Did bots really help Runescape?

[Kingvictorr]

Think of bots in a sense of a U.S history lesson. Remember when immigrants started coming to America in the 1790's , 1880's and 1920's and even tho they helped America become a better place, people hated them because they did the dirty work. Well, their labor cause America to have a golden age and made it become a better nation economically; but certain people during those eras, hated them because some came here illegally, and most took up jobs,. Well, bots in Runescape are similar that, (bot took the jobs from merchants), and in an awkward and secretive way, they did help keep prices down. Also, like the immigrants of this eras, bots and they also made it so players didn't have to so much labor and dirty work. Maybe bots indirectly made it easier to gain xp and made it easier to buy and sell raws, and did bots make it easier for the player spend less time gathering raws, and more time having fun?

 

 

 

*So in an awkward thought, did bots actually helped the players ,and did they indirectly helped the Runescape ,become a more enjoyable game?.*

 

 

 

Discuss.

[highlanders]

Bots farmed gold to sell to irl rich players, which would give them an advantage over honest players. Isn't it already good enough that they are rich in real life, but they have to shove it in our faces in Rs too? No.

[tha_boas]

They did made buying skills easier as they provided alot of stuff needed to skill.

 

Which is actually good for players.

 

 

 

But soon to many players could simply buy this massive amount of bulk goods and leveling up your skills would simply depend on how much cash you had and lots of people easily reached 99 in a skill which caused alot of ppl to have high levels which made it less appealing to get 99 stats (personally). So that's a bad side ...

[Kingvictorr]

Bots farmed gold to sell to irl rich players, which would give them an advantage over honest players. Isn't it already good enough that they are rich in real life, but they have to shove it in our faces in Rs too? No.

 

 

 

I think bots only helped the rich players ,(who are probably spoiled), and i agree highlanders =D> . Bots are wrong because in RS, whether you are rich or poor, you should have to work hard to achieve your goal...not just buy your way in. Kudos +2

[Solidus_77]

They helped some and hurt many. There are about 5 threads in debate forum where simple minded folks just realized this and for some reason believe they've stumbled onto some big realization.

[Chaos_Reborn]

Yeah there are good sides and bad sides, but I'd like to comment on the rich player part. Don't forget that it takes hard work to become rich as well (there are exceptions of course), so they do deserve an easier skilling since they've put down time on earning money.

 

 

 

I've never been much of a skiller, so bots were more of a positive thing for me. But I fully understand skillers who get less for their efforts with bots competing.

[gg_kk90]

No naming names - Unbeaten

[wioneo]

Actually bots were very convenient for me because the only raw material that I collect was coal, and I doubt that there were ever many coal bots. I'm sure that thousands of the flax, yews, bowstrings, essence, runes, oaks, and hides that I've bought were produced by bots. So the bots in runescape have actually had a positive impact on my experience, but I know that a lot of people have to compete with them and that's wrong etc... etc...

 

 

 

Most of these anti-bot updates have had a negative impact on my playing experience though...

[hatebringer]

look at the price of d bones now. Incredibly high compared to the old 1.5k they were. Bots made them low, and now the price is going up fast. Just one example. Yew logs and other items also. but Bots were never good for Runescape, and made RS just a game you could buy to be good at. Not a good way to play a game.

[Clash]

Bots knocked down the prices of raw materials, and made them easily available (though, I suppose they're easy enough to get now with the grand exchange), but overall the game is certainly much better off without them. Knocking down prices was good for the fletchers, for example, but it killed the woodcutters.

[Artificial_Doom_Flavor]

I'd rather have bots than the mess we have now, that's for sure.

 

 

 

I hated them- they slowed down the work for all the honest players- but if the price of them going is fun, then I'll take them.

[Sean_Chaos]

if you think 10k 99 cooks is a good thing then yeah bots are awsome

 

 

 

they did their job well

 

 

 

get tons of raw recources in the game and make it waaay too easy to lvl up take the glamor of lvls make money sell account and start over again

 

 

 

 

 

i dont think its cool that anyone who wants a heavily botted skill like fishing can get lvl 99 cooking and only spend a few mil

[Sam]

As Solidus 77 said, they helped few and hurt many. Yes, the might of kept prices down, but in doing that they took all of our training spots, for themselves, for players too lazy to earn money.

[monkeyboo2]

I'd rather have bots than the mess we have now, that's for sure.

 

 

 

I hated them- they slowed down the work for all the honest players- but if the price of them going is fun, then I'll take them.

 

 

 

Yeah definately. Bots did help i think overall. I don't mind that they made money IRL; but i do mind that they made raw material gathering less profitable. However i profited and bought raws cheap.

[Sy_Accursed]

In a short simple view yes bots helped as they made key resources cheap.

 

 

 

In long considered view:

 

 

 

No they did not.

 

Firstly they fueled the selling of rs gold for real world money whihc is highly illegal and was boosting certain lazy players up, therefore adding the bad image of the rs community.

 

 

 

Secondly the cheap easy xp made many players become lazy, which further hurt the community and the decent players.

 

 

 

Cheap resources are good for thoose who bought them, but it meant 90% of decent money making methods were killed off or much harder to do. Making the game more grinding and less fun for new decent players

 

 

 

Plus as bots grew and resources got cheaper it meant you had a flux of players able to make big profits from alching etc with little effort meaning they could buy rares easier. This meant the ecnomy was becoming slowly polarised as resources crashed and hard to get items eg barrows and rares slowly grew.

 

 

 

All in all if the bots remained we'd end up:

 

A very ignorant, lazy and cheating community fuelled by cheap xp players and cheaters

 

A polarised economy where it was impossible to make decent cash off resources, and equally impossible to save the insane amounts for items you actually need.

 

And with very few ways for new players to actually make money.

 

 

 

Remove the bots and you remove a strong bad element of the community with it, and cause sort term economic chaos as resource prices will rise again and most rares will drop.

[Doomster]

They helped:

 

1. Secondary skill trainers / users who didn't care where their resources came from.

 

2. Rulebreakers who bought items/gold by RMT

 

 

 

They hurt:

 

Pretty much any honest player resource gatherer, by insane competition.

 

 

 

You could say they also hurt honest players versus the RMT buyers.

[bobbas7]

Yes

 

 

 

Because...

 

 

 

they helped to keep all the prices low, and i simply don't care about irl item traders, sorry.. (I DONT DO IT >_>!) but.... i dont care, like it's ur money? get a life if you buy 1m for 5 dollar.. lol

[Junkie_Joe]

Well, bots in Runescape are similar that, (bot took the jobs from merchants), and in an awkward and secretive way, they did help keep prices down.

 

 

 

We have something to keep the prices down now. It's called the Grand Exchange. Seriously though, the prices have never been lower... At least the prices of the items I've been buying.

[Sy_Accursed]

Well, bots in Runescape are similar that, (bot took the jobs from merchants), and in an awkward and secretive way, they did help keep prices down.

 

 

 

We have something to keep the prices down now. It's called the Grand Exchange. Seriously though, the prices have never been lower... At least the prices of the items I've been buying.

 

 

 

Thats just the nature of the grand exchange.

 

 

 

Using forums/banks and having to hop worlds and move around meant matching up a deal was alot harder and the effort involved in making the deal was much harder.Plus f2p was largely excluded from the market.

 

 

 

With the GE you can just throw up what your buying or selling and it does all the work you meaning it is alot less effort, meaning more people sell, meaning tht prices drop

[Dragontotem]

all they did was make 30k people able to get 99 fletching. Without yew/bs bots there wouldn't be 30k+ people with 99 fletching, as they'd have to get their own logs, OR buy in much, much smaller quanties, as people weren't selling that many.

 

 

 

MY opinion

[Cazwise]

370-380gp for Oak planks? Yeah they helped!

 

 

 

Mind your language ~darkdude

[Callahan]

Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives

 

 

 

In my opinion, to get rid of bots means it has to hurt someone else. Bots did do most of the boring work for most people before, which is kinda like helping player-killers, but at the same time, they are also hurting skillers by taking up all the resources. Whether it's the skillers that get hurt or the player-killers, someone has got to be affected by the autoing.

 

 

 

Just my opinion. :D

[Junkie_Joe]

Well, bots in Runescape are similar that, (bot took the jobs from merchants), and in an awkward and secretive way, they did help keep prices down.

 

 

 

We have something to keep the prices down now. It's called the Grand Exchange. Seriously though, the prices have never been lower... At least the prices of the items I've been buying.

 

 

 

Thats just the nature of the grand exchange.

 

 

 

Using forums/banks and having to hop worlds and move around meant matching up a deal was alot harder and the effort involved in making the deal was much harder.Plus f2p was largely excluded from the market.

 

 

 

With the GE you can just throw up what your buying or selling and it does all the work you meaning it is alot less effort, meaning more people sell, meaning tht prices drop

 

 

 

Yes, this causes the prices to drop further, but it had to start somewhere. The G.E. started off with low(er) prices. The 'less effort'-thing has just made the prices drop further.

[chc05dude]

.forums lagged double post.......

[chc05dude]

I think auto's would have eventually ruined the game.

 

 

 

Personally, they ruined my main way of making cash, killing green dragons. It used to be 400-550k/hr before they started killing them at level 67 with dragon daggers. (The fast money/hr is why, too)

 

 

 

Basically, all that was left for fast cash were things like 91rc, boss killing, and staking/merchanting.

 

 

 

Anything else, and you were pretty much competing with bots. RWL trading was much more prevalent than you all probably think. I had about 10 core friends, and around half of them bought items for irl cash.

 

 

 

Eventually, if they became prevalent enough, there would become a barrier to entry so to speak. New players unable to do the things i mention above, all of which require a well established account, would be forced to RWT in order to have any chance to catch up.

 

 

 

Jagex stopped it before it got that bad, but that's where it was headed. It's bad for us established players, but in the long term, it probably saved the game.

 

 

 

WoW, which everyone likes to cite for letting RWT go rampant, works around this problem by having an expansion about every year. The expansion brings a huge influx of gold into the game basically resetting the economy and gear, it happened once and is due to happen again in 2008. Gear in WoW is more important than levels, really. Not to mention that WoW employs much bigger money sinks. Much of the RWT WoW cash ends up being removed from the economy anyway, rather than going back into the economy like it does in runescape. Not all of the cash, but a large chunk of it is put into money sinks.