Chaoman3

Welcome to the boards, hope you enjoy your stay.

I enjoyed the article you wrote TS_Stormrage. Covered many points I was thinking. I've moved on to WoW and at social events sometimes RuneScape pops up in conversation. We're all in our 20s but many of us remember it as the game with crappy graphics, simple gameplay but a fun community. No real desire to return after logging in and getting bombarded with all sorts of popups and clutter. The TV adverts were very misleading.

Regarding the skillcape article; I have been saying this since early 2007, when I first left the game because of it. People were not interested in spending a couple of hours with me patrolling the wilderness or having some fun in Castle Wars. They were cooking 5000 lobsters in Rogues Den instead. Why? So they could get a 'cool' purple cape. I came back after they stemmed the RWT (which exploded a little while after skillcapes, :rolleyes: ), so in 2008. I noticed everyone was buying and selling items at the Grand Exchange rather than creating things themselves, doing store runs. These tasks were left to the newer, newbier breed of players. People set fire to the grand exchange, fletched around it, did all of their herblore tasks there, etc. etc. Then as the Grand Exchange became more controlling with the merchanting clans pretty much deciding who got left behind, who turned a quick buck and who had to fork out abnormal amounts for skilling supplies bots were trickling back in under the form of dragon slayers. These RWTers would offer to farm gold for you because prices would skyrocket and collapse every week on the Grand Exchange, preventing 'skillers' from getting those 99s they so desired. After this came the PvP worlds and Wilderness Bounty Hunter (not to be confused with the Volcano). PvP was infested with '26kers' and '76kers' as we liked to call them. Making money off the stupid system. Those who actually pvped were outnumbered it seemed. PvPers who had returned, began leaving in frustration. Newer players were treated like slaves ('09 prod/'10 prod's) and basically tasked to do the lower grinding part, getting next to no recognition for their work... So they turned to botting. Bot during the night, skill during the day. Heck, for some of them it's bot during the night, bot-skill during the day. Jagex, trying to find something to get their playerbase back, desperatedly holds a vote (this is what brought me back...) promising they would remove the majority of macro users and return free trade and the Wilderness. The damage has been done. More and more players turn to macro-based scripts to get their pixelated 99 capes. The money they spend for these capes is farmed by other macro users, or gold farmers. The Wilderness, with its nice massive Clan Wars Arena and Volcano, reminds us of the days when Jagex was willing to curb down on these problems. No more. /ramble.

Since '02. I was 10 when I started. Got scammed a lot.