Jonanananas

I have never really considered botting, and I won't RWT while I'm playing as well. It will probably never occur to me because I don't play Rs in a way to make a lot of cash, but if I was quitting and had a huge cash pile sitting in my bank, I'm not sure I could resist. I mean, if I had a billion and was quitting...It's worth over 500$, that's quite a lot of money. I don't think I could resist that.

You are, however, under the assumption that products produced by bots get alched in the end. That is definitely not always the case. Also, of course the RWT money will come into the economy eventually, but until then it is stored away, which slows the rate of inflation, or increases the rate of deflation, depending on where you start. As for your last comment, that's kind of a no-brainer. Currently most item prices are decreasing, at least on average. Therefore there is deflation in this game. Only because there was a huge inflation before that doesn't mean that deflation doesn't happen.

Well, how about one? I think it should be easy enough to work out, I have an old excel file for it, it wouldnt be complicated and pretty useful imo. Tip.it has almost all the data needed(only thing needed would be rough distribution for the bonus items such as the different gems, but that shouldn't prove too much of a problem)

Interesting Articles this week, I'd definitely be interested in a follow-up article. It explained nicely how inflation and deflation occur and what they're symptoms of, but in that manner of speaking, it didn't really tell us what the disease does. I think a large factor of that is that the balance between skilling and Monsterhunting(or anything that uses these cheap resources) is shifted. I'm one of those who would hope that it would shift back a bit again ;) The second article was even more interesting for me, it's really the question if it's just nostalgia or if it really was better. Regarding tutorial island, I would definitely choose that one, preferably with the advisor system removed. I've played both, and the unstable foundations in itself is imo, next to useless. The old tutorial explained a few skills, basic fighting and then threw you out in the world. The new one explains basically nothing but then has the advisor system which cuddles you up like a little baby. I do think I would definitely prefer the old way and it's not just nostalgia. A reopening of tutorial island would be great, even if just for the memories. I think it would make for a great quest tbh - One of the funny, self-ironic ones. Regarding gnome copters, it's an interesting idea and I would personally be in favour of it. However, one thing your article fails to address is the real reason why they were removed. You do name it, but then you continue talking about how great it would be to get F2P into members, when that is exactly the problem with it. MMG wants to avoid a deprecation of the F2P game, which is a honourable goal. What you should have done here is showing how gnomecopters advertise members content without deprecating F2P gameplay. I think they're great because they are optional and you decide yourself if you want to take a tour, so if you don't want to see it, you don't have to. They advertise members without forcing it on F2P, unlike some of the other things that were removed(such as non-working pickpocket options or non-working options to open gates to member's areas). Nevertheless, an interesting and good article.

I'm not sure, but couldn't using a touchpad give you an advantage over mouse users if you're experienced with using it? It just occured to me, no idea what's Jagex's stance on this.

It would be interesting to know which part of the share the raine group got....before that, andrew and paul had 51.35% together, ian had 0.65%, constant 13% and insight 35%. Assuming that raine didn't get some of the insight share...that'd mean that the gowers no longer hold more than 505 of the share. I couldn't find any recent information on this however :/

As the author of the second article, I am afraid you are not only offensive in your interpretation, but also ignorant to the very contents of the article you are ridiculing. If you found it naive, you've clearly misunderstood its message or have no experience in the creative business community in RuneScape. As stated in the article - if only you'd be as gracious as to read and understand it - people often talk of changing minor aspects of the community, e.g. starting a slightly new venture within a corporation framework, and are naive enough to believe this alone will reinvigorate the community as a whole. The proposition of abandoning the corporation model, which would, if implemented, radically alter how the community functions, is far from naive; it may be a success or a failure, but either way it will have a significant impact on the community. With regards to your second comment, I am going to present to you a concept. RuneScape is a game, with no basis in real life. The Tip. it Times is about RuneScape. The corporation model which serves as the basis of the article and is discussed throughout is, therefore, the corporation as it exists within RuneScape, not real life. When an article on herblore is published, do you feel the need to point out that herbs cannot be used for potions in real life? I sincerely hope not. Just because you are not aware of them within the context of the game does not mean they do not exist, and I think in future you would do better to apply common sense before posting such puerile remarks. To those who made the reasonable, informed comment that the article catered only to a select audience, I accept that I was writing for said audience and the suggestion that it could have been more accessible to those unfamiliar with RuneScape's business community is a good one which I shall take into consideration in future. Those who made the effort to respond critically and constructively, regardless of their familiarity with the subject matter, your feedback is much appreciated. :thumbup:

I couldn't agree more with this. An Times article is as already said, the author's view on something. The whole meaning with publishing an article is to share your own view with the community. Not to just say something that the community have just discussed. And according to me, this is at least one of the biggest reason to what makes the Tip.It Times what it is today; Awesome. Nothing against that, really not. But when an author presents his opinion in an editorial, its aim normally is to influence the opinion of the reader into a certain direction. If it doesn't do that convincingly, it's generally not a good one. If there are obvious counterarguments left out, it doesn't help the goal of the article. If Racheya wanted to bring the point across that livid farm is not as bad as people make it out to be, then she should have adressed e.g the usefulness of the spells in some way.

First article was ok, didn't mention a few things I would've liked to hear though(as in I don't agree with the opinion of the article as most of the spells are useless and I don't particularly care about getting farm xp so I wouldn't put up with the grind it seems to be) Second article: I guess it could have been good...The problem is that I personally, and I suspect a few others here as well have never been involved with Runescape businesses...which makes your article seem like a lot of brambling. You should have put more notion on who your audience is and shape that article a bit so they can get something out of it too.

Tbh Runescape is grinding enough already - raising skills up to 120 is useless if you don't even have the content to 99 yet. Currently it will just encourage mind-numbing training of skills which is, for the majority of people, the wrong way to go. Those who really care about their achievements and are willing to grind for hours straight can already do that with Xp or highscore goals. No need to add new levels just for that. I think the whole focus should shift, away from the shiny 99 capes who may be fun to get, but don't really offer anything worthwhile. Tbh, a lot of that attitude kinda sickens me. Take the livid farm update. When it was released, players complained that if they already had 99, they still had to play the minigame to unlock the rewards. Like they were FORCING them to train a skill after 99! OMG! That is totally wrong, isn't it? /sarcasm off. Of course runescape has always included grinding, and unless you completely rewrap the game (which wouldn't be a smart move considering that millions have come to like it as it is) you cannot scrap it completely. I'd just wish they could provide alternative skilling options, which don't need to be the new fastest method ever, but simply an alternative way with similar xp rates. Is that too much for ask for. And of course, a lot of skills are still missing a point. Let's see Combat skills obviously provide an advantage and have a point herblore as well. slayer, dungeoneering: check agility: kinda but then come the older skills... Firemaking:useless. Smtihing:useless. Mining:useless. Thieving: useless. Farming: Useless. Woodcutting: Useless. Fishing: Useless....I could go on. Most of these were needed in Runescape, and obviously they are still kind of needed today. But not by an individual person. All these skills are merely for producing a few nice things(or they don't do anything worthwhile at all) and you're better off if you just make some money and buy it all. Most skills have lost their usefulness for single players, and I think that needs to change. It's a long way to go of course, but honestly I can't see Jagex even starting with it....just look at the supposed smithing "revamp"....

What I've personally always wondered is: You say bot programmers can get every information out of the RS client. If that's the case, why continue to supply it? I definitely don't want to piss off people who use it, but is it really necessary? What's the big deal about playing in a normal browser?

If it is, they still haven't understood how it works. If you want players to socialize, you give them the possibility and the incentive to do so (clan chats etc., incentive to form clans) community events don't really change anything about that. Oh and the content is still just as half developed. Row glitch, dozens of duel arena glitches and similar.

You had about 1-2 (maybe 3) minutes before your items appeared on the floor to everyone. That was PRE-gravestone. There was one minute for your stuff to recollect your stuff without it appearing to others. Another minute of it being visible for everything. That's exactly 2 minutes in total. not 3.

Activities that are dangerous in Runescape: Pvp, Corp, GWD solo, KBD(because you have to run through the wild if you die),chaos elemental. Apart from that, I can't think of anything. Gravestones were already a joke, and with 15 instead of 6 minutes it's just downright hilarious. There is no area except the above mentioned where you couldn't go easily within 15 mins and collect your stuff. Heck, you could go there four or five times before your timer runs out. There is simply NO danger with normal monsters under any relevant circumstances. I think gravestones provide just the wrong kind of security. If you die at any normal slayer monster then you'd have to be pretty damn stupid or AFK. Both things that are entirely your fault and therefore should be punished by losing money. At bosses, if you fight them seriously sometimes death simply can't be prevented. But it's these players that may get punished for dying. I don't think that's how it should be. The risk of dying at slayer monsters if FAR lower, therefore it should be punished a LOT more than dying at a boss imo. Jagex should just have kept gravestone as they are(or even lower the times, but they probably wouldn't dare that) and code individual solutions for GWD and such. Second article: Yes it's a trend a lot of people have noticed recently. Tbh, most of these events are a fail and only fun for a tiny minority of players. Jagex shouldn't do community events(or at least not many) and instead provide framework for community events organized by the COMMUNITY, not Jmods. Triumvirate was a nice addition like that, and the clan chat update probably will be too. The rest is mostly just a waste of time and it's sad to see Jagex going into that direction.

What the clan article didn't mention was that Jagex is actually working on an update to the clan chats right now, which would feature a lot of interesting stuff such as clan highscores, the prevention of multi-clanning and a lot of other neat stuff. I'd wait for that before suggesting further changes - they may already be included ;) scam article - meh. Honestly I couldn't care less if jagex prevents these scams - I don't think it hurts anyone if they fall for a scam. It's their own fault and they should learn out of it. Unless, ofc, it's a really good lure - but I haven't seen or heard of such yet.

Well, I have honestly no idea why Hasbro would choose Jagex, but I think they should get a chance at least. Apart from Runescape, Jagex has released only funorb yet, which practically did only really fail because they tried using subscriptions there as well. No matter how good the games are, there are tons of sites how offer small minigames, and almost none require you to pay money to enjoy them fully. The market was just overflown with free stuff already. But a lot of the funorb games are actually really decent.

The FAQ released in the recent updates forum. On the story part...yeah you're right. I haven't even noticed that. The story works just as well without that though, so it's not a big deal.

Ooooh, so many shiny articles! :D So, let's do them one by one: Smithing Revamp: I haven't personally tried it yet(and probably won't for a long time) but it seems like it offer some interesting training methods. From what I've heard, the update itself is actually decent - apart from the fact that it's in no way what was expected or needed. The FAQ looks more like an excuse tbh, but what I think I could read between the lines is that they don't want smithing to become another Prayer/Herblore. Face it, most of the suggestions included more powerful, untradeable armour and weapons. Smithing isn't quite a cheap skill(Unless you train it at the blast furnace) and obviously a real use to it would drive up prices a lot. Now, the artisans's workshop doesn't really help with that...but I think it's a try. But until smithing is actually revamped we'll have to wait quite a bit...more than a year at least. The house always wins: I have heard the suggestion of incorporating such games into actualy Runescape code(to prevent scamming) and I though it was an interesting idea. Of course the thrill of not knowing if the host is going to cheat you will be gone...but the flower games and such have a lot of bad reputation as being scam-games and I think it's a bit sad that something which people apparently enjoy cannot fully be used because of that. I think that'd be quite a nice addition ;) Logdotzip: A very interesting article, you have successfully shown why you love this game. Runescape is indeed an awesome game that offers thousands of possibilites to play(I personally would probably have quitted some time ago as I don't really can get fun out of skilling or combat - if it wasn't for Team Penguin. It's something I discovered that's a lot of fun to me, the community, the aspect of helping other players and the whole game mechanics of dealing with penguins - even if that doesn't really have to do so much anymore with what anyone would consider a "standard" runescape playstyle.) Even if we may disagree with certain updates, we have come to love this game for what it is, and I think the people at Jagex are trying their best to keep that and also offer new stuff at the same time - even though they fail sometimes ;) Larry and the penguins: PENGUINS! :D Nah, I really liked it although it was a bit too short for my taste but it certainly got me thinking about it. Without larry, what would we have done? No chance against the penguins...and everyone thinks he's crazy. Poor larry :(

Hmm....with the climbing boots update, there was the rumor floating around that mod mark had leaked it to his friends and they made tons of money of that. If an article with some proof that's not easily distinguishable as a fake was published, bashing mod Mark for that...I could imagine them going mad a bit ;) but this is kinda going off-topic lol ;)

Jagex also undoubtedly has changed. Just compare it - Back then, players were banned for having offensive names, and now not even botters are guaranteed to get a ban. Just that should show that a lot of things are different at Jagex today, and I'd say most are for the positive. This would need to be taken to a whole other level, with more controversial information and probably also a more biased view in order for Jagex to ask for the removal of an article again.

Well tbh...I wouldn't exactly say my article was *that* much of a kick in the hornet's nest. The only information that I didn't find publicized by Jagex in some way were there profits and employments from last year(I don't see how these would be that controversial in any way) and the fact that the gowers and constant have left the directors board...but that has been floating around the forums a bit without even a lock. So I'd say there's no risk with the article at hand ;)

Regarding Storm's idea, because I haven't yet got to talk about that myself: I actually think this might be a viable solution, it just depends on how much work will have to go into this. Yes, botters want to have an advantage over other players, and the private server doesn't offer that, but think about it. We have a random player who thinks about botting. Why does he think about it? He doesn't say to himself "Hey, I want to use this illegal macro program to gain highscore ranks quicker than everyone else, I'm going to download it now and start botting so I can have an advantage over everyone" It's probably more like "Damn, fishing is so slow...I wanna go PKing but I don't have the money for it....hmm I've heard of this bot that's supposed to be undetectable. I guess I can try it out" Now, you have to think that Jagex will always look a lot more reliable than some dubious RWT company. Which means that, if someone has the choice between the two, chances are high that he'll choose the official way. No risk of getting banned, no risk of getting "hacked" etc. Of course private servers will soon hold no merit for most of these cheaters. But how many of them will actually go back after that? How many will say "Oh, I realize now that I only had fun botting on the normal servers because I could gain an unfair advantage over others. I'm tired of these private server cheatings, but will go back to normal servers and bot there in order to have fun again" Imo, a pretty low number. Most will probably just quit. But on the other hand, my mind kinda revolts against legalizing botting in any way, and tbh, I'd like a few SERIOUS attempts to stop botting before this would be implemented. What Jagex is doing atm is just a joke.

If it became widespread like that, they'd fix the bots to deal with plants. There are already bots who can deal with it...and yes, if it became an official move, bots would adapt within a few weeks at most, probably only days.

Afaik, they already have been taking legal action against bot developers...with few merit. I know that at least one site was closed down but immediately opened again under a slightly different name. It's not very easy to prove that bot developers actually break laws, not just game rules. On the second part of your post...unfortunately true. Actually I have seen a few bots at Aubury's already who logged out once they got near the marker plant/cannon. And however suspicious that might be, it's not enough to prove that it's a bot, not even mentioning that you'd have to get his name first, which will be hard if he logs out.