Omali

I'm back because, as much as I wish I could quit Qeltar, the memory of his old Truthscape articles keeps bringing me back. Ethics is a factor when it comes to affecting people outside of the game. Macroing is against the rules because it is cheating, real world trading is against the rules because it favors those with access to cash, and causes mass inflation. Crashing someone is fair because they always have the opportunity to go train, get better, and make themselves less vulnerable to crashing. But aren't you trying to dictate my ethics right now, while I explain my reasoning for my own ethical beliefs stemming from the fact that crashing is fine because it is competition in a video game that transcends a whole five minutes of time, consolidated to inside of the game world? "Yea well if you crash you're a lazy asshat." This is pretty much what your argument comes down to. Of course you wouldn't, as that would require adding consistency to your already unstable and inconsistent opinion. Actually it's a perfect analogy, and I'll put them side by side: Person A is in the electronics department when she comes across the one and only Princess and the Frog DVD, sitting on the shelf, which is on sale. She decides to make a phone call to her daughter to make sure that she has not already purchased said DVD for her (Person A's) granddaughter. In her absentmindedness, Person A wanders into the other aisle during the phone call, during which Person B enters the scene, sees the DVD, and breaths a sigh of relief that they found the last one before Easter and more importantly, before the sale ends. Person A witnesses Person B walking away with the DVD and proceeds to flip [cabbage] on her, claiming ownership over the item she neither purchased, nor had even removed from the shelf. Person A claims that they "saw it first." Player A is in the Godwars Dungeon looking to solo Graardor. After 30 minutes, player B swoops in with or without a clan and starts fighting the boss. Being of higher level, Player B gets the most hits in, and thus ends up getting the drop. Player B proceeds to flip [cabbage] that the spot is his because "he was there first." The store story is a true story, and occurred just this past Saturday. When the guest eventually came up to complain, she was told quite calmly that the store could not do anything about it, and that if she was thinking about purchasing the item she should have held on to it in her cart, otherwise the policy was first come first serve. Nope, my belief is a little more in-depth than that. My store promises to do our best to keep items in stock, and order more when stock gets low, and do everything we can not to run out of stock, or at least offer rainchecks if the item was on sale. Some items we do not offer rain checks on, one of those being the pre-Easter DVD that Person A was seeking. That being said, we make it very clear that, despite our best efforts, when popular items hit the store there is no guarantee that we will have it in stock, and everything on the weekly ad list is on a first-come first-serve basis. People complain every week about how they came in on the last day of the sale and we didn't have any left, and their response is always the same: Come in earlier in the week. I guess the store isn't that great of an analogy because, in Runescape, you never truly own something. The equivalent of what you said, coming up and ripping it out of the person's hands, would be if the person proceeded to hack your account and somehow transfer the loot you received over to their own account. If you are fighting a monster, using a resource node, or doing anything that is non-instanced, you are the person idling around the shelves. As long as the item is on the shelf, it is up for anyone to grab. You've never gone shopping on Black Friday if you think you can't get away with your "ripping out of people's hands" theory. I'm not anonymous. You can find my full name on my MMO blog, not to mention my general area and college major, apparently enough information to track me down because one avid reader of MMO Fallout managed to piece together where I work and actually approached me, all based on a combination of general statements as well as slightly more specific jokes I had made (being the only male worker in that section of the store), I'm working and I hear "OMALI!" and look up to . As my discussion mainly pertains to politics in real life, I will agree: I do not act like I do on Tip.It in real life. I would say I'm pretty laid back compared to how I am when I discuss politics. I'm a lot more sarcastic, condescending, and always on the offense in real life, at each time's appropriate moments. I have much less tolerance for irrelevance, and I have zero tolerance for lies and misinformation. But that was partly how I was raised, you fight for what you believe in and you fight hard. I think it was my father who recently compared me as young Rahm Emmanuel, aside from the fact that I never lose my temper. Then again, I've been debating Senatorial and Gubernatorial candidates for years now, most recently a Senatorial candidate who I won't name.

Insert personal attack. Insert irrelevant analogy Insert retort Insert personal attack. Rinse repeat, thread over.

Real world trading does affect people outside of the game, including the company itself. The rest are unfair advantages that break the game's rules. Nice straw man, but half-assed arguments like that aren't going to work on me. There are limited resources in Runescape, and in other MMOs, except unlike Runescape in other MMOs you often don't get the luxury of being able to switch servers, so if a clan has decided to camp a non-instanced boss for the night, you're screwed 100% and you know what the developers will tell you? Deal with it. Roll a character on another server, or find something else to do for the night, or get your own clan and stomp them out of business. You bring up this concept of who deserves what, without using the word itself, and presume that anyone who "crashes" is an asshat. I think you need to take a step back and look at your own situation: You're like the person in a store who sees someone take the last [insert item here] on the shelf that you wanted, and immediately thinks "Wow, what a selfish jerk who doesn't care about others who might have wanted [insert item here]." You don't care about "others" who wanted it, you were looking out for your best interest. In fact, if you didn't want it, you would not have even given a first glance, let alone a second.

This is both simplistic and stupid. Ethical behavior (not morality -- there is a difference) is what enables human beings to coexist. There's a reason why every society in history has had an ethical code; without it, anarchy ensues. It's a simple matter of decency and fairness -- treating others as you would want to be treated. As someone else said, it's not about what you *can* do, it's about what you *should* do. If someone wants to be selfish, then fine, just recognize what you are doing and why. And don't complain when it gets done to you. Oh, and take heart that you use the identical lame rationalizations used by mercher pyramid schemes, gold farmers, account traders, botters and hackers. They use the exact same "arguments" to justify *their* unethical behavior. It's only a matter of degree. This is a video game. Competition is fine ethically because ultimately losing your spot at the mole or anywhere else in-game isn't going to have an effect outside of Runescape. Morality in Runescape is just a crutch used by people so they can take their ball and stomp home in a big huff, while pretending that they weren't acting like a child.

From checking the Adventurer's Log: Strange? That picture looks like it may be quite old, it was taken before the UI upgrades (The blank summoning icon is still there). Perhaps the person changed names since then?

ITT: College kids try to act like their business associates degree (college equivalent of a GED) makes them more qualified than a CEO. There are several forms of MMO business models but we won't go into that right now. There is no such thing as a "demo" in the MMO world, there are only "trials" and there are fundamental differences between the two. 1. A demo applies to the non-MMO genre. 2. A demo is never updated, at all, unless the developer wishes to fix several bugs. 3. An MMO "trial" is subject to the same patches as the full game. 4. A demo is almost always segregated from the full game, should multiplayer elements even be included. Free To Play: Many free to play games are dubbed "Free to play, pay to compete" as they more often than not have a cash shop, and usually one that gives perks in player vs player combat. It is not often you will find a free to play game that does not have some form of cash shop (Shadowbane is one of the few MMOs to opt for in-game advertisements). It is important to note that a free to play game does not carry any option for "membership", although some may offer subscriptions in the form of a certain amount of cash shop currency being delivered each month. Freemium: This is the category Runescape falls into. Technically a subdivision of the free to play brand, freemium allows players a full game for free, but with the added option of getting premium options by paying a fee, hence the name freemium (free-premium). Although this varies per business, freemium models in the MMO genre are not time-limited. The fundamental difference between freemium and an unlimited trial, in this respect, is that the free portion of a freemium title can be considered a full game in and of itself. Although a soft-wall exists in freemium titles, where players may be limited in world-space, an unlimited trial is freely admitted as a small taste of a full game. To better make the comparison, a free vanilla ice cream cone, with napkins and access to a bathroom, would constitute the free portion of a freemium title, with sprinkles, syrup, a drink, cherries, and other amenities being the "premium" service. Unlimited trial: The unlimited trial only began catching steam in the past year or two, with titles including Champions Online, Warhammer Online, and Global Agenda being among the MMOs that are switching to this business model. In the unlimited trial, a player has free reign to take in the game at their own pace, owing to internal research showing that the fifteen day trial was overall not long enough to give players a satisfying look at the game. Unlimited trials offer no time limit, but always impose some form of limit on levels. In Warhammer Online, for instance, players are limited to tier 1 (up to level 10), while Champions Online restricts players to the first fifteen levels, and the Qulaar Invasion area (to be changed at an unknown date). To continue the ice cream analogy, an unlimited trial would be the option to sample (if you've seen those thimble sized cups and fingernail sized spoons, you'll know what I'm talking about) a couple flavors, but just large enough to have a taste.

There are a lot less autoers, most of them are private use nowadays, just people too lazy to play the game, or getting powerleveled. They are also less public than before, and tend to do their business in dungeons and in obscure locations. Like in the old days. One of the best ways still to catch a bot is to report it.

Yea, that stupid Bruce Everiss and all of those "facts" he presented not only in court but in his blog. I mean, what do pictures and press releases mean anyway? NOTHING, that's right. Not that it matters. Bruce will continue blogging, and Evony will go back to making Generic Asian MMO #98579234847593874593784593874593478589347958348753974 for the glorious people's republic!

The Community Has Spoken: How MMO Creators Balance Development Plans with Player Feedback Community and player involvement are the backbone of any good MMO. One of the huge issues we face as a Community Management team, and as a game developer and publisher, is that all of our players have an opinion on pretty much every aspect of our games...and they're not afraid to let us know about it! What's the issue, then? Well, when you have the largest free MMO in the world in your game catalogue with millions of players, that's one hell of a lot of opinion to attempt to digest, respond to and factor into game development. Here at Jagex Games Studio, we place a great deal of value on community satisfaction and player response to our games. We genuinely believe in our loyal community, and very much want to give them what they desperately desire, demand, deserve, even dream of...but that's not that easy to accomplish. As a game developer with a huge community, we have multiple aims: to continually produce interesting, challenging and playable content, as well as respond to player feedback, and, where possible, to incorporate player feedback and opinion into our development schedule. Maybe it goes without saying, but we value our players and their opinions more than anything. They are our dedicated heroes who care about the game and the company a lot, and let's face it, they provide the funds to enable us to invest both in current games as well as develop new ones. Without our players, we vanish. So what's the issue? The problem is that the content teams have plans, ideas and designs of their own. After all, shouldn't they as professional game developers? Don't forget, too, that the owner and CEO has an overriding strategy for each game. The crux of this then becomes how does Jagex as a company (and specifically the Community Management Teams) sift through the hundreds of thousands of suggestions made every year in order to ensure that the Content Teams are taking on board player feedback so that the game is relevant for all players? More importantly, how can we ensure that players know that they are actually listened to, and that their opinions, suggestions and feedback do make a difference to the game they know and love? Sheer Scale In 2009, RuneScape players made 21 million posts on our forums. This means that players were writing in at a rate of 2,300 posts per hour, 24/7. Of these, 124,799 suggestion threads were created with an average of 3,284 suggestions posted per week! The most important thing to Jagex is to make sure our players don't feel like just another number in the crowd of fans and players, and for them to keep coming back with enthusiasm and excitement for our games. So, over the years, we have adapted our approach to try to elicit feedback and suggestions from groups of players, such as clans, high level players and volunteer moderators. While not perfect, we feel we are on the way to striking a balance between being able to hear relevant feedback, and responding to them by including suggestions into actual game development. Unfortunately, we simply can't incorporate every suggestion and idea that players send us. From time to time, we even have to turn down ideas that we all really like. We want to involve our players in the decision making process, and also give them a chance to speak to our top decision makers directly. In the last year, since Mark Gerhard became CEO, we've really opened up channels of communication with players, as well as adopting a much more direct, honest and frank approach with the information we give out. With regular updates coming out every couple weeks or so, we're able to act quickly on feedback and suggestions. There's a ton of activity that goes on behind the scenes that most players may not know about – so here's an idea of the things we do to listen to player feedback, and how we actually feed that through to the content development teams: Listening to specific communities, such as clans, language communities, fan sites, volunteer moderators and high level players. We have dedicated staff members for each of these communities to work with them to help them grow, and understand their needs – we're also looking to restructure our forums to facilitate discussions between groups of like-minded players. Direct interaction with players through game update feedback threads, live Q&As with Jagex decision makers and community managers, developer blogs and in-game chat channels. By opening the lines of communication and making sure the community has access to our top leadership within the company, we've created a dialogue where players can ask any question they want and feel a sense of personal interaction with the people behind the scenes of their favorite game. Listening to opinions on game updates, polls and suggestion threads. We're increasingly establishing new ways for players to give us their input. These include asking for suggestions on specific development areas in the suggestions threads, polling players so we can gauge popular opinion, and processing all feedback that comes in regarding game updates to help content teams determine if they need to tweak an update. Striking a Balance Our teams make big efforts to incorporate as much player feedback as possible into our games, even though we have our own thoughts and plans. We strive to ensure that the voices, opinions, feedback and suggestions of our huge player base are heard. We all need to keep this into perspective, however. Players may suggest something which would cause balancing issues, limit future content, or benefit cheaters and real world traders. When players make suggestions of this type, we have to have in mind the overall game and what's best for that. Despite all of this, we have a nagging doubt that players in general still feel that their suggestions and opinions are ignored and not considered. There's more for us to do to ensure that this is not the case, but at the end of the day it's simply not feasible for us to take note of, and respond to, every single suggestion given the sheer size of our playing community. Where we can do more is to be more open and honest with our communities about what works and what doesn't. We can also be more transparent about how we ensure that Community Managers and developers get to hear about the best and most popular suggestions made for our games. Finally, let me leave you with this: many of our Jagex staff play RuneScape and our other games, and they are just as committed to gameplay as the majority of our players. A great many of their suggestions are echoed by the content development teams all of the time. As a result, the game is often shaped by players, which is also a major part of our success. Part of why we've been able to build games that appeal to such large audiences is the fact that we have put player satisfaction at the top of our priorities, and have invested increasing energy and focus to this area in the last year. The community management approach we have at Jagex is constantly evolving, but always with the player at the forefront of what we do.

No. ...Just...no.

I think this picture sums it up.

I don't know what Jagex is doing for April Fool's day, but I'll be prepared in case Me_Hate_Libs decides to come to my job again this year and write "troll" on my car with chicken intestines and a staple gun. And by prepared, I mean I'm going to hire a Spartan warrior to guard my vehicle. So I can sneak up and . Every day is a good day for a glomping.

If you don't want to look like you're grasping for a reason to whine, you start at the basics and work your way up, namely knowing what the topic is you're talking about. As someone who is involved in political debate constantly, you have a hard time getting people to take you seriously if you were trying to argue against the "Portrait Act." Mobilizing Armies was also the first venture into a new idea that has never been tried before on this engine, so there are bound to be a lot of flaws. A large percentage of first-generation electronics break, almost all new technologies are riddled to the point of not being viable, and no MMO has had a decent launch. The firsts of everything are riddled with problems, but they pave the way for bigger and better things.

Now what other "awesome" update was sold like this? Mobilization armies anyone? No, pretty sure mobilizing armies wasn't advertised as meant to be its own game. Good try though, you really had me at the part where you couldn't even name the mini-game correctly.

Eve Online has approximately 300,000 players, Runescape has them in the millions. I'm pretty sure Eve's issue with real world traders, at its peak, doesn't hold a candle to Jagex's.

This happens every time Jagex does any advertising, the same kiddies come out of the woodwork to say that: 1. The thread is deceptive. 2. Jagex are desperate. 3. "oh no more kiddeez" Derp derp derp.

I think they're trying to find a way to give a pet to free players, and this was the best way they could think of without completely bringing down the free 2 play servers with all of the lag permanent pets would bring in.

"Hi, I'm a high level." "Hi, I'm a low level. There are twenty of me for every one of you." "Yea, well my $5 is still worth more than yours. I even pay less per month, because I was here when it cost less. You see, players like me who joined a long time ago are worth more, because we are more likely to quit out of boredom, reaching high level blocks, completing a lot of the content, seeing changes in the game, or other reasons, but that just makes it more important to keep us over someone who just joined a couple months ago and still has a good couple years before they run out of content." "...But your status says retired." "Now you're starting to get it."

At this point, a free player pays more of Jagex's wages than you do.

You're very negative, elloello. You should cheer up a bit. Being annoyed is not an excuse, as text can easily be contained and can be erased before it is sent, unlike spoken words. I love you. Not a troll. A troll is someone who says something inflammatory for the sole purpose of ginning up a response. I respond to rant threads in the manner that I do, because I firmly believe that if someone is going to take the time to write up a rant, they had better be prepared to fight for it. If you were to go back through Tip.It history, you'll find that most of the people I joke around with now (Quelmotz, Gidion, Me_Hate_Libs, Ratchet573, etc) originated in the form of a long, drawn out argument in the rants forum. It's like a really sadistic start to a relationship. And you could not have paid that much attention to my posts, because you would have caught the point I make in most threads like this, usually multiple times: The OP chooses to make personal attacks against me, focus on calling me a troll, and never refute any of the points I make (this is the part where OP usually claims I didn't make any points, so I'll save you a post). And to follow up on a previous question: I don't respond to every thread. Threads that have no prospects, I don't even bother replying to. I don't give people I don't like the time of day.

I learned the Runescape world by mapping it out with a sheet of graph paper, which ended up being horribly out-of-ratio. I didn't learn about Tip.It until over a year into playing. I still remember watching my friend get killed by a dark wizard in Draynor.

1. I found this bit concerning: Thanks for lumping everyone who plays Runescape into the same group because one player acted like a jerk to you, and for attributing crashing to Runescapers, because obviously this is the only game that this happens in. I happen to be old enough to remember the days of Ultima Online and Everquest, where people actually did stand in an impromptu line for certain unique quest bosses, bosses, and mobs, and after a couple of years of that there is no way in hell I am going back to that method. If it is easier to knock you off of your pedestal than to find a new pedestal, then I will do that. It's called competition, and even Mod Mark has said that if someone crashes you out of an area, get better of find a different spot. Runescape is designed to be competitive for certain resources and mobs. It doesn't give you the right, but it does give you leverage. It has nothing to do with respect, and as I have already explained Runescape is not a first-come-first-stay game. You cannot just enter an area, claim it as your own, and camp it to your heart's content. If you really want to talk respect, how much respect are you showing for other people, when you stake an area as your own, and then tell everyone else to get the hell out. People abuse "I was here first" as faux courtesy as much as some pkers abuse the "unwritten rules" of pking. You don't care about respect, but you enjoy pulling it out when it suits you.

I'm not using a mac My Runescape-gaming setup:

There are a lot of classic players here on Tip.It, myself included. Chat me up, I'm usually on at varying times of the day, my private chat is always on. Also: Welcome (back?) to Tip.It.

I usually can't smell anything due to a strong sulfur and brimstone odor that seems to follow me from room to room, so I will have to take this man's perspective on the Wild's odor as such.