pal2002

And here's my wish too. Although I am less optimistic about RS surviving that long as a game, or at least as a 'mainstream' game. (people still play Ultima Online...) RIP the Jagex I knew 2001-2009.

If you're P2P and have your blinders on - such as questing dging D&D you should be (barely) okay. If you want to actually level your resource skills and heaven's forbid want an acutal resource (!) it's totally hopeless. And sadly, even non-resource skills like slayer and getting crowded out by the bots. And if you actually want your achievement/levels/gold to mean something? Definitely look to another game. And F2P is just hopeless in general - I'm guessing >80% of F2P population are bots now. You can go to the GE and ONLY find bots there and not a real person to talk to.

@elucin8er Although I would much rather them actually perm ban the bots, I have arrived to the point where I actually really like your idea. If they're not gonna ban them, at least label them!

I've made a few anti cheating threads in general - each get 3K+ views. The bigger anti-cheating threads get 10K+ views and hundreds of replies. Now look at that lonely sticky in rants after all the threads were supposedbly combined banished there. It has <2K views and barely any replies because NOBODY can find it. I only found it because of OP here mentioned it. I was wondering exactly where did all that community passion against cheating suddenly went. That is what is happening here. It may not be the mods' intention -but they're in essence supporting the cheaters.

Well, we can at least not lock all the anti-cheating threads and put up a visible message here that we at least don't support bots here. Locking legit anti-cheating threads is supporting cheating IMO.

How is that true? Every single bot related thread - you will ~30% of people go on about how bot don't hurt the game and/or will make their 99 prayer soo much cheaper, and 30% of people go on about how I place too much emphasis on a game (ie. cheating is okay in most games...why not RS), and always people who think Jagex is doing a great job with botters and that there just happened to be all those players who don't talk, have names like lllLLLLl11lll, and grind soul wars 24/7. No, that lllllLLLL111lLL is NEVER a dead give away....etc.. and lastly as OP brought up - the banishment of all "bot whining" threads to a very hard to find corner of the forum - even RSOF has a more visible sticky... btw, I have quit the game now - but I'm just taking up anti botting as my whatever activist cause here and and on RSOF. Like save the dolphins and such crap. So based on your generalizations of the community, we tolerate cheating? :rolleyes: And some of the bot threads are merged/locked because they are saying the same things that fit the criteria of the sticky. The mods do that to any threads that discuss what is already being discussed in another thread. Note the sarcastic overtone in my original post. It's clear that most of TIF is against cheating - but we're also becoming quieter, and trying to deny/ignore/live with it. Like in psychology, denial is often the first step to acceptance. Cheating in RS not something I want to see gradually being accepted. And I believe we're on a dangerous path if we continue to deny, and contiune to silence.

How is that true? Every single bot related thread - you will ~30% of people go on about how bot don't hurt the game and/or will make their 99 prayer soo much cheaper, and 30% of people go on about how I place too much emphasis on a game (ie. cheating is okay in most games...why not RS), and always people who think Jagex is doing a great job with botters and that there just happened to be all those players who don't talk, have names like lllLLLLl11lll, and grind soul wars 24/7. No, that lllllLLLL111lLL is NEVER a dead give away....etc.. and lastly as OP brought up - the banishment of all "bot whining" threads to a very hard to find corner of the forum - even RSOF has a more visible sticky... btw, I have quit the game now - but I'm just taking up anti botting as my whatever activist cause here and and on RSOF. Like save the dolphins and such crap.

Props to OP for saying some truth. Tip.it and Jagex would never openly endorse cheating. But look at the attitudes of both RSOF and TIF communities toward us "bot whiners." Threads are getting deleted and moved to gutters. All of a sudden we are the "bad guys." I really want to ask, does TIF want to become the current largest RS communities - eg. the botting forums? They have 10x the online population of TIF at any time... Denial and cracking down on "bot whining" is really not that far from endorsing cheating. Since it appears very much the norm here how cheating is tolerated, why not follow the OP's suggestion? Tip.it WILL become a popular fansite if it happens. Is that what you all want?

I initally posted this in the compliments forum in RSOF lol - but as expected that got hidden in about..30 seconds. Great police work silencing dissent. I should add that to my list.

- Turning a great profit on RuneScape operations by turning a blind eye to cheaters, taking money to unban permenently banned cheaters, and selling lots of those 90 day membership cards along with the "free" and super limited katana. No one will suspect that it's a microtransaction. At all. - Making everyone in the Jagex corporate office happier by ignoring desperate pleas of help from loyal, honest, hardworking players and actually deleting the rants forum. Great move! Will definitely save valuable valuable customer service resources. - Continuing being the world's NUMBER ONE free MMORPG even though more than half the online accounts (esp. in free worlds) are bots and spammers. Those people from Guiness World Records will never know the difference. Just count those online accounts! - Having a great marketing/PR/propaganda team that brought us Free Trade and the Wilderness back with bots totally under control. And also for brining us useful merchandise like "I Pk'ed Your Mom" T-shirt and great discounts like 20% off said T-shirts. - Passing WOW on the Google search rank, especially on terms such as "botting" and "gold". A hearty congratulations! (on the eve of Jagex deleting the rants forums on RSOF and yet keeping the compliments forum, I want to offer some of my best compliments to them. Cheers!)

:thumbsup:

Oh Jagex... How low can you go? RS has been for the longest time a game where everyone had a fair playing field (or at least, a fighting chance for anyone) - no matter how much money in the pocket, no matter how good your computer was, no matter whether you were on dial-up or a T1 connection. Not to mention the rampant RWT/bots that are largely tolerated now, even Jagex is now blalantly doing a microtransaction while being a complete hypocrite about it. What's next? A free torva piece with 12 month membership card? It's just a free gift with membership! ..... :(

Foreign/quickchat worlds are filled with even more bots...

Oh noes! I've been IP banned. Now I have to get out of my chair and walk 3 steps to reset my router. Oh wait, they just banned my MAC address. Now all I have to do is go edit a simple registry entry without even leaving my chair! Actually, for most ISPs in the US, resetting your router does jack [cabbage] to change your IP. This is even more true in college residence networks - you get a static IP and that's it. I have no idea how Jagex would know your MAC address, that is literally something only your ISP sees... The easiest way to get around IP ban is really VPN (not free) or dial-up. And how many people you know are still on dial-up? And why are you arguing for ways to get around punishment? Of course there are ways to get around EVERYTHING, but does that mean we should just stop punishing cheaters completely. No system for punishement = anarchy and everyone living in a cave with a shotgun. IP ban (and heck ban all accounts on that IP) is a harsh punishment and it will ger responses. ofc none of that matters since the only [cabbage] Jagex had been handing out are temp bans...and if any legit players are left, I REALLY suggest you to look elsewhere.

Unless you're 70+ or have been recently diagnosed with cancer, I would very much worry about the game dying to bots and/or Jagex abandoning it for a new game rather than you dying..... :^o

This sounds exactly like something a PR department came up with - no new information, just freaking more propaganda. Jagex is turning into a Communist dicatorship by the day. Or, this is something community management, or in more frank terms, low level employees who get charged with dealing with bots put up themselves. I *might* believe that the few Jmods from community management truly care about banning cheaters, but I don't believe for a second that there is an attitude change at the higher levels. The only way to really solve this problem would be some real tough in-game antibotting measures (new, rotating, harder randoms and banning those who repeatedly fail randoms and log out) and bring back the PERM BAN. I haven't posted on TIF for a while since quitting. But Jagex has made botting punishment even more LENIENT. Botters aren't even getting 14 day bans now, they're getting SEVEN DAY BANS with no wealth or xp reset. And then 14 day. And then 21 day. And then they buy their banned account back. FFS exactly how many chances do these cheaters get?!! I smell a lot of greed. We need to see some real ban waves being in the PR (like Blizzard does) instead of this propaganda crap. "winners don't use bots?" That is just PATHETIC. How about "Botters get PERM BANNED". Much better catchphrase IMO.

LMAOOO and I thought I was getting a lot of phish emails...

You mean the sleeping bags/fatigue? That is some weak ass CAPTCHA compared to the the industrial stuff like recaptcha today. They were not really hacked either, there was just such a limited number of words that botmakers just solved them all - this will be utterly impossible today if Jagex uses the good stuff. But they were pretty effective - I remember actually having real players inside mining guild and at fishing guild those times. Real people! They were removed because, well, captchas aren't very game-friendly... but they added thise tough randoms to replace them. Unlike now, where there's nothing and all randoms are bot solvable (mostly because the game client's been hacked so badly..)

NO MMO has >half the players bots and bots at the highest levels of game content. Look for it. Nothing out there is as bot infested as RS now.

here's what a captcha is - Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Well made CAPTCHAS are made for this purpose - and they work. If Jagex actually goes and uses a well known system such as recaptcha, there is no way that can be easily bypassed, Sure, hackers can pay real humans to solve them - but there's be only billions codes that need to be solved. Despite the fact that this really is becoming necessary, Jagex is never gonna do it.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating Bin Laden's death. He is , to put it quite frankly, an evil person that has plotted 10+ attacks before 9/11 and 20+ attacks all over the world even after 9/11. So many people have lost their lives for no good reason. That aside, the huge economic effects of 9/11 on the U.S. contributed greatly to the depression we're in right now. Bush spent billions on wars and lowered the interest rates to zero in the days after 9/11 in order to stimulate it. And the banks sure liked that 0 interest rate that they had to pay. So, in a way, you can argue to those standing in the unemplyment line right now that Bin Laden had cost them their jobs and their home.

Capes being P2P aside, it appears from previous posts that even current P2P members will not be able to get it unless they were a member at the 5year/classic time point or however it works. You can have bunny ears/scythe (8-9 years ago) and you can't get the cape. Quite a load BS to be sure.

Bumping this for those who missed it - perfect opportunity right now to see this effect ... It now has been more than 3-4 hours after the system update, and we find that about 60% of F2P and about 30%-40% of P2P population has been WIPED OUT. In the next 4-5 hours or so the bots will get back at it - and the number will not drop again until the next system update (I have been up at 3-4am and found that the numbers are still higher than those now...) Heaven almighty...I keep hoping that the next system update things will get better, but NO they just keep getting worse... In F2P the tipping point of bot over humans has pretty much been reached...when will it hit P2P?..

A completetionist cape doesnt need the 5000 castle wars games.. the trim does and I'm not sure if that many people will bot for the trim. But to your other comments - oh yes bots can definitely bot every skill to 99, and DEFINITELY a yes on the dung bot...

This. I'm never gonna grind every single level to 99...esp. when so many ppl who actually do are bots. That kind of attitude is pretty pathetic. Just because other people are willing to do more work than you, they're cheating? No I did not say that - the people who actually have completionist capes RIGHT NOW prob aren't bots. But let's be very frank, at this point the game is so permeated by cheating that you can really can't tell if the random person next to you got their 99 legitly. Take it a few months from now, how many people are gonna bot their ways to completionist capes...? And YES I definitely have a thing against GRINDING alone. I always loved quests and adventuring - but GRINDING for hundreds of hours at end for grinding's sake? That's not gaming.