Rsvote

I can't say I agree with the idea that either of the articles has been anywhere near "too controversial". If you actually mean to say "It criticises Jagex, therefore it's bad." then firstly Jagex don't receive enough criticism from the Tip.it times, and secondly it is the role of a fan to comment upon and criticise the game/whatever they're interested in. Though I'm not a fan of fan sites "behaving" and not publishing "controversial" opinions on Jagex to begin with xd.

RWT still happens. It's broken. Your argument is invalid. ...I've wanted to say that for a while now. EDIT: Oh, and in response to the first article, you've managed to sum up my thoughts very well. The question is, what should have Jagex done instead? Ok, then you don;t break it even worse. :shame: Impossible to do so. With the trade limit system you can not track the majority of RWTers, with free trade they'll be able to be picked up by the radar again as the trade limit methods (a lot of which centre around manipulation clans) will no longer function. Further, yes the current system is broken. The original change was the biggest injustice Runescape has ever witnessed; the majority of players were punished due to Jagex's inability to deal with the offenses of the few and to top that off, it doesn't work; if anything, it made the problem grow and harder to detect (complain about level 3s at yews? They're visible and detectable, the new manners of RWTing are mostly not). What I meant wasn't broken was the wilderness. The wilderness is perfectly fine as it is. RWT very much still happens, but now they're just opening up the floodgates to let it be even more of a problem. RSVote, you have no proof to your argument that RWT will be easier to catch. Yes Jagex said that, but can we really trust them? They're unleashing a huge update changing a lot of game code, and something is bound to be missed or go wrong knowing Jagex's history of getting it right the first time. Consider that Jagex said all of the following things: Quotes drawn from here After acknowledging the above, do you really, really think that things have changed? Did Jagex miraculously learn how to stop all RWT forever over a couple of years? Will they be able to handle the multitude of accounts that will attempt to RWT once they pull the switch? I don't think so. You don't change the gun restriction laws to allow anybody to own any gun without any license just because the amount of murders and robberies goes down and the police have bigger guns. Also, considering Jagex said that "All Customer Support teams combined, we're banning tens of thousands of accounts each week that belong to real-world traders," I would not consider the removal of wilderness a punishment for the majority based on the offenses of a minority. Hundreds of thousand of accounts is not a minority. Throw in the huge publicity stunt to make it look like they genuinely considered the opinions of the "Runescape Community," which was performed horribly, and it turns the whole thing into a bunch of bullcabbage. You have seriously misunderstood the point I made. One of my posts from the previous "Tip.it times" thread partially explains the *current* RWT market, which you seriously misunderstand (as most of the RS community does, because they don't "see" it, it's beneath the surface): Botting is no longer needed or highly profitable for RWTing, whereas other RWTing methods which are impossible to prove/detect are very much common practice. These are considerably more damaging economically than botting ever could be, yet they will be eliminated with free trade; "closing the floodgates" as you put it. I did not suggest Jagex had improved the free trade system, my argument is fundamentally that the non free trade system is worse/more damaging. Jagex's statistics are incomplete and untrustworthy (amusingly, one minute you're stating we shouldn't trust Jagex then you're quoting from them as if their correspondance over issues is entirely trustworthy), but there is a definite fundamental point to be made; yes, they probably do ban a significant number of ACCOUNTS if we include BOTS, which do not have a single PLAYER per ACCOUNT, It isn't a secret that some people ran hundreds of bots at a time which, after being banned, they replaced within a very short space of time to be banned again/etc. I don't think even Jagex could deny (with a straight face) that they punished the majority of players for a minority of rule breakers. P.S. No you didn't mean the wilderness, after the other person replied you continued arguing on the basis of free trade, it wasn't until I replied and ruddied the claim that it "wasn't broken" that suddenly you meant the wilderness. That's when you threw any credibility out the window.

RWT still happens. It's broken. Your argument is invalid. ...I've wanted to say that for a while now. EDIT: Oh, and in response to the first article, you've managed to sum up my thoughts very well. The question is, what should have Jagex done instead? Ok, then you don;t break it even worse. :shame: Impossible to do so. With the trade limit system you can not track the majority of RWTers, with free trade they'll be able to be picked up by the radar again as the trade limit methods (a lot of which centre around manipulation clans) will no longer function. Further, yes the current system is broken. The original change was the biggest injustice Runescape has ever witnessed; the majority of players were punished due to Jagex's inability to deal with the offences of the few and to top that off, it doesn't work; if anything, it made the problem grow and harder to detect (complain about level 3s at yews? They're visible and detectable, the new manners of RWTing are mostly not).

First article (Racheya): Entirely logical, sensical and well explained overview of the situation and the extent of it's significance. Though I dispute the claim that "RWT was reduced"; I do not think so, it just went from a market in a sort of perfect competition state to a market based upon several oligopolies. I think after the initial muck up, Jagex's behaviour has been well calculated (including in their decision to not split the vote; http://rsvote.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/the-reasons-for-not-splitting-the-vote/) and I suppose I'm hopeful their implementation of the changes will be equally well calculated, but I'm not holding my breath. Second article: Cute. EP is indeed infuriating, as are the drops which introduce far too much ruddy money into the game.

Following the hot debates in this thread and others, I did indeed compose a blog on the vote being split, as it's an issue of controversy which has contributed to starting the year with a bang: http://rsvote.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/the-reasons-for-not-splitting-the-vote/

The problem being that that wasn't it's "stated purpose" until AFTER it had been removed. Jagex made a flawed poll, they fixed it; they should have come clean and told everyone they mucked up. Outside of that, everything you've said is fundamentally correct. EDIT: http://rsvote.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/the-reasons-for-not-splitting-the-vote/ splitting the vote blog.

You speak the truth. I actually took the time to come up with a coherent argument for my point of view rather then claiming that opposing views were invalid simply because they were not in agreement with mine. Also, RWT included those people practicing credit card fraud. Both members and nonmembers worlds had bot accounts clogging the yew trees. It is far easier to use stolen credit cards/fake credit cards to pay for these accounts. Even if the account gets banned after a few months of botting yew trees or other moneymakers, you still get enough yew logs out of it to sell to people and then sell your gold to your paying customer. You don't even have to worry about running out of names for these accounts as there are 4.87x10^18 ( :shock: ) names possible on Runescape. Even supposing that creating an account took 30 seconds, and you were creating 100million accounts (vastly vastly exaggerated) each time, it would still take 46,363.8 years to use all the names. RWT is also directly facilitated by the GE system, through clan manipulations. Some examples: 1. Paying for clans ranks (some clans sell even the lowest ranks for £10 each) 2. Paying for someone to sell your junk. 3. "Buying in on a manipulation": where you pay a "leader" who instructs you on what to buy long before the manipulation, to then (if not scammed) reap the profit of the merch in full spring or (if you're scammed) for the item to never actually be merched. 4. Clan leaders raising "starter" accounts (training them to a reasonable level and gradually securing a high cash store due to manipulations). <--- Note that GE/trade limits did absolutely nothing to stop the selling of accounts. I've never believed the majority should have been punished so much due to the minority of rule breakers, but for them to be punished for the measures to actually not work is an even greater insult.

Just for the record, I considered pointing out the fallaciousness of his arguments too. lol. I only did it because he tried to use his "knowledge" of fallacies to escape from responding to me. "She" and "her" ... I'm female. :P <--- Sorry. You're attempting to argue that, because the Wildy and Free Trade were eliminated at the same time, then they MUST be inter-dependent. It's already been clearly demonstrated by LCool and others that the two aspects are not inter-dependent. You can have one without the other. :shame: <--- Can't be bothered to reply to this. Jagex produces polls every week with multiple selections and yet they are oddly unable and unwilling to do so in this circumstance? Why? <--- Read my earlier post in reply to you if you genuinely can't understand this decision, also note that there is a significant difference on the impact of this referendum and the weekly polls. It is abundantly clear that this has been planned for a while yet the actual production and presentation has been entirely shoddy, half-assed and half-baked. Why? <--- Read my blogs. All that seems to matter is that you and people like you are happy about it. It appeases so many people, apprarently, that it is being blindly accepted and remains unquestioned. Why is that? Why isn't anyone asking "why now"? <--- Read multiple posts I've made on this subject. Obviously Jagex has neither the willingness or the ability to stop the rampant cheating being conducted within the game. Once the Wildy and Free Trade come back, players on Runescape will only become even more dishonest. Why would Jagex do this? <--- Clause 1: They do lack the ability, as the current scenario within the game illustrates quite clearly. RWTing is considerably worse now than what it was pre ge. Clause 2: You have no evidence for this; I personally would refute it, taking away free trade did more harm than good. Is this move going to make an improvement on the quality of the Runescape community? <--- Yes. Read my earlier post in reply to you. When offered the choice of drinking the Kool Aid or ask questions first I always ask questions. <--- And don't listen when people offer their answers. You keep restating the same points without any regard for what others have said. It's fine if you dissagree, but don't suggest people haven't questioned something when they have indisputably done so. Why don't you? I'm curious ... <--- If you haven't got the message by now, there's absolutely no hope for you. Do read my comments in the quotation above this time, as you've clearly missed the point in my previous replies. I'll spell it out for you: Yes I am very happy about the idea of free trade comming back, but the idea that because of this have not "asked questions" or that I'm not querying their motives is fundamentally flawed and evidentially disproven by my conduct on this thread, other threads and on my personal blog on the subject. I can't speak on behalf of the other person you've quoted, but I think it's abundantly clear that he/she has also questioned recent events.

Just for the record, I considered pointing out the fallaciousness of his arguments too. lol. I only did it because he tried to use his "knowledge" of fallacies to escape from responding to me. Hehehe, I got that impression. You'll observe that if an argument "for" (or an explanation of "why") is presented, it's ignored. Which is a pretty consistant problem amongst all of those who're disputing the validity of the referendum (there's been another reasonably prominent example in this thread, who went so far as to call someone as "idiot" because they didn't also agree with his stance). I expect a negative product of this referendum (or - to unambigiously make sure these posts are "on topic" - starting the year with a bang) might well be arrogance-ammo for those who feel it's appropriate to self righteously assault those who dissagree with their stance but not provide any argument to substantiate said stance. Oh such fun.

Just for the record, I considered pointing out the fallaciousness of his arguments too.

How do you reckon that one? :unsure: Because they were both removed for the same reason. Hypothetically, say Jagex put the Wilderness back in in 13 days. But they left the trade system and GE as it is now. Why would this not make any sense? [hide=My answer] It would not make any sense because they were both removed for the same reason. They removed both the Wilderness and Free Trade to combat RWT. They removed Free Trade so that players could not just hand each other massive sums of cash or items without receiving a form of payment equal to the value of the items being traded. So gold farmers could not walk up to a paying customer and put 10mil cash up, hit accept twice, and walk away, thus leaving the "customer" 10mil richer in game and roughly ~$50.00 poorer in real life. The removed the Wilderness so that a goldfarmer could not carry 10mil + 3gp with him in his inventory, and walk out into the wilderness and let the "customer" kill him and loot his deathpile of exactly 10mil coins and one bones. This would leave the "customer" 10mil richer in game and roughly ~$50.00 poorer in real life. Now, if Jagex reintroduced the Wilderness, they would essentially be saying. "We feel that we can now combat RWT with new detection systems and cool gadgets. Because RWT and botting are no longer hard to deal with issues, we will reinstitute the old Wilderness with all the old rules. All of the reasons we gave you for the removal of the Wilderness have been rendered moot (irrelevant)." All of a sudden, everything mentioned in the paragraph about the Wilderness above becomes possible again. If Jagex were to do this, some players would probably say something like: "Hey! Wait just a second! You said all the old reasons you gave us for the removal of the Wilderness don't matter anymore. Well, you gave us the exact same reasons for the removal of Free Trade. How come we don't get Free Trade back? Do the reasons matter when they are about Free Trade, but don't matter when they are about the Wilderness? If so, that doesn't make any sense!" And they would be right. There would be no reason for Jagex to keep Free Trade out of the game (while bringing back the Wilderness) besides the impulsive "Because we can!" The same principle applies in the other direction as well. [/hide] Doing something like this would give a much deeper meaning to the phrase "You got Jagex'd" though. :P Your logic is circular and therefore flawed. Sure, both were removed for purportedly "the same reason", but they are not necessarily inter-dependent. Unless you can provide an actual valid reason that demonstrates how they are completely and utterly inter-dependent, then there is no reason whatsoever why both options had to be included in the same poll. :P Firstly, it's worth pointing out that the vote was for the basic principle of how Runescape would progress; they didn't have to offer it, yet they did. Motives aside, this is a fundamentally significant act for the game. This vote, which yields a (predictable, maybe) clear result towards one side effectively solidifies the bulk of the community, as a clear majority has opted for this significant change as oppose to it being randomly added without consultation. There are plenty of practical reasons why (I.E. Old Wilderness makes free trading entirely possible, people would do this and Runescape would yield a considerably higher scam rate) but I think that the principle reason why they did not is that if they'd have split the potential changes, the majority (who were willing to accept things they didn't like or didn't care about for the things they did) would definitely have been smaller on those issues which did yield a majority ("probably" most of them, but not all), and this would have caused so many more community splinters/clashes which would be terrible for the game as it stands; they knew this, they weren't prepared to risk it. I'm almost inclined to write a "what if" blog over this. Jagex "splitting the vote" would have been potentially catastrophic and broken on so many levels.

Um, if you are talking about the joindate on the Tip.it Forums, then: http://forum.tip.it/index.php?app=members&module=list Just hit advanced filters, and then at the bottom of the page, select sort by joindate in ascending order. ForsakenMage Was apparently the 3rd TIF account created, and he is still active, having posted just before the post I quoted. And if you are talking about Runescape, I know for a fact that Ashley still plays, and she was the 13th account created on RS I believe. (or 9th account, possibly) I've got absolutely no interest in length of period playing, being on the forum, etc. That's just the equivalent of buying a car with a long...nevermind. If you check my profile, it gives my age. I'd don't believe that the advanced search options offer the option of searching by age, to be fair, if they do, they shouldn't. But I know giving a birthdate is a requirement of registration. So I'm interested in trying to find a player who was really born before the real me, rather than their characters age. Hope that makes things clearer You're only 41. I'm sure there's plenty. EDIT: I believe my friend made a forum account here a few years ago, and she's 43/44.

Sound familiar? Jagex made a rubbish voting system, realised they'd mucked up and replaced it. The second one (the referendum) did not engineer a bias in the result. I actually made my own dissaproval of the "petition" clear in the part of my post you quoted (and in other parts of my post), and I have also composed blog entries about it (feel free to read them). Well - for the sake of argument - how do we truly know that Jagex actually honestly recorded "all" the votes on the second poll? Doesn't it seem just as likely that they already planned on bringing it back, and merely made up a poorly designed "poll" the first time, then covered their tracks and recorded only a small percentage of the "no" vote to skew the results into showing what they wanted? Yes, they could well have done this and it makes a wonderful conspiracy theory; I myself don't trust Jagex and didn't when they first released the "petition". However, my point that the poll itself didn't engineer a result would still hold true; there was no bias in the actual poll's question/answer. Secondly, if Jagex wanted a real honest vote, why didn't then have each issue voted on separately? They offered a package which players could opt for or against. We was voting for whether this package was desirable, not our individual interests in each part of it. I'm not giving my position on this decision (it's rather long and boring) but there's no "dishonesty" in blocking them together. In so many ways, this reminds me of the 1995 Quebec Referendum question: Yes [] No [] Don't care [] :rolleyes: Hehehehehe.

Sound familiar? Jagex made a rubbish voting system, realised they'd mucked up and replaced it. The second one (the referendum) did not engineer a bias in the result. I actually made my own dissaproval of the "petition" clear in the part of my post you quoted (and in other parts of my post), and I have also composed blog entries about it (feel free to read them).

Edit: Jagex clearly are giving us a dramatic start to the year ( http://rsvote.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/the-date-is-set/ ) Firstly; I am personally of the belief that the "petition" was a muck up and the "referendum" was a fix, even if Jagex didn't admit to this. However, some people attitudes towards this are rather annoying. I also don't understand how a member of the editorial panel is allowed to flame/insult posters when they dissagree with him? Calling the other person an idiot was completely uncalled for. Quoted for truth :) Quoted for stupidity: A) Prove that all of those who dishonestly voted in the poll are in game cheats. I voted on 5 accounts of mine in the "petition", and would have voted on all of them if the referendum wasn't a clear yes. B) Punishing the majority due to the activities of a minority is unreasonable and injust. C) Can't be bothered to restate all of the arguments others have delivered. In regards to Stormrages "poll" (which is about as bad as Jagex's "petition" was): Bladewing hit the nail on the head, and yes your poll probably did tell you what you "wanted" to know because you engineered this result. P.S. Why must we use... Full stops... All the time... It's slightly annoying and... obscures your message...