One little comment on the whole 11 year old Timmy who got hacked because he got lead off the official Runescape site. Yeah, this is a couple of weeks late but I just heard about it.  Been so busy with the GEC I lost track of reading other people’s blogs.

At first I was actually feeling sorry for the kid. He seemed to have worked hard to get to where he was. He was high enough level to fish sharks so he must have spent a little time playing. But as the story progressed it became more and more fishy.

SEE NEWS VIDEO HERE!

The family says that they raised money so Timmy could buy weapons and other equipment. One hundred and forty dollars.  As any legitimate player of RuneScape knows, you cannot buy items in RuneScape with real world money (rule 12).  It seems that the family and the news crew are completely oblivious to the fact that this practice is against RuneScape rules and terms of service and that players are warned exhustively not to engage in such activities.

Thus little Timmy must have been engaged in real world trading if he used one hundred and forty real dollars to buy weapons, armour and become more powerful.  That is an offense that can and does get people banned. That is cheating. I now wonder if little Timmy was really just trying to join a clan and got tricked into going to the wrong RuneScape site. It takes jumping through quiet a few hoops in order to real world trade and I suspect that little Timmy knows at the very least he was cheating.

It is sad that he is only 11 years old and (hey, wait a minute!  What’s he doing chatting?  You need to be 13 or older to be on a non quick chat world).  Anyway, it is sad he had to learn such a tough lesson so young.  He had to learn that there are bad people in the world. He also had to learn that cheaters get cheated in the end. If he is a real world trader than he is a cheater. But maybe he will be a little smarter and a little wiser in the future.  Of course, maybe all of this could have been avoided if his family had taken the time to read the parents guide on the official website.  They should look into it.  From some of the quotes, it seems like the family isn’t aware that Runescape is not a childen’s game.

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.