After reading the nice personal post by Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard I decided to read through many of the replies he received. I couldn’t read all of them because there were already 5000+ replies within the first day. But of the ones I read, most were well reasoned, well written, and well thought out. But I did read a few comments that made me want to reply but I didn’t want to waste the space on a 5000+ rely thread in the forums, so I will do it on my personal blog.

Real World Trading: Someone mentioned that real word trading doesn’t hurt anyone. I do take exception with this point, at least in part. I understand that a person selling a character or goods for real world money would still need to work to get that character to where it is valuable or get those items through various other means such as mining or what-not. In that respect it seems alright. Someone did the work. Why shouldn’t they get paid? In fact, that is how the internal Runescape economy works. Many people buy items they would rather not work on getting. I for one almost never cut down trees, I buy the logs. I buy the secondary ingredients for summoning pouches because I am not going to spend hours hunting around for those ingredients. That is what drives the internal Runescape economy.

But here is what people forget. Runescape is designed for everyone, no matter who they are in the real world. Remember that 80% of the people who play Runescape are free players. Many (I am not saying most, just many) of those free players are free because they cannot cover even the small monthly fee. I spent a year playing free because I was too broke to play, and every once in a while I still tighten the buckle and by-pass a month of membership. Plus there are the kids who can’t get their parents to cough up the dough. The concept of a Free Runescape World is based on the idea that no one should be excluded because of their real world financial issues. And those free players are a very important part of what keeps Runescape running.

Now lets say that Jagex suddenly loosened up and started allowing real world trading. This becomes a nightmare. Many, if not most, of the most powerful and wealthy in game players will be those people who bought their way in. Not because they earned it, but because they had real world money. How is that fair inside the world of Runescape? It is bad enough I have to deal with rich snobs in the real world who never earned their money. I don’t need to deal with that in my relaxation also. Should I become one of the 10% most wealthy players in Runescape only because I dropped 1000 real world dollars on a Blue Party hat? Should I speed my way with all the advantages that real money can buy to level 99 while the remaining 99% of players cannot or will not drop a bunch of real world money. The ban on real world trading gives all players a fair and equal ground to fight on.

Does this mean I don’t think people should make real world money off the games they love to play? Certainly not. There are countless books for sale about investing in Runescape and advancing in Runescape. Many fansites including this one have ads (and I try hard to block ads that are suggestive of RWT but they grow like weeds). Those are legitimate ways to make real money from something we love. But there could be other ways if the people a Jagex implemented some major advancements.

One thing that could make real world money for players and yet keep things within the world of Runescape fair and balanced is the introduction of player made non-tradeables. This blog receives the bulk of its visits from people who are interested in clothing. Maybe Jagex could introduce a costume development package. Thus taking a page from the people at SecondLife. People could design their own clothing and sell it for real world money. These items would be visible within the world of Runescape, but would be untradeable (and have no effect on stats) thus preventing real world money translating into gp. Maybe we could relax that untradeable stipulation to only give-awayable. These items could still be given away to other players for free. So you could give a nice new trench coat to a friend for their birthday, but no gp or other items would be involved in the trade. The people at Jagex would have to come up with a way to make that work, but it is doable. Of course it doesn’t have to be restricted to clothing, maybe posters could be made to hang in player owned homes. In any case the clothing or other items would have no advantages beyond cosmetic, like a lot of the current clothing available.

Another thing I noticed when people were commenting on real world trading is the statement that real world traders can be slowed down but not stopped. This point is valid. It also borders on idiot when thought out. Theft and bank robbing are illegal and there are many laws to prevent these things. But people still steal and rob banks. Just because people still do it doesn’t mean we should cut our loses and make them legal. They are wrong and if the best we can do is slow these crimes down then as a society that is what we need to do.   In the real world laws are made to stop or slow down the few who would do wrong and the rest of us by default have to suffer the burden.  That is society and the cross that we must bear.  In Runescape, real world trading is wrong (if we wish to preserve fairness) and we should support reasonable efforts to slow it down.

I would like to take this moment to appeal to those of you who think that some of the practices that Jagex has taken to curb real world trading has hurt the game. I agree with you. The initial changes to the wilderness and player killing were poorly made. I don’t pk, but I always knew it was an important part of the game and when I discovered what was done to pking I was very disappointed. Again, I don’t pk, but if I did and I justed killed a player wearing all dragon armor, I want that frigging armor. I think if they are wearing and wielding it and they die, it should be given to victor (minus the top three of course). Anything in their inventory is just lost (that would help with the RWT).  The new PvP concept is a nice step forward, but more needs to be done.

Also, I agree with people about trade limits, to a point. I don’t think the limits should be abandoned all together. But they need to be further relaxed. I think these tight limits are what is causing the downward spiral in the Runescape economy (which almost all of the GEC charts show). Something needs to be done before the economy collapses to nothing. Right now it is not reasonable to do long term investing in Runescape items because almost all items, though they have a roller coaster graph, everything is still progressively devaluing.

Anyway, there is my 2 gp worth of comments on real world trading.

I’ve been so bogged down in writing the Grand Exchange Central’s database scripts and page codes lately that I haven’t had much of a chance to really play the game. So this weekend I purposely sat down and told myself to play and enjoy the game for fun sake. That of course let me to see a few funny sights, finish a couple annoying quests (like Shield of Avvay and Heroes)  and come up with a suggestion for a Jagex April Fools prank.

I can’t have a stupid idea without sharing it, so here it is. I think that on April 1, 2009 the people at Jagex should toss in a Rickroll. Maybe right in the middle of Varrock square. Before I go on I probably should mention a couple of things for those few people who are oblivious to the greater workings of the Internet.

First, over the past fifteen years April Fools Day has become the most universally accepted holiday on the Internet. April Fools Day is a holiday that everyone can enjoy because there are no religious or political drawbacks. And it is not geocentric; every place on Earth has fools and pranksters. It is a safe holiday to observe on websites. And most major websites take part.

Second, a Rickroll is an Internet phenomenon that is closing in on its last days. But it still has a little life left. Basically anything can be a Rickroll as long as it involves the song, “Never gonna give you up” by Rick Astley appearing in a place where it would normally not appear.  Hearing the song on Lite-FM WSLP is not a Rickroll. Having the video pop up on a congressional website (which it did) is a Rickroll. Rickrolls originally started out as misleading links to the Astley YouTube video, but have expanded out to include pretty much anything that involves the song.

Now on to my idea. I think that on April 1^st for a few hours there should be a little Rick Astley like NPC wondering around Varrock square singing the lyrics to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Or if there is a copyright concern then change the lyrics slightly. You can’t say that some little dude like the one to the above right wouldn’t be a hilarious April Fools prank. Plus, maybe as a side bonus he could give out tan tench coats as a nontradeable holiday item.

As a side note: The GEC is coming along nicely. It now contains over 500 items, has parts lists on many individual items, and has the ability to store up to 60 days worth of data for each item (the official GE website only displays a months worth). There are now several Runedexes that place items into categories and many more tools to come in the very near future. I have added all the headwear I can find and will be starting on footware this week (it takes a lot of time to initially enter in new items).

As I was entering in all the Runescape headgear I could find into the Grand Exchange Central database I was literally dumbfounded by the variety and cost of all the things players can put on their heads (over a billion gp worth). The world of Runescape allows players to try on all sort of different head garments including partyhats, hoods, masks, bandannas, hats of all colors, sleeping caps and more. My focus was strictly on tradeable items, but there are also a bunch of things for the head that can not be purchased and need to be skillfully acquired through quests and other activities. After spending several hours of researching this category of Runescape clothing I decided to post a little about what I discovered, at least concerning partyhats.

Partyhats [GEC 550.1m gp] or phats are probably the number one article of Runescape clothing that people search for on the Internet. These tradeable items account for six of the most expensive items in Runescape. The cheapest partyhat sells for only 76 million gp. To wrap your mind around that figure consider this; to buy the cheapest partyhat (purple) you would need to sell about 179 thousand swordfish [GEC 506 gp] to get enough money. These clothing items are so expensive because of their rarity, with rumors around the Internet suggesting that only 500 of these rare treasures still in existence. Of course this figure cannot be substantiated unless Jagex comes right out and disclosed the true numbers, which will likely never occur. But if that 500 hat number can be trusted we can imagine an interesting scenario. According to the news in mid 2008, when Runescape was awarded a Guinness World Record, it has about six million players, 1 million of which are members. That means that only 0.008% of the Runescape population could conceivably have a hat (1 in 12,000 players).

Party hats were first introduced during the Christmas event of 2001. They were prizes in Christmas Crackers where two players would pull on the ends of the cracker to obtain the prizes inside. Each cracker contained two prizes, one that sucked and one that was cool. Each player would get one of these prize. Typically a partyhat (the sucky item) of various colors would go to one player and then something else of value to the other. The player who got the hat would likely discarded it because it didn’t seem to be worth anything. But being a limited time item which remained tradeable after the event, the hat’s value soon skyrocketed (hence why new holiday event items are no longer tradeable). Now the complete set of six hats runs around 900 million gp.

The rarity and prestige of owning a partyhat has now grown into a thing of legend and has even created its own mythology. According to one myth it is believed that for an extremely short period of time there was a black party hat. But because Jagex deemed it not festive enough, it was soon changed to white. This is of course a myth and there is no and never was a black partyhat. Usually this myth is only mentioned in order to egg on noobs who don’t know any better.

The black hat myth aside, if you see someone wearing a partyhat you can make a couple of guesses. Either they are a long time player who never got rid of their hats (bravo), or they blew a crap load of money to buy an item that has no purpose beyond being an investment item and showing off. (Did that sound a little bitter?) In either case you will not be looking at a noob.

I am one of those impatient freaks who always has to have the latest updates for everything. I was part of the original beta test group for Windows95 and proceeded to beta test most of the following operating systems up to and including Windows2000. On my iGoogle homepage I have RSS feeds from FileHippo and other software update sites. When I download share/freeware I almost always exclusively download only packages that are a couple of months old. Current. Updated. Beta. For me it has to be new, better, faster, easier. So it is no surprised that I recently downloaded the Windows 7 beta.

Since this is a Runescape blog I will restrict most of my comments to Runescape on Windows 7. But I will make a couple of comments here about the OS in general. First of all, Windows 7 is Vista without all the problems and annoyances. Or maybe it is better stated as, Windows 7 is exactly what Vista should have been. It is clean, efficient, powerful, and stable even in its beta form. The security, at least in terms of the UAC and annoyance factors, is effective yet hardly intrusive at all. I have yet to run in to a significant application comparability problem with any of the software I use on my may XP machine (Dreamweaver, OpenOffice, PhotoImpact, etc.) Its boot and shutdown times are slightly faster than even WindowsXP. Provided Microsoft does not fugg things up between now and the eventual release of Windows 7, it should be the OS to bring respect back to Microsoft and even to bring back some of the lost customer base that Microsoft has sacrificed to Apple and other OS developers. As of right now I would be happy to have Windows 7 as a replacement to XP, even in its beta.

Now on to Runescape related issues. After first installing Windows 7 I ran into a problem getting Runescape to display in any HD format, small, large or full screen. This same issue happens when I occasional reinstall Vista just to try to give it another chance (which within a couple of days I usually axe it). But simply installing the most current nVidia Vista WHQL drivers solved this problem immediately (as with Vista). The only remaining problem I have is that occasionally during some games and other graphically intensive programs the system will freeze totally and require a reboot. However, I do not believe this to be a Windows 7 problem.

My system and its nVidia 6800 graphics card were completely stable prior to my February 2007 installation of Vista. After that time I started experiencing rouge freezes in conjunction with graphic card error messages. After I gave up on Vista and returned to XP these problems continued and still continue to this very day. Yes, now they are in XP for me too. I suspect that something in the early nVidia Vista drivers physically messed up the card (don’t ask me how and nVidia and Microsoft will never admit to it). Either that or my fairly old card could not handle the continual and added strain of the new OS 3D graphics and puked out on me. In either case my card is questionable at best and I do not consider the freezes in Windows 7 to be anything but normal hardware issues that I have with all the OSs on my computer.

Aside from the hardware related freeze ups, Runescape runs practically identically on Windows 7 as it does on XP. I have noticed that the loading of Runescape takes a little longer and that when displaying some graphics it take a very insignificantly longer period of time to display on their first showing. But after running the game for a minute or so everything runs smoothly and I have noticed no increase in lag time while playing Runescape. I chalk up the slightly longer load times to my computer being at the bottom end of the recommend minimum requirement for Vista and Windows 7. My computer is a Pentium 4 3.00Mhz with 1gb of RAM. That really isn’t much compared to the standard equipment on systems currently sold in stores today. Though I have not tested it, I suspect that any system with my minimum speed and a minimum of 2gb of RAM should have no perceptible effect on game performance compared to XP. In fact, I would wager that performance might even be slightly better.

I have read in some places where people have encounter HD issues with Windows 7 and Runescape. I cannot speak to those issues because every installation is likely to be different. Different hardware. Different specs. Different setup. And of course every user has different skills and abilities when it comes to computers. I have been a computer consultant for the better part of twenty-five years and my skill set is significant compared to most. When I installed Windows 7 it was clean and very precise and in a very efficient order making sure that almost all drivers and updates were installed prior to any other software installation what-so-ever. I only used the graphics drivers that came with Windows 7 out of curiosity as to whether they would work or not. They did not and therefore my recommendation is that prior to trying out Windows 7 and Runescape first install the absolute latest WHQL Vista drivers for your graphics card. Also, load the latest version of Java. Outside of those items, Runescape should run fine out of the box.

Here is a really random thought for the blog. As far as I can remember in my almost six years of playing Runescape I have only died six times. I am excluding any deaths during my first week or two. But even during my formative weeks I don’t think I got killed all that often. Now that I think about it, I may not have gotten killed at all so my original count of six may be very close for Absenm’s life. I also do not count deaths in “safe” minigames like Castle Wars. I am talking deaths where your actually lose stuff.

(BTW: Absenm has been my sole character since I began on Runescape 2. I believe my character on Runescape 1.0 was named Absen with no ‘m’. I do have a secondary character whose name I forget but I only created him to finish the Shield of Arrav quest. Sadly I discovered that two computers on the same network can not play at the same time. Thus, I have yet to finish that frigging quest!  I hate quests where you have to work with other dorks… ah… I mean players.)

The first death I remember is getting my ass kicked in the basement of Draynor Mansion by that frickin vampire. Obviously this was early on in Absenm’s life and I was on a quest (in fact this was back when I wasn’t even a member). Actually, that vampire accounts for deaths one and two because he kicked my ass again when I went back to Draynor straight from Lumbridge.  It is funny to think about now, when I can just look at the vampire and he dies.  At least I assume he would die. I jhaven’t gone back to find out because I refuse to go anywhere near that SOB.

I know one time I got killed when I got jumped in the wilderness by some jackass while fighting green dragons. This was of course long before PvP worlds and before Pking was banned from the wilderness. He or she ruthlessly attacked right after I killed a dragon and only had about 10hp left. Strategically it was a beautiful ambush which wonderfully took advantage of me being an idiot and not eating enough. But it really pissed me off and my murderer remains on my ignore list to this day.

Another time, for whatever silly reason, I was by the Dark Warriors fortress in the wilderness (again). I can not recall my reason for being out there. It was probably a level three treasure trails or something like that. Anyway, that time I got jumped by three players. I didn’t even have time to move my mouse, let alone do anything to defend myself or run away. That pissed me off more than the green dragons dude. At least he waited patiently for me to screw up. The three jackasses went three on one. That was just rude.

The fifth time I don’t remember much at all. All I do remember is that I was fully expecting to get beatdown and therefore did not bring anything of value with me to my death. I think I was doing research on a monster. I only include this death because I did lose some Rune armour. Again nothing of much value.

The last time I died was just a couple of months ago and it may quite possibly be the most idiotic thing I ever did. I was in TzHaar beneath the Karamja Volcano. I was messing around fighting the TzHaar monsters. Nothing particularly dangerous for my skill level. But they are strong and due some respect. Respect which I did not show. First I wore my full daily wear outfit which I have mentioned before in other posts. A picture of my outfit graces the top of all the pages of this blog. According to todays Grand Exchange Central WIWI Index my daily wear is valued at 5,094,200gp. My second disrespect was leaving my computer during a fight to go upstairs and use the bathroom. Of course you can see where this is going. When I got back to the computer and logged back in and found myself standing in the Lumbridge Castle courtyard practically naked (hey, if you went from Gold-trimmed Rune [GEC 997.4k gp] to a t-shirt and jeans you would feel naked too.).

I was, of course, well past the time of my gravestone. Heck, even with a five minute gravestone (which I did not have) and some generous bystanders there would have been no way I would have gotten back there in time. I had taken a Popular Science with me to the bathroom and was in there for a good half hour. Not meaning to sound sexist, but taking a magazine to the bathroom is typically a male trait. I think guys do our best thinking in the bathroom. I am the only person I know who has a TV and a data port (which I no longer need thanks to WiFi) in my bathroom.  On a related side note, has anyone else noticed that there are no bathrooms in Runescape?  Just a weird observation.

Of course my three most expensive items remained with me so it wasn’t a full 5 million loss. My Amulet of Fury [GEC 14.6m gp] alone accounts for almost half my outfits value. But it still was a multi million gp bust. And every gp I made for a week or two after felt like I was just catching up, not going forward. (Oh yeah, did I mention I had over 200k in gp on me when I died. Talk about disrespect.)

Anyway, I don’t know exactly what triggered this walk down the valley of death. I know I had been thinking of my game play strategy and how I am not a risk taker. Heck, if my HP drops down to below 20, I am off like a prom dress. Also I very rarely go anywhere near the wilderness (excluding chaos druids in the Edgeville dungeon.) I suppose we all have our own ways to live life in Runescape. Risk isn’t mine. Plus, even without any loses in weapons, armour, or other valuables, I just simply find the death of Absenm unacceptable and insulting. Maybe that is just a character flaw (pun intended).