NukeMarine

In all likelihood Jagex shot itself in the foot thanks to its legal proceedings. I'm sure in those court transcripts Jagex equated real world value to things such as GP or Experience or Items. As such, they argued there's inherent value to items in RuneScape, even if they don't like that value to be cashed in by other players or entities. Combine that with this update, and I think a smart district attorney can argue this is gambling using Jagex's own definition in addition to a state or country in question. I do not like this update. Loyalty rewards I backed as that was rewarding consistent membership which I argued should have been a condition for higher trade limits during the trade lockdown. This is just selling a predictable chance pattern with rare items tossed in. Now someone wearing a face tattoo could either be very lucky, or had a lot of real world cash lying around. At the very least, I hope Jagex makes this pseudo tedious to use. In other words, you have to always put in your credit card information. I'm not stupid enough to click "remember cc details" on my daughter's account, but I wouldn't doubt some parents are that stupid. This is a special news report waiting to happen: "Tonight, a very special report: Kids spent thousands of dollars in one month on a game advertised as 'free'. The owners claim it's not gambling, but wait to you see it in action"

What if you just had to turn them into unfinished bolts so they didn't disappear? And the unf bolts were tradeable? Just an idea. If the bolt tip is only a fraction of the price of the bolt, it seems like a good solution. The bolt tips are 200 gp each. Right now, that's over 40% of the current GE value (ok, it's more since it's new and this will change obviously). Given that high level trees can give you 15 logs, that amounts to 30k gp just in bolt tips and 75k gp overall if you manage to make 150 complete bolts. I think that makes for a tempting target for pkers to camp which is a fair trade off. That's my opinion only, and I get the desire to not having to risk so much for only small chance at doubling is annoying. Again, I just see this as doing what should have been done with rune rocks long ago. If people think that the flasks were a good update in the long run, then I can see them feeling the same about bolts in time. This is assuming their use in combat will prove worthwhile to justify a higher price per bolt.

Really low output from the tree, which has a long respawn rate.. Kinda kills it. Making them near the tree is completely useless..I got an extra log and couldnt use cuz i didnt bring enough tips.... why do we need to fletch it near the tree? I can't believe this was a whole update.... =\ Just look at them like potion flasks, a small amount of a perishable resource per person per day. Flasks are now about 200k gp for about five to ten minutes work. It's likely these bolts will equate to 400k gp for about 10 to 15 minutes work, even more should Jagex change to benefit PvM and alter PvP with regard to anyone using magic counts as wearing magical gear for 10 seconds. As for making bolts at the tree, Jagex wants this have legitimate risk involved. Do you risk less by banking each tree or risk more by trying to do all three trees at once? I understand why skillers hate that and it's a legit complaint. I just agree with how Jagex did this.

Pros: -Combo skill: Never a bad thing, need more of these. -INSTANCED DEAD TREES!!!: That's got to be the best part of this update. This has been suggested for the runite rocks for the longest time (obviously with longer respawn rates). -Must be fletched on site: Some see this as a negative, but I like this as they're legitimately risking stackable items which runite farmers don't seem to do. -More trees with more quests -Aimed shots is a nice idea. Cons: -Head shot easily countered. As others said, use the exception in Castle Wars all over. -Little benefit for PvM. Some good ideas up above on how to change that. It's definately a small update, but given that these are instanced resources, we should be see lots of bolts come into the game.

He described that part poorly. It's not about resetting all servers, just some of them. The idea is a group of servers are set aside with a reset economy and anybody logging in for the first time will find their character has fresh stats/quests/bank/etc. The normal servers would still be there. In that case, a majority of people aside from checking out the new servers, will go back to playing the normal set as they have developed characters there. However, many people will still take a stab at the idea of a fresh character in a relatively fresh economy. The author is just theorizing what the initial economy will look like during that time. I too would like to see a PvP server or two brought back on line. I wouldn't go there myself, but it seems like a nice idea for people that enjoy pk'ing.

All three articles were very good this week. One item missing from updates with the most impact is the PvP Server update. That introduced 76k'ing and had a large economic impact on all worlds. While others including myself were glad to see 76k'ing go away, I'm kind of disappointed they never reintroduced a PvP server as I'm sure one or two of those would be very popular. With respect to a rebooted economy, two things can radically impact the path: presence of a Grand Exchange and presence of alchemy spells. Personally, I think the GE is essential to stabalize prices early on and help view is real time how the economy is progressing. There can still be bartering as the article puts out, but older players know the tedium of World 2 trading and would prefer not to go back to that. In addition, removing of mass high alchemy will limit introduction of gp into the game keeping the value of gp very high compared to the original economy. Of course, that'll put enormous strain on the gp intensive construction skill.

The difference is that the Louvre gives visitors permission to bring cameras or recorders and take photographs of the exhibits. The movie studios don't give online pirates permission to make copies of their work, and Jagex does not give permission to players to cheat at their game. It goes back to agreement of the terms of purchase. It should also be pointed out that while the Louvre owns the Mona Lisa, the French government owns the Louvre, making it public property. Wow, talk about missing the point. Ok, let's say the Louvre or even the French government proclaims "Since we own the original, selling photos of the Mona Lisa is illegal". In your childish view of the world, is it now illegal to sell photos of the Mona Lisa in any country? Is the French government RIGHT to make such a law? If your only distinction between right and wrong is that some law exists, you've got a naive view of the world. Laws are made by men. As such, some laws are just and some are corrupt. What we as noble persons should do is strive to do the right thing regardless of the law. When what is the law and what is right do not intersect, it is incumbent upon the noble persons to try to change the law back to what is right and just. Now, is it right and just for what Jagex is demanding about it's game? For the most part, yes. However, they make some idiotic judgements at times. Something stupid like "Playing Runescape while playing the XBox is AFK and is a bannable offense". On the other hand, I don't think it's right how a program just removes the need for a player to be present. In the middle is this happy medium where a majority of players wouldn't bat an eye at the gameplay one way or another. Again, this isn't about what Jagex or the law of whatever country says, this is about what's right and wrong in a massive online role playing game.

Saying that someone is stealing your soul by taking your photograph is a silly superstition. Saying that they are stealing from you if they download your intellectual work without paying for it is fact. It doesn't matter if you deprive someone of the use of their property, the buyer and seller must agree on the terms of purchase, and if those terms are not met then it's theft. The example you give below makes my point more obvious, but it's the same point even if you download solely for personal use. No, you are completely wrong. There's a musuem that OWNS the Mona Lisa. I can take photos of it all day and I'm not stealing a damn thing. Hell, they can lock up the painting and refuse to show it to the public, as is their right, but I can post and sell all the copies I want. I'm not stealing. I have to actually take or destroy the Mona Lisa to be charged with theft. Property is very clear in this matter. Now, copyright is a different issue. It's a concept enforced by most modern governments on the idea that a person should have the ability to justly profit from his/her creations for a reasonable amount of time. Violating copyright means you're interfering with the reasonable ability of another to profit off that intellectual work. At one time, fifteen years was reasonable. Now, thanks to corporations in the US pushing for longer limits we're at a juncture where no reasonable man can agree with the law as written. So you're saying that expecting the courts to uphold the law is "dirty work?" We, as citizens, voluntarily give our right to retaliatory force to an objective government, which in this case means criminal and civil courts, in order to see to it that laws are upheld fairly and impartially. The only exception to this is self-defense in the event of immediate threats. This is not "dirty work," it's their job, and it's what our tax dollars pay for. (This is actually meant to be the function of a proper government. The myriad ways in which they fail and are getting worse is an entirely different matter.) To bring this back to the issue of botting - setting aside for a bit the question of whether the bots themselves are illegal per-se, by playing Runescape one agrees to follow Jagex's rules, including the rule against botting. Those are the terms set by Jagex (the seller) and agreed to by the player (the buyer.) Therefore, the use of bots means that the player is not sticking to the terms of purchase agreed upon, and is therefore stealing from Jagex. It's that simple. Yes, there's a common idea that you can drown people in lawsuits. Corporations are famous for it by submitting questionable lawsuits with thousands of defendents hoping for a quick out of court settlement. They also use lobbyists to push for changes in laws to benefit their own corporation at the expense of the people that actually elected the lawmakers. Look at what the DMCA actually does. It CRIMINALIZES the study and advancement of digital encryption/decryption. A field of work that could benefit the private citizen because some multimedia company is afraid their ten year old encryption scheme might get cracked (and already was). So yes, I consider there's reasonable situations where corporations are abusing the benefits of the judicial and legislative systems. In all this, I'm not defending botting. However, I like how Jagex keeps it pretty much in house. The lawsuits seem to focus more on the use of their trademark. Plus, there's still an option open to Jagex to start enforcing fees for hours per month. I wouldn't cry if the monthly fee after 100 hours of play is $8 for 100 more hours, $16 for 200 hours, $32 for 300 hours, $65 for 400 hours, $130 for 500 additional hours of gameplay that month. That right there would penalize many high level bots that try to run 24/7 while only affecting a very small percentage that truly play more than 3 hours/day on average. Perhaps a grandfather clause could apply for fairness.

Except robbery is a criminal act, while Jagex would be issuing a civil suit against you. As far as I know, Jagex hasn't actually reach the level of court with any persons who bot/ people who distribute bots. Perhaps you could show me credible proof otherwise. PS, I think the "You wouldn't steal a car" videos are equally foolish. You wouldn't steal a candy bar is more like it. http://forum.tip.it/topic/307200-jagex-limited-vimpulse-software-eric-snellman-and-mark-snellman/ everything in that video is true, you can actually get hard time for downloading. It also has alot to do with morals, breaking the law is breaking the law, just because its a small crime its not ok. Just say "You wouldn't download a car" and "You wouldn't download a bike" to realize the idiocy of these ads and mentality. Really, it's the modern day equivalent of saying that taking a photo of someone is stealing their soul. You have not denied someone their property. Now, it can be argued that by copying works of art and distributing them that you're interfering with the ability of the legal owning entity from making a just profit. However, the burden of proof falls more onto the copyright owner. Now, if you're turning a profit on another's copyright, then it's easier to show damage as that's easy proof of lost profit. With bots, my understanding it's more about interfering with a just business. Not sure how you can compare to the real world, but maybe it's like scalping. A company floods a box office with people to buy up all the tickets to resell at a profit. Normal fans are denied a fair price for the same experience in that case. My problem here is if the company did not take reasonable methods to hinder such activities yet calls upon the government and courts to do the dirty work. Sort of like moaning about people stealing your property, because you held a lawn sale with only a sign 'Take what you want, pay inside for what you take'.

It will be fascinating is if "land lords" of virtual realstate are held to some sort of accountability as happens to land lords in the real world. I'm not talking a 1 to 1 relationship, but in the real world there's repurcussions if you try to kick out renters or don't hold up your end of the contract or create a hostile living environment. Just because you own the land doesn't give you 100% say on what happens once you open it up to public renting. With virtual RPG accounts, it's established that these characters have real world value. As such, a character with 200 days of development would hold more value than an account with 1 day of development, even if the cost to rent from Jagex is still the same. Now, you can try to argue that's irrelevant since Jagex says it's property has no real world value. However, there are counters such as items such as drugs that are illegal thus have no legal value, yet hold an inherent value (street value) and is noted with regards to severity of the crime. Remember, Jagex owes a certain responsibility to the people in all the nations it operates. Those nations contain networks that support its servers, protected and aided by all the infrastructure that makes such a set-up possible. Jagex didn't build the roads, building, backbone, powerplants, electrical lines, phone lines, trained people, etc in Britain (or any other country) last I checked. However, it's using those resources in a method to enrich its coffers. A government may consider there's a social contract that should be respected in return for such a situation. Basically, there are servers in the US so the US courts can have a say in how Jagex deals with its customers. Same goes with the other countries. Anyway, I do hope this is explored further in the courts in a positive manner. The nature of the internet is evolving, and the impact of these virtual worlds is being noted by real world governments. Abuse of the customer/business relationship then could have far reaching impact if the right person takes the right case and argument to court.

I like this Lodestone Network. It's offering a minor convenience for players that are doing quests, clues, tasks or penguins. For anyone wanting to seriously skill, they'll use normal teleports via tabs, magic or jewelry as it saves 30 seconds every cycle. That said, like the tool belt, I wish they had attached some sort of task or accomplishment to activate slots. Oh well, chock that up to missed opportunities. It was mentioned at RS Fest I think, something about a RS Transport Hub where you get access to all the various transport systems in Runescape: Glider, Spirit Tree, Carts, Carpet, Eagle and whatever else I'm forgeting. That'd be a nice addition to the Lode Network. Hope it happens soon.

Ok, how are the pure F2P clans affected in the slightest? Unless I'm mistaken, you don't have to continue on member skills or even stay in member areas. If a person wants to start a pure F2P account, they'll probably be able to accomplish that. I think it's as simple as going into the task list and selecting "Tutorial Off". At the most, you just miss out on new players that stayed F2P after the trial, happened to have leveled member skills, and cbf'd to start a new account without touching member skills. I hope this trial works out personally. The new member's tutorial is very good and show cases lots of things RuneScape can offer. To be honest, the quests are just so good, I hope they redo all the low level and free to play quests.

Saw this link on reddit. It's a comprehensive before and after of all the armors taken by omustardo. Good resolution to boot. It was cool looking at them all. Don't care what others say, I've always been impressed by the graphical updates starting with the dragons oh so long ago. http://imgur.com/a/nim37#8 Edit: Apparently these shots came from this video - http://www.youtube.com/user/Omustardo/videos

Here's a possible reward system: Temporary binds that are lost when you reset prestige. Easy is boots, Medium is boots and gloves, Hard is boots, gloves and necklace while Elite can have boots, gloves, necklace and pants temporarily bound. It's an old idea, but it can't be that overpowered. In addition, it FINALLY brings a reason for boss drops that no one ever binds. Then again, I don't dungeoneer so maybe I'm wrong and allowing smaller bind items to stay on a current prestige run is too OP.

If I put myself in the mindset of a new player, the tutorial seems to be pretty good. You're not forced to go through it like it was with tutorial island, you can come back to it as you feel like it, and I like the different characters. This decision to allow a 2 week member trial seems sound. Member items won't count against a player's bank if they decide not to commit, yet the items are there waiting along with at least level 10 skills should the decide to go with it later. Too bad this member free trial totally messes up the graphs that have been tracking membership. Now it's impossible to tell which are there for only the two weeks and which are staying.

I don't collect effigies, however I'm dissappointed with how Jagex implemented this nerf. If instead of a radical NOW IT IS FIVE AND ONLY FIVE EFFIGIES!!!!!, they could have said: "We feel the approach to effigies has unbalanced skill training in the game. As such, we will slowly be scaling back how many effigies can be collected by players. Starting today, the drop rate for effigies will begin to reduce at 50 and completely stop at 100. Over the next four months, this will be steadily reduced to where drop rate slows at 5 effiegies and stopping at 10. This brings effigies more in line to other diversions and distractions like penguin points where experience can be saved, but only up to a certain amount." Such a change would still have had complaints, but I would be less inclined to care about such complaints. If they slowed the drop rate at five effigies, it gave players a chance to bank a few and have a chance to get a player to unlock it without thinking they're hurting themselves if they keep slaying. As of now, ithe update is just a slap in the face.

Fairly sure my article stressed keeping it as simple as possible ie identical to the server image of the main RS with exceptions of a two week lag for bug/exploit fixes found on the main servers. Any changes are more of a comment on possibilities which can be open for discussion or debate. This sentence means that there are zero restrictions on the GE. So, if we put that in number form, we get: Number of GE restrictions = 0 If we then look at: We can see that increasing the restrictions tenfold would be the same as multiplying the number of GE restrictions by 10. Therefore: 0 * 10 = 0. Still zero GE restrictions. It reads more like something that is not quite the truth (a lie) was used as a basis of an argument, and to make it sound better. The GE does have rules. I do not think it needs more rules. A poorly worded description on my part however that was in the legacy portion of the article ie problems that existed that don't exist now except in the ripple effect. Early in it's release, there were less limits for high valued items on the GE as there were now. IIRC Jagex had to go and put in further limits in response to the exploitation of the GE. The point about further restricting the GE is to encourage using the thing for getting your items for training and less so for speculating. Even then, I said it's beyond the scope of the article because it is not a simple matter to fix it fairly and keep it fun. We're not talking laws, we're talking game mechanics. Rules would mean the player has the choice to follow them or not. Change the game world, and the player has no choice in the matter. Think of it like not just having a 25 kph speed limit in school zones, you also put in speed bumps and dips. You don't just have DUI laws, you installed breathalyzers on the ignition systems. This is passive enforcement where you have to follow the rules or need to way out of your way to break them. As for laws in general, I'm a personal fan of putting term limits on real world laws making the legislature work on reviewing and re-passing older laws instead of creating new laws out of the air. Even then, I'm for passive enforcement since giving more power over your wallet and freedom to bored bureaucrats is a bad idea. I love the GE. I played RS long long before the GE came out. From personal experience, finding people in World 1 Varrock or World 2 Fally was stupidly annoying. There were just too many people talking at the same time. It was quite difficult to find anyone selling or buying what you wanted. And trading with them didn't really generate all this personal interaction like the rose tinted glasses would have you believe. Basically, if you didn't put up the asking price within about 15 seconds, they just declined and moved on. So essentially like using the GE, except you have to run through the Maze random to click on it, and it keeps changing places like the pinball random pillars do. Just annoying and time consuming for no real change. There's no question the GE is great for any that had to deal with the world 2 mess and all the scams that went with it. The only reason I could think it wouldn't be a part of the RS: New Realm servers is logistics and cost on Jagex's part. It would mean new GE servers and New Realm prices and a simple matter to access them on the main page (in addition to high scores). Still, I think the GE is too lenient with trade. It's a passive trade bot so I think it's better to encourage players to gather bulk material via the GE over time. If a player MUST have 25k planks at that moment then go trade a player merchant that stores bulk items for high prices. Hell, I'm even for a 5% tax on all purchases using the GE which helps counter inflation and encourages player trade. The GE is so convenient that most players would still pay the 5% instead of dealing with players face to face.

Since it's the first day, I'll still offer a prediction 1. Initial high price with a very quick drop after the first day - just happened today 2. Flasks flood the game the first week as it's pretty much the only new content (well, really cool other news to test out) 3. Flasks used in the game become a consistant rate - demand is constant 4. Interest in making flasks wane as it's a daily task - supply is limited Give it about three weeks to smooth out the initial rush. After that, it depends how annoying of a daily task this is. The 150k from MTK, 100k from battlestaffs and 150k from broad arrowheads takes less than a minute of effort each (well, getting to Baba Yaga adds a bit more). I'll predict it'll turn out to be 100k per minute of effort in the long run. Again, I don't know how much that is per flask.

Here's some options to balance that: Holiday Items: For discontinued, if your account existed at the time the holiday event took place, you get a non-tradeable version of that item on the new servers. For others, if you main character got the event then your same character on the new servers count as having done it. Alchemy: The spell could be removed entirely. This of course has a big impact on the gp aspect of the game that evolved mainly in response to Alchemy bringing in lots of gp. Maybe it's best to leave alchemy as is. There are many ways to implement money sinks if Jagex wanted. As for repairing bad game design, I don't see that happening much if at all since that means you'll soon have two different games. However, Jagex could look at such a thing like this as a test. First, they can tell if a large part of their gaming community will try out a fresh character from scratch in an undeveloped economy. Second, they can tell how a two to four week beta period will impact gameplay. Both of these gives them hard data on feasibility of a revamped RuneScape 3 with fixed gameplay like turning a grind that makes 1 item 100 times in 5 minutes using 200 clicks into making 1 item once in five minutes using 10 to 20 clicks.

The thread seems to have been deleted. I've no problem with the article being discussed on the main forums. It's been discussed and ignored before and I've no doubt it'd be ignored further still. Well, maybe ignore is a strong word, but let's just say it's been left uncommented by Jagex mods.

Thanks for your reply. I get what you meant by DIY in that members as a whole will need to do more early on with gathering material as that material just won't exist to buy even if the GP was there. This would be made more so by the fact less players will be on such servers. However, if you say DIY people are going to think you mean the individual player is doing it all alone so perhaps it's not the best term to use even if you clarify later. You also realized that the game is not the same game as it was 10 years ago. Getting gp and high level weaponry and even mass materials (thanks to MTK and other daily tasks for example) would be rolling in the game in short time. Skills can become buyable a short time after that. This isn't a bad thing and not what I'm advocating against. It's more about a game where new players can feel they have a great chance and older players a place they can put their high level knowledge of game mechanics to the test. And yes, I mentioned there's a chance if this is successful that Jagex can replicate it a couple of years later with a new set of reboot servers. It would not be that complicated as many, many mmorpg's have isolated servers as a matter of course. Well, it will be complicated with respect to item prices but that means greater dependence on the GE if the individual worlds.

Here's the odd thing, this ruling and Jagex's cases against botting companies show that time and effort put into this virtual world translate to inherent wealth and value. As such, this ruling can be referenced in a lawsuit against Jagex in regards to items destroyed or lost due to actions by Jagex. Now, Jagex could claim that it holds all ownership of all "property" in its game and can do with it what it wants, but how much can that hold up in court when two major cases show that there's much more to these virtual items than just a electronic game. Basically, Jagex could become like the landlord of a housing complex. A landlord may own all the property, but he/she cannot arbitrarily kick people out as he/she sees fit.

This is a non-issue for most players. Existing members are not affected and non-members thinking about joining are not going to be turned off a price that's modestly higher than what they weren't paying anyway. The only people affected are those that like to do the on again off again membership. It was these type of accounts Jagex tried to sway with loyalty awards. Not sure if those not hopping onto loyalty rewards are a high enough percentage of players to really dent Jagex's bottom line. I don't think an argument on what counts as expensive should come into play here. Most I can say is that if $8 a month is the difference a life of ease and living on the streets, you may want to reconsider your financial situation prior to spending productive hours on an online game.

Read a story where a journalist took a trip to the zoo. On a tour bus, they passed by the lion where it was laying on the rock which made for some good camera shots. The journalist told the tour guide 'Guess we're lucky the lion decided to rest up there instead of inside the cave'. The tour guide said sarcasticly 'Yeah, lucky'. Turns out the zoo heats up the rock when it's cool outside and cools down that rock when it's warm. The lion learns that's the best spot in the his area to be. Why bring it up? Jagex needs to reduce this prohibition approach to its game and the players. The whole "You must not do this in the game, even though we're not capable of making the game in a way to stop you" just means you get random enforcement of rules. Except in extreme cases (actions that break real world laws such as death threats or soliciting), if Jagex can't prevent your character via programming, it really shouldn't make it a reportable or bannable offense. Jagex did the right thing with respect to dicing. It didn't say "Dicing is illegal, do it and we'll ban you if we catch you". Instead they removed dice. Problem with people luring others into the wilderness, put up the ditch. Tired of bait and switching and scamming? Put in trade indicators and price guides into the game. Don't like people exploiting a bug that gets them enormous xp and gp? Have a system that detects such things and roll it back. So one way is don't say gambling or trust trading is illegal and reportable. Change the game so that such activities either cannot happen or are too inconvenient to bother with en masse. Here's one way: Trade limits however anyone on your clan or friend chat for more than one week has unlimited trades. Death drops and other methods of gambling Jagex provides such as Conquest are not restricted by this. Trading with strangers become a nuissance and merchanting dies, but gambling all but dies too.

Look, common sense here: So long as there's a means to transfer wealth, you're not going to get rid of RWT or Gambling or Whatever else that goes against such and such spirit of the game. Now, you can limit it such as tracking one way trading between two non-interacting accounts wrt real world trading or just removing all manner of randomly generated events near banks wrt gambling. Does that get rid of either, no. However, it severely limits it to the extreme ends of players with minimal impact on the majority. Jagex will not make gambling illegal because there's too many ingame activities that allow fair versions of that (rat pits for example). Just get rid of systems that create random occurrences. Horse phrases, flower colors, seal numbers and whatever new emote they create happen in a predictable fashion. Hell, they could bring back dice, just prevent their use within X squares of any bank in addition to only being available to people on your friends chat who've been there for at least 1 week. This is not rocket science. Don't demonize gambling, just make it inconvenient.