Next Poll Suggestion

[Phthartic]

OK, now for all of you that voted "yes" on the referendum, tell the truth: How many accounts do YOU really have? How many did you make to vote "yes" with? I don't care that you never logged into the game with any of them; they're still your accounts. For answer choices don't even bother with "one" or "two." Might as well use "5 or fewer", "6-15", "16-30" and "31 or more"

 

Oh, silly me. That's like asking how many times did you hit "redial" to vote for your favorite person on "American Idol" two seasons ago, right? You can't possibly remember. If they have another majorly important vote, you'll just have to make 20 new ones again....

 

And feel free to follow that up asking the exact same question of referendum "no" voters to make it fair. I'd suggest scaling back the answer choices to the current ones or be prepared for 99% "5 or fewer" which won't really be very informative.

 

Yeah, you're right - I'm still a bit bothered by it; just can't quite let it go.

 

It's going to take a while for me to get over:

 

*Ten months of bot hell which was entirely predicted by "no" voters literally within a few minutes of the referendum's initial announcement.

 

*The serious degradation of my daily game experience having to be surrounded by literal hordes of scammers and gamblers of every description in the GE and Edgeville.

 

*No noticeable benefit to the economy (for a small seller like me) except for the super rich rare holders. (Though I'd be open to price comparison evidence that I'm wrong.)

 

*The removal of profit from crafting air battlestaves - I worked for my money.

 

*The destruction of the fun of one of my previously favorite activities: penguin hunting.

 

*And the general coarsening of public interactions caused by intentionally attracting back to the game people of low class and character like botters, scammers and immature PKers that kill for spite and lulz not profit.

 

 

I just don't see how "giving friends gifts" and "the thrill of being chased by PKers" (the common "benefits" people cited) was worth all that we've had to put up with. Too bad all the people that regret their "yes" votes now didn't listen to the mature side of the debate.

[Red Star]

What a sore loser you are. Of course, multiple accounts are the only explanation for the victory of the massively more popular (and superior) option!

 

Trololol.

[Nim]

Even without duplicate accounts, the majority vote would still be the same.

[Vezon Dash]

I voted no. I still stand by my vote, but to be honest, free trade is still amazing.

 

As far as penguins go, I don't see how that activity has been ruined. Sure, there are pkers, but I like to carry about this little thing I call "Food" that keeps me safe from them.

They added free trade to help with the inflation problem as well as those giant merchanting clans.

 

 

Overall, it has been more good than bad.

[Trade_With]

No-one cares.

[Platinum_Myr]

Free trade is important because the economy was controlled by jagex, and it was messed up. I could care less about the wilderness.

[Sy_Accursed]

Seriously someone is having a whiney rant about a vote that happen what like 2 years ago? Serious?

[The Runar]

I have a lot of accounts, but I voted "yes" with exactly one. I decided to be fair.

 

But honestly, you must had lived in a barrel if you honestly think that the majority of players didn't want free trade and old wilderness back - or at least didn't oppose it.

[Stev]

As many will agree this seemed like more of a rant so I moved it to the more appropriate forum. If you have an issue with that or feel it should be moved back for any reason, don't hesitate to PM me.

 

As for the topic, it's been discussed many many times in more threads then I care to mention. :P.

 

I voted to have it back and don't regret it. It's nice to have less limits for things like borrowing/lending multiple items for bosses, being generous to friends, etc. Although, I think even if the votes didn't go according to Jagex' plan, they still would have released it again. >.<

[Arceus]

I have many accounts, but I think I voted with two of them, but not twenty times.

 

And it seems people still haven't "learned their lesson." I challenge anyone to go to the Recent Updates forum and count how many times players ask Jagex to let them "vote" on or evaluate new updates before they are released.

[Phthartic]

" this seemed like more of a rant" - Yeah, np. It didn't start out as one, but I generally end up doing that whenever something brings that "vote" to mind.

 

Thank you Tiigon for having class in the vote. I think you're about the third person I've seen to say you chose to vote "yes" once, and I'm sure one of the others was lying. Tons of "yes" voters admitted cheating (fine, call it "multivoting" since Jagex encouraged not prohibited it) during the debate on the RS forum (I'm not familiar with the debate here...) and I never saw one "no" voter admit doing it til very recently.

 

The thing that really bugs me about it is NOT actually that they brought back W/FT. Even considering all my OP reasons why I think they've made the game worse. If they had just been honest and announced they were going to do it I'd have been annoyed but not ongoingly bitter about it. Some updates I like; some I don't. The annoying part was the massive biasing and cheating on one side. I've spent a lot of time reading old polls, (once they allowed us to see them again after the vote) reading thousands of debate posts, looking at all the "yes" voting names like "Joe 1" "Joe 2" "Joe 3" on "The Art" and amassed more than adequate evidence that the multivoting on the "yes" side FAARR outweighed the amount that I'm sure must have happened on the "no" side. Plus I have common sense and could see all the biases built into the "vote" to ensure that "yes" would win. (I'll spare you...)

 

But what I usually see is people like the guy up there who thinks that the 90% / 8% split means there is absolutely NO WAY "no" could have ever won if the vote was fair. I would grant that all the PKers, scammers and botters that were lying their collective butts off during the debate probably managed to convince enough people to win with a slight majority in a fair vote. But, sir, I'm afraid real votes ARE NOT like reality shows. I happen to think it's important for you to learn that when a third world dictator holds "elections" and wins with 105% of the "vote" that does NOT mean that at least a majority must have voted for him.

 

It's literally amazing to me that people aren't bothered at all by the things I listed like massive botting and scamming/gambling. As long as they perceive the economy improving which I still would like to see proof of. Jagex won't release the data that proves my case; prices have been public knowledge all along. "Destroy the merch clans" - that was the claim. So how come prices of everything I want to sell seem even crappier now than when they controlled the market?

 

I also love that "get over it already; it's been 2 years" stuff. No, it's been about 14 months. How long did PKers whine to Jagex to bring it back before they finally went back on their word and did it? Hmm? I'm not even advocating reversing W/FT, only making some changes to things put in the wild when PvP was "never coming back" that were never designed to be PvP. Like penguin hunting.

[Phthartic]

I have many accounts, but I think I voted with two of them, but not twenty times.

 

And it seems people still haven't "learned their lesson." I challenge anyone to go to the Recent Updates forum and count how many times players ask Jagex to let them "vote" on or evaluate new updates before they are released.

 

 

Why more than once? They supposedly wanted PLAYER opinion. You're ONE player. And I assume given the massive botting that immediately started on W/FT's release that you wouldn't deny that a lot of botters voted for it? How many accounts do you suppose a serious motivated botter that really wanted W/FT to pass has? Might he even have scripts to make and/or vote accounts? Would he have the ethics that Tiigon demonstrated, or would he vote every single account he could dredge up?

 

Not sure how this is related to players wanting to have input on new releases. Most of that is just to prevent them from releasing a bunch of bugs. They won't test, so we volunteer to test for them. The referendum was in no way designed to solicit player input. It was designed to give the illusion of massive player demand. If I'm wrong, why wasn't it done like every other poll they've ever done?

[aerendil]

I voted yes on my main before realising what impact free trade would have, and then voted no on my pure... but jagex would have implimented free trade anyway, the vote was a farce as it was.

[Arceus]

Also, when the actual yes/no/don't care vote came up, I voted no (I don't remember if it was one or two), but for completely self-serving reasons. (And actually, free trade didn't hurt those interests.)

 

I'm not sure why I voted twice.

[Phthartic]

I voted yes on my main before realising what impact free trade would have, and then voted no on my pure... but jagex would have implimented free trade anyway, the vote was a farce as it was.

 

 

Whew! At least you made up for it and cancelled the first one. So in effect you abstained.

 

Which reminds me of one of their cheap biasing tactics: Make a first vote that only accepts "yes" votes, including the ones tricked into voting "yes" by mislabeling the button for a few hours, and the "no" voters' names that the "yes" vote cheaters fraudulently voted because no login was required. Then tell all the people opposed to the idea that the correct way to register a "no" vote is to abstain, secure in the knowledge that lots of "no" voters not paying enough attention will mistakenly abstain during the REAL phase 2 vote. Which plenty of them announced they in fact did on the debate thread.

 

And I hope I've made it clear that I agree with you - W/FT was coming no matter how the voting went, but all the biasing tactics they built into the "vote" probably did turn out to be adequate to achieve the desired result. Though how could we know this? Is it not interesting that the voting split remained almost entirely unchanged since literally about an hour into the tallying? (When I first saw the standings) It never varied more than a percentage point one way or another from 90% / 8% / 2% THE ENTIRE VOTING PERIOD. At least to my memory, and I was paying pretty close attention. Not proof of fraud by any means, but a bit suspicious. If they hadn't given us PLENTY of reason to BE suspicious, it would have never crossed my mind that they might have just written a script to display their desired "results."

[Arceus]

From Runetrack:

[Hedgehog]

I voted yes on my main before realising what impact free trade would have, and then voted no on my pure... but jagex would have implimented free trade anyway, the vote was a farce as it was.

 

 

Whew! At least you made up for it and cancelled the first one. So in effect you abstained.

 

Which reminds me of one of their cheap biasing tactics: Make a first vote that only accepts "yes" votes, including the ones tricked into voting "yes" by mislabeling the button for a few hours, and the "no" voters' names that the "yes" vote cheaters fradulently voted because no login was required. Then tell all the people opposed to the idea that the correct way to register a "no" vote is to abstain, secure in the knowledge that lots of "no" voters not paying enough attention will mistakenly abstain during the REAL phase 2 vote. Which plenty of them announced they in fact did on the debate thread.

 

And I hope I've made it clear that I agree with you - W/FT was coming no matter how the voting went, but all the biasing tactics they built into the "vote" probably did turn out to be adequate to achieve the desired result. Though how could we know this? Is it not interesting that the voting split remained almost entirely unchanged since literally about an hour into the tallying? (When I first saw the standings) It never varied more than a percentage point one way or another from 90% / 8% / 2% THE ENTIRE VOTING PERIOD. At least to my memory, and I was paying pretty close attention. Not proof of fraud by any means, but a bit suspicious. If they hadn't given us PLENTY of reason to BE suspicious, it would have never crossed my mind that they might have just written a script to display their desired "results."

 

That seems awfully paranoid

[Phthartic]

Also, when the actual yes/no/don't care vote came up, I voted no (I don't remember if it was one or two), but for completely self-serving reasons. (And actually, free trade didn't hurt those interests.)

 

I'm not sure why I voted twice.

 

 

Again, I assume it's obvious that I was just as opposed to someone voting "no" twice as voting "yes" twice. Not to pick on you, I'm just stating the principle. But:

 

A) I could find NOT ONE example of a person admitting multivoting "no" in a 3000 post sample while finding about 15 posts flat out admitting they multivoted "yes" and usually it was around 5 to 10 times. And I didn't count any posts that merely implied or advocated multivoting "yes," of which there were plenty.

 

B) Given this, I'm sort of surprised more "no" voters DIDN'T multivote once we could see that we were being used as "punks" - to put it politely - by the "yes" voters.

 

C) People voting twice on either side were PIKERS. I'm more concerned with those voting 10, 20 or 30 times.

 

D) Wouldn't ANYONE'S reason for voting the way they did be self serving? Mine certainly was. I didn't want to be cheated by botters, principally. Both in prices and in stolen or undeserved, cheating XP. I did see the occasional "yes" voter suggest that we should vote "yes" even if we didn't like the proposal, just so that people who enjoyed PvP and giving big gifts could have fun. After all, we could just ignore W/FT if we didn't like it, right? TBH, I doubt if any of them were stupid enough to be serious about that suggestion though.

[Arceus]

All I was thinking of how it would affect my profits from merching. I didn't really consider anything else :thumbdown: .

[Phthartic]

"That seems awfully paranoid"

 

 

Well most of it is simple recitation of historical fact. I'm well aware that accusing Jagex of straight out faking the results sounds a bit over the top, but I think I made it clear that I only find it a possibility based on how much cheating was built into the whole process, much of which I've ended up documenting here, even though I swore to myself I wouldn't bother again, as most people on the winning side seem completely unable to accept plain facts staring them in the face if they make "their side" look bad. To make it plain, I'd put the chance that they just ignored the real voting and displayed a script tabulating predetermined results at less than 2-3%. As I said, any fool could have gotten the result they wanted out of a vote so clearly improperly constructed. That degree of cheating was probably unnecessary. Is that really all that paranoid?

 

Again I say, considering how obvious it became that they intended to implement W/FT from the outset, why WOULDN'T an objective, rational person suspect them of this degree of cheating if it started appearing necessary at some point?

[Hedgehog]

Or just accept that your side lost.

[Phthartic]

Or just accept that your side lost.

 

 

Well, yeah. Reword it a bit to "our side got screwed - how badly we will never know" and I'm with you. I don't spend my life obsessing over this. As I said, certain things happen that remind me of how dishonest the process was, and I sometimes take the opportunity to remind people that have forgotten just how far Jagex is willing to take the PR concept - to the point of rigging a vote just so they can later say "Don't blame us, our customers overwhelmingly demanded it" which is to some significant degree a provable lie. Or "look how customer driven we are."

 

They were simply tired of people whining and moaning for 3 years that they didn't have any say in the removal of W/FT, so to recover some subscription money and give themselves "plausible deniability" if it went badly, some high up executive said "bring it back but make it look like they all wanted it so we can't be accused of forcing it on them." That's all.

 

You've seen it here a couple of times. People who voted for it and STILL know it was a rigged farce. Happens every time the subject is discussed. Only the blindest of the blind completely lacking any semblance of objectivity think it was actually a fair "vote" seeking players opinions.

 

Put it this way: Rewind back to late 2010. Jagex announces that they've become convinced that they can now control botting effectively, so they've decided it's now safe to put back Free Trade and PvP wild. Done. They're WRONG of course, but no matter. They have every right to just do it.

 

Then I don't have a side to lose. No winners, no losers. No arguments. Implement it. We'd have the same results, the same game experience. Complaints? Sure. Just like every other update no matter how inoffensive. But nobody would have been able to point out the total lack of integrity in any voting process, because there wouldn't have been one.

 

If people still want to pretend there was nothing funny about the vote, the posts I've made on other threads proving with verifiable cites of cheating admissions, and examples of how frequently names that are obvious multivoting throwaway accounts can be found on "The Art" aren't going to convince them. And sadly, these people are allowed to participate in real life votes that actually mean something. Or will be when they get old enough.

[999134]

*And the general coarsening of public interactions caused by intentionally attracting back to the game people of low class and character like botters, scammers and immature PKers that kill for spite and lulz not profit.

 

Wait whut, pking for fun is bad?

[Red Star]

Apparently. This is the big double standard in the thread: the level 3 skiller who voted "no" is the most honest person ever and only voted once, always (even though his reason, namely that the free trade economy is less favorable for him, is purely selfish), while the level 108 PKer who just wanted to enjoy the game like it was back then, before 2007, is a dishonest scamming gambler who created 10 accounts to vote. You seem to forget a simple fact that weighs far more than all the ramblings about the economy and the bots: the removal of free trade crippled RuneScape, it was a critical point where the game took a deep plunge into its dark ages of which it has never recovered, even despite Jagex's decision to wisely undo the changes in 2010. If you are so concerned about bots, play a singleplayer game; no company has ever managed to find a solution to bots (unless the game inherently can't be botted), and Jagex has only proven that trying to eliminate them at the cost of lowering the quality of the game is just not worth it. Evidently Jagex have other ways of killing bots; if they only had the willpower to keep fighting, instead of doing only one bot cleanup every year that lasts for a month...

 

Also, comparing the vote to a third world election is pretty steep unless you can prove that Jagex released fake voting results.

[Phthartic]

Ah... so much to refute. We get more than 2000 characters here, right?

 

Nope. Nothing at ALL wrong with PKing for fun. All they needed to do was ditch the stupid timers and statues and 76K tricks and you could have had the experience you loved on an entire world, not just a small piece of it. That may have required restoring Free Trade; I'm not sure if a way could be found around that problem. As I indicated my main concern was botting not the wild, though I freely admit to hating GRIEFERS as opposed to PKers. What is it about you guys that can't have fun killing armed combatants on equal terms? You can only achieve happiness if you're allowed to attack unarmed, unequipped people with nothing to drop? Sounds like a "personal problem" to me.

 

"... the level 3 skiller who voted "no"..." Not sure who this refers to, but I've just finished documenting that YES - practically nobody who voted "no" multivoted and huge numbers of people who voted "yes" DID. Of COURSE I can't provide Jagex's voting data. I can't prove exactly how often a goblin drops a feather - they don't release that. You think they'd release what proves their dishonesty? You all keep evading the basic question: If they wanted a fair vote why not just do a regular poll like every other? I don't need to list every single element of "yes" bias they built into the process. I've already given you several, and as usual you people that voted "yes" just ignore them and pretend like I'm imagining things. The evidence is right there in black and white, if any is needed besides the completely obvious common sense reasons about the design of the vote.

 

Of course my motivations were selfish. SO WERE YOURS - your OPINION is that the 3 years without W/FT were "...dark ages of which it has never recovered...". MY opinion is that those three years were FAR better than the ten months after they restored W/FT and somewhat better than now. We all vote our own self interest. There is no way that is comparable to "dishonesty." What was dishonest was all the ludicrous claims the "yes" voters made about botting wouldn't increase and the economy would be better and several others I'm forgetting. All of which were wrong, and most of them KNEW they were wrong. No doubt many of the posters were botters and scammers trying to trick people into helping their cause. Successfully.

 

Ha, that's classic: your opinion is "simple fact" and my fact and logic based evidence is "...ramblings about the economy and the bots..."

 

And I grew tired of that "you can't eliminate bots" "argument" during the debate. No, you can't "eliminate" them, but you can darn sure choose not to do stupid stuff that massively increases them, can't you? Greatly reduce the already large numbers in the game and THEN ask if we want W/FT back. What's so hard about that concept? Far more people would have voted "yes" in that case. Maybe even me. Maybe. Then you can win your vote fairly and not have to cheat.

 

I never said PKers = dishonest scamming gamblers. They simply were on the same side in this vote and were every bit as fanatically motivated to vote "yes" as many times as possible as the other factions mentioned. I was there - I read their posts. They were the group that pestered Jagex for years to bring it back. They were simply rabid. Very few were going to have the class to vote once, especially with Jagex openly encouraging them to make new accounts to vote. As if they didn't already have more accounts to start with (pures, hybrids, w/e else you guys do) than people that just wanted to quest, skill, chat, do minigames w/e all of which only requires one account. Even without Jagex's encouragement to make new accounts, the "yes" side had more accounts to vote with on average (can we say "botters?") AND had more people willing to cheat.

 

I used the term "immature PKers that kill for spite and lulz not profit." I was attempting to draw a distinction between PKers that PK for profit (and fun, I suppose) by attacking people WITH STUFF, who generally either WANT to PK themselves or at least, have accepted the risk of skilling or w/e in the wild. And griefers who just want to annoy as many people as they can so their stupid hats can lie about how awesome they are, and so they can feel like they're in control of everything.

 

I by no means accuse EVERYONE who voted "yes" of being a lowlife. I only assert with complete confidence that pretty much all the lowlifes who DID vote were on the "yes" side. Or perhaps you're like the guy in the debate who only knew about green dragon bots, so he constantly asserted botting would DIMINISH if W/FT passed (which would imply that botters would vote "no"). I think it's obvious to assume that since botting and scamming are more profitable under Free Trade that botters and scammers voted "yes." Call me crazy.... And that since botting, scamming and gambling increased exponentially after implementation, it's safe to assume those types of people voted "yes." And it's probably safe to assume these sorts of in game cheaters don't have any ethical problem voting as many times as they can. I guess I must just be a paranoid nut making this stuff up out of whole cloth, right? No logic involved here at all....

 

I compared the referendum to a third world election only in that you can't assume any vote designed with massive biases and irregularities that produces a lopsided result would have still ended up with the same side winning if you removed all the biases and cheating. How can anyone assume (as people making that "even without multivoting the result would have been the same" claim always do) that X number of votes couldn't possibly be made up for if you remove cheating? It can be easily calculated mathematically what the differences in multivoting would have to have been for "no" to win in a fair vote. I think it was like 12 to 1, meaning every "no" voter casting one vote and every "yes" voter casting 12 votes. Huge number, right? Of course. Unlikely? Yes. But:

 

A) while some wouldn't have voted nearly that many times, some botters or even fanatical PKers blew that number away. They admitted it.

 

B) there were more biases at work than just multivoting, like depressing the "no" vote by telling them to "just don't vote" in the first phase. And Jagex's lie that they could control the obvious botting increase.

 

C) as I've said, the RESULT is NOT what bugs me; the dishonest process is, and the blind determination of so many (but by no means ALL, as we've seen in this thread) "yes" voters to ignore how rigged it was.

 

 

So let me add some things up: For you to disregard my evidence that out of thousands of posts zero "no" voters admitted multivoting and many "yes" voters did you must believe me to be lying. I voted once against something I was quite strongly opposed to, even though it was completely obvious that I could get away with multivoting as much as I cared to. "Others" on YOUR side voted many times when Jagex claimed to want to know what PLAYERS thought, not what every account they could come up with "thought." So it seems rational to you to believe I'M dishonest and your side won fair and square.... Okeee.