EugenyG

Am I supposed to take their word for that? They promised an "uber" detection system since 2004, and each new update they swore will break the back of RWT, because of their detection system. But RWT thrived all the way until its physically impossible to trade. Their detection system isn't worth crap for what they say it is. The detection mechanism never worked well before, and I have no reason whatsoever to believe it's going to be better now. For example, they had a gold transfer detection system in the past. And they banned a lot of bots and mains using it, or at least they said they did. But RWT still thrived. Why would it be any different now with powerlevelling than it used to be before with gold farming?

The updates aren't even in full force yet and already I saw a couple of gold selling RWT sites (won't link) that offer this new "service" - you give them your account name&pass, and pay them, and then they either level it for you or farm gold on it for you while you are afk :/ Of course the "clients" of such sites will risk much more now, since they don't just risk getting their account banned but also have it stolen by the RWT itself. But I have no doubt that the major RWT industry players - not the small scam ones but the real ones that use it as a real life profit - will do an "honest" job because that means more business for them in the future. After all, since you can't trade items, they won't need to steal your items since it doesn't mean real world profit for them. Doing an "honest" job for the player means the player will return to them to pay more real-life money, which they care about much more than game gold (especially now that its untradeable so they can't resell stolen gold) I expect this to be the next hot thing. A couple of consequences for the honest players out there: - If before we only used to see yew trees/fishing spots/other resource sites get hogged by macros, now it'll be pretty much anything that can level or profit, depending on what skill did the "client" pay for the RWT to level them. - We'll see much more macros on P2P since most of those who use these services are members - Instead of just being confined to "noob" areas, even the high-level areas will be hogged - Can't tell friend from foe anymore. It was easy to spot and report macros, but if a high-level well-dressed player trains in a high level area, it's much harder to tell if its a bot/farmer or not - And of course, the rest of us can still enjoy the wonderful collateral damage of Jagex's update that we already know about Could Jagex's bloody crusade against RWT be shot down even before takeoff?

Ever heard of the term "repeat customer"? The major RWT sites will actually want to not steal your account but level it for your money, since it means you'll be coming back to them for more "business". Of course there will also be small scam sites that pretend that they do that but instead steal your account, but the major sites will actually want to stay honest. Besides, why would they want your account stolen anymore? They can't use the gold because it's not tradeable, and if they resell the acc you'll probably reclaim it anyways via customer support, so there won't be many buyers of stolen accounts. So (unfortunately) I think this is even a bigger problem than you realize. The bad thing is not that they scam, it's that they WONT scam, and isntead we'll see a horde of rwt-driven powerlevellers and powerfarmers, and won't even suspect they are macros instead of honest players.

If you refer to my use of the term "totalitarian", I don't think I break that law. Godwin's law only applies to very specific instances (National-Socialist party and Adolf Hitler). Note that it doesn't say a word about "fascism", "communism" or "totalitarianism", not because these words are "better" but because they are generic and unqualified. Jagex's behavior IN THEIR GAME is totalitarian, because the simple definition of "totalitarian" is running a system with absolute control over it. Here is a dictionary definition of the term "totalitarianism": "A system of government where the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control, for example a dictatorship." -- Wiktionary, the Free Dictionary. Note that the DEFINITION says NOTHING about murders, repression, concentration camps, etc, that is just a connotation of the term when applied to real-life situations, but I didn't apply it to real life here. This definition applies perfectly to Jagex's in-game government. If you don't think having an absolute control in a game is bad, then just don't be offended at the term totalitarian when used in-game, but don't attack my perfectly legitimate usage of the term. You can say that there is nothing wrong with Jagex being totalitarian in their game, or you could argue that they are not (and present facts to back up your claims), but you can't attack me for using the term.

Qeltar - read your article. It seems like a good response to the first part of my reply, offering numerous technical means on how the brutish hackjob can be polished around the edges and make it work a little better. I also wrote a possible suggestion to one of the biggest problems of the 3k limit here: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=723676 But none of that addressed the second part, which I believe to be the most important. Really, RS simply feels like a job if not a game if everything is laid out for you and you just have to follow a path to destination. You have enough of that in a real life job. MMORPGs traditionally meant carving your own destiny through your choices, and freedom is a critical component. Also to add a bit on top of your harsh criticism of "uncivilized response". You know, people just don't feel like being an "acceptable casualty". If you hurt someone, expect them to fight back using any means they have. Even if they know that their fighting wont change your decision, they will fight simply out of revenge, just to cause maximum damage that they can to you, due to the damage you caused them. Even if it didn't stop you from doing what you done, it'll at least make you maximally suffer for causing suffering to others. Like it or not, that is fundamental human nature. Jagex hurt the players - the players will punish Jagex in the maximum possible way - and regardless of whether Jagex considers the way legal or not - this includes riots, forum flooding, causing disruption, and of course, quitting. And sure, Jagex can threaten people with bans/mutes, but if the damage they caused is so bad players are going to quit anyways, then there's nothing Jagex can do to stop the reaction. This is the murder-suicide mentality. You can consider it wrong or immoral in principle, but it happens in real life, and it will happen here. Drive a person to the extreme and there is no limits to what they may do in revenge. You can't just punch someone in the face, and expect them not to punch back, even if both of you knew it wouldn't affect your original decision to punch.

Well, they'll certainly have all the necessary tools to do so and we will barely have any way of detecting any of it. Only if we're going to see any strange price behaviour then we'll really know there's something going on. And yes, Jagex could make the rares pretty much untradable anytime they want now, let their prices devaluate by creating new rares for sale or just ensure that their prices remain stable by both buying/selling them according to player demand. As Ts Stormrage said, and as can be read in various threads around here as well, there is plenty of suspicious activity already. Is this really so surprising though? Most of the bots will be gone soon and the masses of materials they created will be used up by the players some time. A logical mid-term / long-term effect of this update would be higher prices for the materials that bots used to gather on a massive scale. However, perhaps we'll not be going to see that happen at all. Jagex could take over the role of the bots by providing the materials that the bots used to gather themselves, using the system that gave them the complete control over the price development of any item in the game. I have to say I'm not too proud of the conspiracy thinking here, but Jagex is crazy enough for it. I doubt that will happen. Jagex is specifically interested in keeping raw material prices higher. When you think about the "social classes" that RS has, Communist Jagex loves the proletariat workers. They are happiest if all players mine or fish all day, that way they cause least trouble, and can be occupied with minimal effort. Its the burgeoisie merchants, intelligencia dissidents, and aristocrat duellers/pkers that Jagex hates. Keeping raw material prices high is another way for Jagex to ensure more people spend time working for the materials. That's one of the major reasons they moved against bots in the first place.

If people specifically were farming accounts they'd come up with good names. They only use lame names because they don't care about their own farming accounts. Also, scamming during trades is bad for business. The major RWT businesses used to focus on money, and most of those were actually honest in the sense that if you pay the dollars, you actually get the money. Most account traders were on the other hand liars and scammers because they don't have the infrastructure of a real account trade. But now that gold trading is impossible, perhaps many of the big businesses trading gold will switch to trading accounts. And they will most likely be honest in offering the account in exchange for gold, because that ensures they have more customers in the future. Now that drop trading or otherwise supporting your other accounts is impossible, I expect demand in accounts will actually increase. People will want to buy a main acc, a pure acc, a dueller, a skiller, etc, all with money because its impossible to put on the acc otherwise. BTW. Before the update, a lvl 100 RS account could fetch many hundred US dollars, so clearly players WERE interested. And this interest can only surge now, because its impossible to only buy the gold while keeping your own account.

Another online game I played a while ago went so far as requiring every character above a certain level to submit a real-life scan of their ID. Jagex has still new heights to aspire to! :/

Aye aye, Captain Obvious.

Food for thought - do you think Jagex will control rare prices through GE? In the free market, rares were only valued by the amount you'd pay for them. But now we have to trust GE to set the price for us, but of course we never know the real market price because nobody is able to sell or buy outside of GE. Jagex could have two options here: - Artificially raise price of rares (in a similar way a sales tax does). Of course, free market laws would then dictate that the amount of trades would then drop because less people are willing to purchase them. In the end, Jagex could rise rare prices so high that almost nobody would trade them, effectively making them next-to-untradeable, which is how the new rares work. - Artifically lower price of rares. Before GE, they'd have to physically introduce more rares into the market, which would be noticeable. But now, they could just set the "market" value lower than the real market value. We'd have many buyers and no sellers, and effectively achieve the same objective as the first option. In the end, Jagex has the power to do now what they couldn't do before - dictate how easy or hard it would be to sell an item, up to an including making it effectively untradeable as far as the market is concerned. Or, as you said, they could also facilitate liquidity by buying/selling extra items. In either case, Jagex could wrestle control of rares with respect to the market to replace them with items they can better control, and which have a steady (even if low) drop rate such as 3a armor. Objectively, perhaps that would be a healthy move for the economy, or it could be a disaster as well.

Read your post. As always, you present a valid line of arguments, even though in my opinion they are one-sided and do not cover the issues that (to me) matter the most. I agree that the "rubbish" that you got rid of is indeed rubbish, but the problem is that a lot of it was either a rubbish performing an important role (despite being rubbish) or was attached and supporting aspects that were supporting important roles. If you imagine all the rubbish you described as cancer infecting lungs, than Jagex removed the rubbish by cutting out the lungs alltogether. There. Problem solved. When you deal with issues such fundamentally supporting how RS works, you just can't have such heavy-handed measures. Problematic issues should be isolated and treated with surgical strikes, and side effects should be thought about beforehand. All vital aspects should have replacements, and even though Jagex claimed they do (in that little list in the article), they didn't really address the biggest issue for me - freedom. Yes, bots suck. Yes, merchants exploit noobs. Yes, duellists win millions in a single stake while noobs toil for months in manual labor. Yes, this. Yes, that. But nonwithstanding anything, I simply don't enjoy playing a totalitarian game, and I will always choose an insecure but free environment over a secure non-free one. I want the freedom of action, without being controlled by a nanny who knows what's best for me better than myself. I want the right to act stupid or imprudent, if I so wish. I want to play a game where my decisions influence my consequences, rather than live in an artificial soapbox. I want to be able to face risks and pay the price of failure, rather than having both joy and pain taken away from me, again, "for my own good". I want to earn my own. I want to be able to pull myself up through any means legal, rather than have someone else's morality imposed upon me, as well as the logic on what a player "should" or "should not" do in a given situation. I don't want to be part of a "fairness quota", and the "maximum wage" Jagex thinks its "fair" for a player to make. I want to be able to risk a thousand times, and lose the first 999, but on the thousanth time come out in a moment of glory. I want to earn things rather than have them be given to me, and have full ownership and freedom to do with what I earned. I am an individual, and refuse to become a statistic or a tool in the hands of the system. Perhaps the ten year old kids with respectfully disagree, though. :P P.S. As for your attitude over the "whiners", saying how they are all ignorant noobs and should be banned on sight. Hmm, you have something there. Come to think of it, aren't all those demonstrators picketing in front of the White House protesting Bush's latest move, a bunch of idiots too? TEAR GAS I say! I mean, surely if they had a valid point, they'd employ more "intelligent" means than to march around with signs like total fools. What about the famous Baltic human chain where 500,000 people stretched hand-to-hand to protest Communist rule? What about the Tianamen square protests? Only a total fool would stand in front of tanks instead of respectfully writing their government about their grievances, right? Sometimes "primeval" actions like a physical demonstrations work better than what you consider to be "intelligent" responses. And once a community has been wronged, they have the moral right to react, even if you don't particularly like the type of reaction.

Fight to live free. Yes. It also still kills the wild, duelling, and just about anything that made RS fun. I never claimed my suggestions would fix the hole Jagex dug RS in. It's just a minimal form of damage control. I know that this suggestion is like having your home flooded, and the repairman giving you a pair of rubber shoes instead of fixing the leak. But it's better than nothing. With respect to fighting, the only way I can "fight" Jagex is by quitting the game and not paying them, which is exactly what I'm doing. Please don't twist my words or infer from them what they are not explicitly saying.

There are so many wrong things with the new update that I don't even know where to start, but a good option would be to consider changing the hard limit of 3k/15min based on something more relevant to how (honest) characters interact. Right now, each character has a hard limit of 3k per 15 minutes transfer. But this system doesn't take into account that higher level, more developed characters will naturally want to be able to have control over larger sums of money, including gifts, loans, and the "unbalance" that comes with the trades - trading more expensive items naturally would give you a bigger potential disbalance if considering the % difference of the item price. It also doesn't take into account that bots will have much lower development, and even bots with 99 woodcutting or level 110 dragon farming bots would still be much worse developed overall if you consider things like quest points, achievement diaries done, and TOTAL skill level. What is the "disbalance limit" would be tweaked as follows (the numbers I propose can of course be substituted for anything you think works best): Note that the trade limit applies to the GIVER. The receiver is only limited by the giver, in the same way it works currently (many people can drop piles of 3k and the same receiver can pick them all up). All "limits" are per 15 minutes, as currently set. - Base limit: 3k. All characters have this limit. - For each skill point above 1 that you have, add 5gp to that limit. - For each quest point that you have, add 25gp to that limit. - For each achievement diary completed (add 500gp for an "easy" diary, 1k for a "medium" diary, and 2.5k for a "hard" diary. - For each minigame successfully participated in (by "successfully" I mean a win or otherwise good ending. Such as finishing the whole trip in the fishing trawler without dying, or winning a castle wars match, or successfully leading refugees from mortanya, you get my idea. If a minigame doesn't have a "successful" finish, simply participating throughout its length is sufficient): add 100gp. Some minigames (such as beating Jad) would be naturally much harder to "complete" than others, but its the same idea as with skills - the higher you level, the harder it is, and some skills are harder to level than others. - For each kudos in the Varrock museum, add 10gp. Players wouldn't have to manually calculate their limit. RS should do it for them, and every player should see their limit when opening their character info screen, together with info on how much of that limit has been spent and how much time there is before it is reset to the maximum. Consider this exercise similar to filing your tax return :P Examples ("base" skillpoints is the number everyone has when they are all 1): A player with 500 skillpoitns above base and average skill of 30 (statistically around lvl 50 combat) and 50 quest points and no achiement diaries done and no minigames completed and no kudos: can disbalance trade or drop up to 6.5k per 15 minutes. A player with 1500 skillpoints above base and average skill of 60 (statistically around lvl 80-90 combat) and 120 quest points and 3 achievement diaries done (2 easy and 1 medium) and 5 minigames completed and 50 kudos: can disbalance trade or drop up to 15.5k per 15 minutes. A player with 2700 skillpoints above base (lvl 126 combat) with 250 quest points and 6 achievement diaries done and 20 minigames completed and 100 kudos: would be able to disbalance trade or drop up to 31.25k per 15 minutes. Now... A bot with 120 skillpoints above base and no quest points would be able to disbalance trade or drop up to... 3.6k per 15 minutes, or only 600gp above what they can already. The objective is to seed out the macros (who will likely only level 1 skill) and thus have a very small bonus, while letting honest players have a bigger limit. Since the limit is based on the giver (in a gold farming scenario, the giver would be the RWT bot), the bots will not be able to give substantial amounts. Macros could of course spend more time leveling high-level bots, but in order for them to gain any substantial return on investment, the amount of levelling would be very high, and it would be impractical, considering that levelling many different skills for a long period of time is almost guaranteed to have your account flagged as a bot and banned. Note that even a very high level would not be able to trade in a disbalanced way HUGE amount of GP as it was possible before the update, so even if someone levels very high-level and developed bots, they wouldn't be able to RWT anything close to the former amounts. Even if you assume "bots" are really people controlled by Chinese farmers, you still have to agree that training a farmer (who probably doesn't know English well) to go through hundreds of quests (as well as level all the required skills) is much harder for the business runner than giving them an axe and telling them to click on trees and run away from spirits. So much harder, and slower, that, in fact, it probably will not be worth the profit they get, which is the whole point. Jagex doesn't need to make RWT impossible, they only need to make it unprofitable, and it'll disappear on its own.. The numbers I chosen (in my opinion) best represent the average need of a Runescapian to have freedom and flexibility in their business. A level 50 character may legitimately want to buy a rune plate 5k under or over the limit, but not substantially more than that. A level 85 combat would be interested in some dragon/barrows items, and paying 10-15k over/under limit seems reasonable. Finally the level 126 would want things like 3a armor and other expensive items, and 30k seems like a very reasonable fluctuation limit. Higher levels are also more justified in giving more expensive gifts and loans, since they tend to be richer. Oh, and did I mention that for a lvl 120, having a 30k stake duel is at least a LITTLE bit more fun than 3k? Yes, it's still not even close to a "high stakes", but it must just be high enough to make it at least somewhat worthwile to do. I put a bigger emphasis on quests and diaries NOT because I hate skillers but because it's MUCH harder to macro those than skills, and most bots would not have high points in those areas. Finally, I do realize that pures get screwed under this sytem just as bots are. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to limit trades that would seed out bots yet keep pures intact, since (other than the fact one is human controlled and the other one is a bot, as well as the fact one sells money and other doesnt), their behavior and goals are pretty much the same. On the other hand, perhaps encouraging a "balanced lifestyle" would not be such a bad idea at all. But feel free to flame me for this :P The added advantage is that people could consider their transfer limit as an achievement of sorts, and work specifically towards increasing it, just as they would a skill. I also do understand that F2P players would not get as much benefit as P2P due not having minigame access etc... But guess what, it's another incentive to be a member, and besides, you gotta admit that 99% of bots are F2P. In conclusion, adopting such a system would serve two purposes: Allow higher-level developed characters the freedom they need and deserve more than undeveloped newbies, and curtail RWT bots which are vastly underdeveloped compared to real players, and developing whom in areas such as quest points and diaries would be almost infinitely harder than just macroing a higher skill level in a skill easy to macro. P.S. Note that none of this endorses my personal view of the update - I still think it sucks for us and is evil. But this is at least some form of damage control I could think of, that would turn pure turd into a mix of turd and cereal. :P

That's pretty clever! You think of it all by yourself? I am a software developer so I treat them like I like my end-users to treat me - with God-like authority and never question me. Ever considered moving to North Korea? You'll feel right at home there. And don't even try to bring up an argument of the form "how can you compare a game to real life", because you'll expose your complete obliviousness to the concept of "Universe of Discourse". From the perspective of my in-game character, RS means as much as RL would mean from the perspective of my human person. You don't see me doing RL stuff like holding demonstrations or writing the government over RS matters, but here, on RS forums, I'm acting as proportionally when expressing outrage over the recent updates, as I would if I was demonstrating/writing to the government over real life issues. Overall, a bad thing doesn't become better online, and a huge bad thing doesn't become good or more excusable in smaller quantitites. If it's unethical to only care about yourself while giving the shaft to your community and those who depend on you in real life, it's also wrong to do that in the game, whether the community are real-life people or just in-game avatars. Are legal rights different? Absolutely. RS is Jagex's private property and they have much more legal rights over it than the government has over our real lives. But moral obligations? They remain the same. It's just that Jagex has much better freedom at being immoral. A [wagon]hole in real life will remain a [wagon]hole in RS, and vice versa.

I express condolences to the victim and his family. That being said (and this comes from someone who hates the new update), I do not think you can blame Jagex. You can't hold the company responsible for the possible unpredictable reactions of their customers. Does the update suck? Yes, for me and many others at least, including the victim probably. Were they stupid in making this update? Maybe, although I give them much more credit than most people when it comes to caring about their own profit. Are they morally responsible for his death? No. Imagine if someone came up to you on the street and said "give me money or I'll kill myself". Even if you believe they speak the truth, that simply does not morally oblige you to cooperate. The parents, on the other hand, at a minimum have a huge moral burden over the event, and at a maximum may be legally or even criminally liable, depending on the circumstances (such as the "abusive father"). You could also blame our dear government for not doing turd until after someone died, and the only doing a half-assed reactive job which won't carry any benefit to the next victim. But as I said, Jagex is not a party of who to blame, regardless of whether his suicide was caused by the update or not.

I'm playing Guild Wars right now. Most will probably go to WoW though, but I don't like it.

Unfortunately DROP trading has been disabled yesterday. It's the hand-to-hand trading which will be disabled January.

Hmm, the reason I hurried is because I THOUGHT you could still drop items till then, but since I was wrong, it does seem that I can wait though. It doesn't really matter though. I was already inactive for about 3 months and no intention of coming back even before those updates. The alternative would be to join your "clan"... Hmm, spending all that money to buy a phat and alching it will certainly make a statement. :P But I don't think it's even enough for a party hat lol

Well, since Jagex has done such a brilliant job, I don't see a way to drop that money without getting someone banned for "rwt". :/ But if you have any suggestions, feel free to say.

But then I'll attract noobs half across RS :/ Oh well, I guess there is no choice. I considered asking everyone to post their names and in 12 hours just divite loot by number of people and give hand-to-hand. But I don't want to jeopardize you being banned for RWT after being given so much money :/ So fine, moving party to same world, same time, falador party room. I know most will be taken away by scavengers, but I dont have a choice. I won't do many drops, just put everything in chest at once and BANG. So be there or be square.

What level are your friends? Jagex said that they'll only make the change for higher-lvl accounts starting Jan, but then again expecting them to keep their word is optimistic at best. Hmm, what am I supposed to do with that stuff in the meantime then? I suppose I could give it hands-to-hands to those who want, unless it's disabled too...

I appreciate your concern. Be advised though that Jagex declared that "noob" accounts can't pick up items immediately (starting today) so your merch might lose out, I have no idea what their definition of "noob" is. In the hypothetical situation of me returning (I quit and returned in the past, although it was always a practical reason (tired etc) and never a political stance), I always enjoyed the challenge of picking myself up from scratch. But once again, your concern is appreciated.

The only things I regret are: - Paying about $200 through membership fees to Jagex which they don't deserve - Spending so much hours of my life working for myself only to see me be a casualty of Jagex's RWT crusade. I do not make decisions lightly, and this one is final.

Thanks for your response anyone, but due to the inability to host a non-idiot drop party, I just gave away my items to all my friends. Thanks everyone, and see you later, probably in another game. =)

wrong place, sry