Ever since the dark ages of RuneScape, and even more so since the release of RuneScape 2, fansites have been saving Jagex’s ass. As head content developer for RuneCrypt, I have seen quite a few things about how tipsites are forced to function, that I never would have suspected in my 3 year history as a normal tipsite visitor prior to becoming a member of the staff. Programming an easy to use, useful system without breaking any rules becomes harder and harder with each update that Jagex releases. Let me cite a few examples…

1. The Knowledge Database

This helpful database is more than just that. It is Jagex own self-structured fansite, giving their players all the information they could possible need, all in a convenient location on RuneScape.com – awesome deal for everyone, right? But let’s look at the reasoning behind this. Would Jagex really spend their time amassing all of this knowledge into one place so that their players would have a more enjoyable (and easier, which is a key part too… but I’ll get to that later) gaming experience? This is how Jagex introduced the update:

“The aim of this update is to provide better support for our players, so that if you’re stuck or just need some friendly advice, you can quickly get the help you need rather than asking Customer Support or hoping someone is talking about it on the forums.”

(News Archives – March 13, 2008)

That seems a bit contradictory to the follow up posts by Jagex Moderators on the forums saying that the intention of the K-Base was to “protect players from malicious third-party websites”.

2. The Grand Exchange Database

Being a staff member on a separate tipsite, it is not often that you will hear me singing praise of our “competition”, but there is not denying the incredible work that Ben (Goten) and the rest of the Zybez staff did when they compiled their famous market price guide. The introduction of the Grand Exchange Database is a direct stab at that project, and furthermore it seems that Jagex has gone out of their way to make it as inconvenient as possible to extract data from their databases. I have truthfully no idea why a readable format of the data has not been released, as was done with the hiscores – although that was yet another example of Jagex only helping out tipsites indirectly because they couldn’t stop it and they would prefer to save bandwidth. Is it not ironic when Jagex finds it necessary to begin each news post with something along the lines of “We did this in response to player feedback”? Read on:

“Many of you asked for the ability to view graphs of market values and track item prices as they rise and fall. Well, this week we introduce the Grand Exchange Database Beta, which does exactly that!”

(News Archives – April 15, 2008)

3. QuestHelp

QuestHelp, in summary, is Jagex taking a primary role of fansites and attempting to render it obsolete. I feel that is all I must say for this one; does it really seem necessary to make a half-ass attempt at quest guides that simply comes off as the creators of the game making the game itself easier? What is their incentive to lower the required IQ for the game? Well, the younger crowd is taking over RuneScape now, and Jagex is doing nothing to stop it (although they only recommend the game for those ages 13 or older). Why would they want to prevent potential customers from playing? As long as they are paying, it doesn’t matter what age they might be. Getting back to QuestHelp, however, it is nothing more than Jagex realizing that tipsites are having a negative impact on some of their players. Once again, they have taken steps to make RuneScape.com another contender in the tipsite world, and cleverly disguise it as being “for the players”:

We know […] that simply resorting to looking up the entire solution can take all the fun out of the quest and often results in you seeing more solution than you wanted to see. This can leave you with the feeling that you didn’t really solve bits you could have done.

(News Archives – May 10, 2006)

But well done, Jagex. You have succeeded in being the first case I have ever seen where a beta version of a feature has lasted 2 years without receiving any changes whatsoever.

The list goes on. If you look at the way they redid the forums, or how they have modeled the hierarchy of their own website, you will see the same patterns. Only once, excluding content in the Knowledge Base, has Jagex truly recognized the fan site community in a public way. It resulted in the second largest riot to ever grace the likes of RuneScape (For the record, that puts it in a close second place to the wilderness and trade updates; aka “The Day RuneScape Died”). Yes, you guessed it. The riot I am speaking of was the one resulting from Jagex’s changes to rules 7 & 9 – the rules regarding third party software, and specifically clients.

On January 2^nd, 2007 Jagex “extended rule 7 to make it clear that it DOES now include third party RuneScape clients/world switchers” (News Archives), meaning that all runescape clients other than the official one were outlawed, as they provided an “unfair advantage” – to use Jagex’s favorite phrase. Once again let’s investigate their reasoning/justification for this radical change:

“When RuneScape fansites are distributing programs which are then used to discuss breaking the rules or result in their own users being scammed, it’s clear that our rules need revision! We don’t want to be unnecessarily restrictive, but we obviously also have to balance that with protecting our users.”

(News Archives – January 2, 2007)

…A classic example of Jagex cutting of the nose to spite the face. If your users are losing their accounts and passwords due to third-party software, sure, some action may be warranted, but severing one of your major lifelines has never been a good choice for Jagex, and they never seem to learn. When at first the update was met with incredulous pleas for withdrawing the new rules, Jagex quietly inserted another paragraph into their news announcement:

“We have done this for two main reasons: a) The sheer number of users losing their account/password to programs which pretend to be one thing but actually steal their password; b) Problems with some of these programs including extremely unsafe chat channels where large amounts of scamming go on, and users encourage each other to try to break the rules.” (News Archives – January 2, 2007)

So Jagex is now pointing the center of blame at the security issue, and has seemingly forgotten their original claim that the reason was that programs such as SwiftSwitch provided players with an “unfair advantage”. In fact, Mod Burgess on the forums would go on to say that IRC is “unmoderated” and “promotes rule-breaking” – a statement that could almost be no further from the truth. This may come as a shock to Jagex, but RuneScape players get scammed in RuneScape. If you want to fix that problem, fix your game… remove trading or something if you have to hahaha… (wait a minute…).

Anyways, now that I have discussed what Jagex has said in response to these updates, let’s look more at what some players said when those changes were made. (Quotes all taken from the RuneCrypt forums – original posters may not still hold these opinions)

“Runescape is evolving more and more into a communist state. The chat filter is already oppressive and now even things that aren’t directly part of the game are being questioned and controlled.

I could quite easily live without SS, I survived without it for a LONG time and only recently started using it. What I disagree with is the freedom of choice that’s being taken away yet again.”

(Agent Yuri)

“Banning SS because it provides a thriving clan community a source of communication, and because Jagex failed to satisfy their customers, is stupid. Jagex you were well aware of SS already, you also made numerous promises to make a clan communication system and you did NOT do that.

Jagex, you backstabbed your customers with a false promise, then you turned a safe client that was acceptable into some taboo thing that will now get you banned. SS is safe and better.

Jagex, you failed to do the obvious, and instead took the only decent means of communicating through clans over RS away from us.

May as well ban in-game trading, I mean scams happen in trades too?”

(X Sam Sam X)

The topic of freedom came up on multiple occasions during those debates and discussions, and then continued as Jagex gave Player Moderators the green light to mute any protestors. You may not come from America, but the freedoms of speech and assembly are somewhat basic rights, especially in such a “politically correct” game.

To make it easy for you to see, I have collected gathered some statistics from RuneCrypt’s user databases and public polls.

• 1 in 4 members stay active on the fansite after retiring from RuneScape.
• 1 in 8 active members changed their status from P2P to F2P, or changed it to “Retired” after the changes to rules 7 & 9
• 1 in 3 active members uses some sort of third party software while playing RuneScape.

What can we learn from this data? 1. Fansites keep players in the RuneScape community when RS itself can’t. 2. Updates targeted at fansites are generally unpopular, and result in Jagex losing members. 3. Players don’t listen to Jagex’s advice, and prefer to use third-party software.

But if there is a Jagex employee reading this article, take this as a plea. Regardless of what I just said, I believe that 98% of the decisions made by Jagex are spot on. The company as a whole has fully deserved the awards it has won, and RuneScape will forever be an MMORPG that can’t be mimicked. It is vastly different from any other game I have ever played, and I think that the 98% of good choices could be increased to 99% if more trust was put in the hands of the players, and in turn to the fansites. When it comes down to it, the upper level of the fansite community is administered by at most 25 people working their asses off to serve the most loyal fans – would it be asking too much to give us a break now and then? RuneScape wouldn’t be RuneScape without it’s players and fans. Jagex is simply shooting themselves in the foot by trying to protect their players from the big, bad tipsites who are run by… their players.

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