Since some of you may want to hear my side of the story... I have a confession to make: I made a mistake. My mistake was to think that something that Jagex said might be true. The claim that the macro detection system is 100% accurate may be true, but only if you round up the real percentage. Now I know that, but it's impossible to prove to anyone else. I always had some doubts about the accuracy, but I never imagined I would be one of the "false positives". I had never met one before, and even if I had, I don't think that I would have believed them. That's why I don't expect anyone to believe me, after all it's just my word against Jagex'. No-one has any proof to support or disprove Jagex' claim, so I would appreciate if there was no guessing. I have talked about this in-game with only a few friends. Please don't be offended if I didn't contact you, you should already know how much I like talking. But since the cat is out of the bag (Took you long enough ;)), I might as well add my own thoughts. Because Jagex gives no evidence for macroing offences, I can't be certain, but I have a pretty good idea why the detection system picked me. The only thing that makes me doubt my theory is that the time between the assumed "detection" and the ban would have been only a few days, at most just over a week. Anyone can check from their favourite XP tracker, what happened before the bang (XP-wise), and draw their own conclusions. But I will try to explain that in detail. Someone who checked me on highscores before the ban, might have seen a few things: - I like "hard" skills - I like my skills in "order" - I'm a little bit crazy Also I like challenges. Earlier this year I thought it would be nice to get back the #1 spot in F2P runecrafting. And it wouldn't be too hard because Gota had stopped playing. So after a few months break from RuneScape, I started playing GOP once again. It was quite a shock to find out how bad the bot situation had gotten in the RC guild. However I don't usually back out from whatever I decide to do, so I began a quest for 1M tokens; something that I hadn't done before, and something that would easily be enough to complete the original goal. As much as I like gopping, after some 670k tokens I felt like doing something else for a change. So I decided to up my resource gathering skills a notch. That meant getting about 1M XP in mining, fishing and woodcutting. Simple enough task, nothing new about it. With mining I made a return to my favourite mining spot: Crafting Guild. I wasn't going for the ultimate XP rate, because I wanted to refresh some memories, and the Clan Camp tele had made it faster, and there were not many bots in there, or any other miners, for that matter. After some experimenting I formed a mining method that best suited me: - One mining urn from the bank - Clan Camp tele - Crafting Guild - Mine all seven gold - Mine all six silver - On the way back to gold, drop all silver - All gold - All silver - Drop silver, leave room for seven gold (six + urn) - All gold, teleport the urn - Daemonheim tele - Deposit At best I clocked about 25k XP/h, which was a huge improvement from the "old" times. At one point I started also high-alching between rocks, to make Magic my first combat 20M+ skill. I went for a minimum of 100k mining XP a day, which meant playing around 5 hours a day. On weekdays that was about all the time I had. With mining, the only part where you need fast clicking is when you drop the silver. With fishing and woodcutting I went for the speed. That meant using urns and the "get-one-drop-one" method, or my variations of that. That again meant constant clicking, worse than burying bones. I won't start estimating, but I have clicked on RuneScape quite a few times, and I like to think that I know how to do it. For example dropping a full inventory of fish happens so "naturally" that it's a little bit scary. I have tried mouse keys just once, for dropping fish, but that only slowed me down. It would have required too much practise to make it more effective. I'm sure there are even faster clickers out there, but I have my moments. However with fishing I ended up with a compromise. "Fish-one-drop-one" until I had seven free inventory spots (one column). After that dropping only full columns, until I was out of urns. I fished at Lumbridge. Fishing being as fast as it is, I don't really understand why anyone would even bot it. I got my million XP in about two days. I actually made my own woodcutting urns, because I had no luck buying them on the G.E.. Some 200 urns didn't take that long to make in Crafting Guild. The new kind of willow took a moment to get used to. The maple island wasn't any better than any other willow pair anymore, so I went looking for another spot. After trying a few too many willows, I chose to stay at Port Sarim, near the church; the place where I got most of the XP for my first two 99 skills. I went into "ultra efficiency mode", trying to perfect the art of willow chopping. That included chopping and dropping two logs at once, instead of one like when fishing, adjusting camera angles just right, and what else: lightning fast clicking, with few short breaks. I'm pretty sure I raised a couple of red flags in the macro detection system. On Sunday, the day before the ban, I made a new own daily XP record on woodcutting, even if I didn't really try to. (Still nothing overly impressive.) On Monday I went to finish woodcutting with my last 26 urns. I didn't get to play for long, when I suddenly got kicked off RuneScape. At first I thought it was just my connection, but when I tried to log back in, I was greeted with this message: Took me a while to even understand what had happened. There wasn't any message in the message centre; that came quite a while later. Eventually I went to Account Management to see if there would be any offence to appeal. And there sure was: I don't know if the fast skilling part alone would have got me banned. But when you combine it with things like playing private chat off, looking like a hobo, and so on, you never know what may happen. Yet I haven't mentioned one factor, which added to all the above, might have been the tipping point. Normally I play with the RuneScape Client. However I have some problems with it when trying to resize the window. The game area doesn't update correctly, and there are black rectangles covering part of the game. Normally that's not a problem, because I don't need to resize. When I started fishing, I wanted to get the inventory as close to the fishing spot as possible. So instead of starting a fight with the RS Client, I decided to use a (not that well known) web browser called Chromium, which I use to play some other games too. That change of client, sudden XP gains after several months of slow XP from GOP, effective training, chat settings... I don't know how the detection system works, but I don't think I made its job easy. I know this may sound like someone who didn't work for their XP, but I don't really care if I get the account back or not. If I do, and there are rollbacks, it just means that Jagex still thinks that I broke the rules. However I'm not interested in a "second chance", and in that case Setelima would be toxic to me. For me it's never been about being the best or beating someone in highscores (well a little). My style of playing has always been about setting personal goals, and trying to enjoy the journey. Icing on the cake is the sense of achievement. Over the few years I have played, there have always been people accusing me of botting, even some "friends". Of course that's not that uncommon in RuneScape. Is it jealousy, or real concern about the Game, I can't tell. But I rarely bothered to respond to accusations like that or to try to dispel any rumors. I have always been a lone wolf, playing for my own entertainment, not caring about anyone's claims. Deep down I knew the truth, and that was all that mattered to me. I don't like what RuneScape/Jagex has turned into with the loyalty program, refer a friend, etc... All that just makes them seem desperate for money, and I don't see how that would be good for business in the long run. I don't see why I would keep supporting them by playing. It's a shame, because RuneScape used to be (still is) a good way to relax after a long day, be it mindless clicking, minigames with friends, or just watching the pixel world whirl around. But with me you'll never know. I have come back before. For now I would just like to see what happens with the appeal. This little incident hasn't changed me as a person, whether it's a good thing or not. In the end it's all about who do you trust. Thanks for the support. P.S. The 1000 characters in the appeal simply isn't enough.
