Hi everyone,

 

Last week, Daniel Clough shared more news with the community about our ongoing war to eliminate botting and gold farming from the game. Today, I am really happy to say we are in the long-awaited position of being able to announce that well be launching our most formidable bot-busting weapon in our history, targeting what we believe to be 98% of the bots seen in game.

 

I anticipate that this update will be a defining triumph in our battle against the bots which youve clearly told us have been harming your game. However, we are not resting on our laurels and will be continuing to develop numerous systems as well as still making a number of improvements over the coming months in an attempt to remain a few steps ahead of both the bot makers and gold farmers alike.

 

As Daniel made clear last week, we are dedicated to battling bots and gold farming on every front. We have also recently detected and banned over 1.5 million botting and gold farming accounts. While we work behind the scenes on certain projects, we know that sometimes the necessary secrecy can be rather frustrating for players and, as a team, weve all desperately wanted to share details about this upcoming project with the community since the very beginning of the year when we had first believed it was going to be imminently ready. However, sadly sometimes when innovating in multiple uncharted areas it takes a lot longer than expected and we were therefore at necessary pains to keep this project tightly under wraps while completing it and, crucially, not giving bot makers any information or warning that could assist them in working around it or preparing for it.

 

The project, code-named the ClusterFlutterer, will be launched as part of the RuneScape game update on Tuesday the 25th October permanently preventing reflection bots from working again.

 

We anticipate that next Tuesday will go down in RuneScape history as 'bot-nuking day'. To celebrate this landmark event, well be running a series of one-off bonus days from Tuesdays system update through to Friday. Over the course of these events, members will have the chance to gain triple XP in Slayer and additional points and rewards in some of our most popular D&Ds and minigames in a bot-free RuneScape:

 

Tuesday:

 

Slayer skill day: All Slayer XP earned from killing assigned targets will be tripled. Some monsters will have a faster respawn time.

 

Wednesday:

 

Castle Wars day: Tickets earned from winning a game will be triple the usual amount.

 

Thursday:

 

Distraction and Diversion day: Bonus rewards will be given for the following distractions:

 

Penguin Hide & Seek: Double points.

Evil Tree: Triple XP.

Shooting Star: Triple XP while mining it and increased final rewards.

Familiarization: Players will receive the lucky charm AND ingredient box instead of having to choose.

Penguin Hide & Seek and Familiarization will be reset on the day, so you can do them again if you have already done them that week. All other D&D limitations remain the same (e.g. only two Evil Trees a day).

 

Friday:

 

Soul Wars day: Players will receive triple the usual amount of zeal points.

 

These days will run from midnight to midnight (BST), with the exception of Tuesday which will run from game update time until midnight (BST). Unlike previous Bonus XP events, these modifiers will not deteriorate and will remain constant for the durations stated above.

 

As promised well be as transparent as possible in keeping everyone updated on the status of our fight against bots and gold farmers and, equally, as before we also ask of you to continue to do your part in helping and supporting too.

 

I look forward to seeing you in-game soon.

 

Have fun!

 

Cheers,

 

Mark Gerhard

 

Additional: (QFC: [qfc]15-16-791-63289799[/qfc] Page 4)

Mod Chris E: The news post was not written by the developers. The update will work against 'injection' bots also.

They say seeing is believing. I'm intending to follow that advice.

I REALLY want this to be as they say 'bot-nuking day' but as you say, I want to see it first.

 

Also Dominion tower will be out, so I cant see next week disappointing :D

Sounds EXTREMELY promising. Funny though that just a week or so ago they desperately needed the players' help to fight bots - but I guess that was part of the plan, too. :P

Yep. I'll believe it when I see it.

 

Not to mention, Reflection isn't the only way to get a bot to work. -.-

No school on Tuesday, brb (I wish :(). Should be fun though. And that bot-nuking sounds interesting. Will be fun to see how it works out.

They plan to celebrate before seeing if their project messes up bots? I hope it's that effective.

 

I am definitely going to do Castle Wars and Soul Wars on that week. No way I will be able to slay properly on Monday.

 

Yeah, this should be really interesting. :P

I hope by "bot-nuking" they mean throwing chinchompas at bots and having them banned. That'd be nice.

At least one week before bots switch botting style from reflection...

 

 

That is if their scheme works at all.

No way I will be able to slay properly on Monday.

 

Slayer day is on Tuesday.

Tuesday:

 

Slayer skill day: All Slayer XP earned from killing assigned targets will be tripled. Some monsters will have a faster respawn time.

 

Wednesday:

 

Castle Wars day: Tickets earned from winning a game will be triple the usual amount.

I came buckets.

 

But then I realised that the effective bonus only runs from the game update to midnight BST, which probably comes to 9 hours of bonus Slayer XP. And I'd probably be asleep for 7 of those :(

If this works:

 

HOLY SHIT.

 

Lots of bonus stuff as well.

Oops, thought it said Monday.

 

My slaying plans are still messed up for a bit on 3x slay day.

Of course one interesting effect of this might be finally discovering how much of the RS population were legitimate players. A well-intentioned gesture to a loyal community could turn into a PR disaster if the problem was as bad as some previously thought.

Actually, I'm not keeping my hopes up too much for this now. After their supposed technical Frost Dragon update that wouldn't hurt legitimate players (-.-), I'm not sure that they know what they're doing, really...

 

Still, we'll see on Tuesday. At least, after the bots come back online.

they must be pretty confident its going to work with all those bonuses

De Elite One has a rather nice idea of what to do.

 

E'erybody buy D meds, granite plates, d legs and obby shields and to the events in the gear :L

It should be "Bot-Busting and Bonuses For All Members". Quite confusing.

If this works:

 

HOLY SHIT.

 

Lots of bonus stuff as well.

 

If this works indeed. I really, really hope that Jagex are right about this. They seem to be more than sure though; 98% is no small percentage! If they really success with removing almost all of the bots in RuneScape this game will change. Forever.

I have been playing this game for 7 years now, and this is the update that I am looking the most forward to in whole that period. Honestly. I know that we can't know for sure yet that this bot-busting will really work. But if it does...It would be really wonderful. And as I wrote above, it would change this game completely. I really hope you know what you are doing this time, Jagex. I really do.

I don't really know what to think, but it's rather fishy that it all happens in the week before RuneFest. :s

De Elite One has a rather nice idea of what to do.

 

E'erybody buy D meds, granite plates, d legs and obby shields and to the events in the gear :L

:wink:

Bonuses for all?

What about those of us with work/school?

De Elite One has a rather nice idea of what to do.

 

E'erybody buy D meds, granite plates, d legs and obby shields and to the events in the gear :L

 

With defaults in the bald goatee and everything on the penguins?

 

This idea is too great to ignore. I'll put an offer in for the outfit to cosplay that week.

 

Not doing on slay day, even though I won't get good exp from everyone doing it. :(

If this works indeed. I really, really hope that Jagex are right about this. They seem to be more than sure though; 98% is no small percentage! If they really success with removing almost all of the bots in RuneScape this game will change. Forever.

They'd also be doing what no other MMO game (not just pertaining to the RPG genre) has ever achieved, which is what makes it all the more incredulous.

I got my outfit and all :P

Now to play the waiting game...