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.