RuneScape Discussion

Last issue, this section was full of articles about the game itself, so the next obvious move was to look at the people who play, and the community within, which has made another handful of great articles. First is The Society Of Runescape by Merch Gwyar , which looks at how actions we take now can come back in either positive or negative ways in the future. Secondly is another article by Merch Gwyar , The Language Of Runescape , that looks at the different languages and methods of communication used between players in RuneScape. Next is Welcome To Autoscape by Neo Avatars , which looks at how the players seem to be having large impacts on the updates that appear, whether these updates are good or bad. Finally this month is Bank Of Doddsy by Doddsy1992 which looks at the stereotypes that some are put under just because of their level or other obvious aspects of their character.

-Neo Avatars

The Society of Runescape - By: Merch Gwyar

For every Jagex update, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unrecognized additions to the game everyday. They are the other players.

Each day, more people arrive off Tutorial Island and blink in their first views of Lumbridge. Conversely, there are those who, for whatever reason, stop playing the game. Whilst not as immediately obvious as, say, a new quest or an updated version of a town, each person brings with them their own personality and style of playing, which could impact upon your own experience of Runescape. Often, this effect is temporary, lasting for as long as you are in their vicinity, but occasionally it can be more permanent.

Some players arrive and organise where they see a niche to occupy. The brains behind successful ventures, like the Worlds 66 and 99 law running companies or the leaders in great clans, are all ordinary players, who saw something that could be done and did it. In doing so, they changed certain areas, if not worlds, and Jagex has occasionally recognised this enough to render it offical. On the other hand, there are those who have discovered and so abused glitches, that they have caused rules to be created by which we all now have to abide. Their lingering presence might also be felt by those who have earned black marks by breaking these rules.

Yet these are the exceptions, the big fish in a swarming school of quieter Runescape players. Nonetheless, the rest of us frequently affect the game of those around us. Our attitude and actions can be like a stone thrown into a pond. They ripple out and what the outer ripples may cause to happen are generally unforeseen. For example, I recently found myself in difficulties and sounded an SOS heard by several other players. One of them reached me and saved not only myself, but a lot of hard-earned armour and equipment. In the post-mortem of the event, someone asked how I'd met my saviour. I didn't recall. How had it been that that player was in the right place and time, with the communication available, to rescue me? He supplied the answer. I'd once given him 50 potato seeds, free of charge, as a complete stranger on an allotment, then took him through all the steps to start off his farming skill. Two minutes of my time and a few cheap seeds had rippled out to result in 20 minutes of his time in saving me and thousands of gp worth of my possessions.

Situations like these are repeated time and time again across the worlds. The low level, who has nothing to give and no muscle to protect, but nevertheless has time to attend a high level skill celebration screenshot, could easily find themselves receiving items and quest advice or protecting accompaniment for months to come. The considerate miner, carefully choosing only those ores not being hit by the pick-axes of anyone else, could find themselves in conversation with others who later come to their rescue. I've been in situations where a low level died and I've collected and returned their stuff, only to be contacted later by an extremely high level player with recompense, seeing as it was their 'choob' whom I helped.

On the other hand, forum threads and in-game conversations have revealed a 'stick' against unsocial behaviour, accompanying the 'carrots' described above. The report abuse button exists for cases of actual rule-breaking, but for those outside the proscribed in-game law, society will and does use the resources to hand to bring people back into line.

Anecdotes abound telling of such things as the high combat person targeting only those monsters, in a multi-combat zone, which a lesser player was fighting, until an even higher level friend was called to enact instant karma, doing unto them as they had done unto others. Similarly, the player who habitually stole the ore of another, who was unable to match him, then found that player sticking to him like a limpet, telling all in his path what he'd done, even as he hopped worlds. Or else the player using superior skill to bully those around her, until a random event occurred and no-one would offer their weapon to save her. Or the scammer, who found an increasing number of people expressing their disapproval via private IM, until (s)he was forced to return for a fairer deal.

All of these imply selfish reasons to watch out for each other, but there's a stronger reason too. If each of us created a mobile compassionate, helpful, courteous and pleasant space around us, then this would spread across Runescape. It would result in a happier world for us all.

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The Language of Runescape - By: Merch Gwyar

Wor bin ya? Yackunsate all yow wun an' sumptwoe ger woh yam sayn. Thearm sayn yow doe spake roiyt!

*pause*

For those who don't speak my local dialect, the above will properly not even be discipherable as English. It is and, moreover, it is precisely how I'd pronounce things if you conversed with me in real life.

Over the years, I have discovered that I have to become practically bilingual within a single language if I wish to communicate with those outside these few square miles in which I live. American friends constantly plead with me to slow down, but they do better than many British people. On a recent trip to London, a friend had to translate nearly every word I said, even when I was doing my best impression of the Queen's English.

Runescape has as many languages as there are people to speak them, as well as worlds written in both English and German. I once accidentally found myself in a Swedish world, standing in Edgeville with a cacaphony of the Swedish language hitting the wall of my incomprehension. I took the opportunity to call aloud, 'does anyone know the Swedish for 'selling ring of life for 10k?'' Someone spoke both languages and so taught me what I needed to know. I learned a little in that world, several words and phrases that I jotted down on a notepad. Another time a couple of Dutch people were chatting in Catherby. Once I'd put aside the knowledge that I speak no Dutch, I realized that our languages were so closely related that I could almost understand what they were saying. I made notes and later checked with a friend from the Nederlands. I was right.

For those willing to grab the fruits of opportunity, Runescape can be a lingualist's paradise. Befriend a group conversing in another tongue and a couple of words can become a few sentences, then a small vocabulary. All gathered in a fun environment far removed from the staid boredom of a classroom. I found myself inadvertently becoming teacher in this way, as many of the people whom I've interacted with in-game now understand 'cariad', a Welsh term of endearment akin to 'darling', 'loved one' or 'person I'm fond of', simply because I use it so much. However, some of the Welsh words they learned as I was doing 'Monkey Madness' probably shouldn't be repeated in polite company.

While the advantages of this sort of education are obvious, there can be a downside too, particularly when players don't know when to switch into a language understood by all. L33t is a modern derivative of English, insofar as I can ascertain, which has evolved over the past decade with the growth of the mobile 'phone. Even predictive text wasn't fast enough in a speeding world, so abbreviations emerged to meet the demand. The internet soaked this up in chat messengers and finally forums. It met with another recent manifestation, that of the computer hacker, who needed a language with which to converse with others and so one was commually created using symbolical representations of letters. The combination produced a language which was, from its inception, designed to confuse those not part of the 'elite', the word from which L33t derives. Runescape now abounds with L33t, which no longer relies simply upon shortcuts and symbols, but also on blatant misspellings. For example, the word 'really' passed through 'rly' to become 'rely'.

There is a school of thought that we should live and let live, that L33t harms no-one and is just a bit of fun. I confess that I found the word 'pwn' to be quite charming and have added it to my own vocabulary. I no longer report that 'I've defeated a lesser demon', as I favour the phrase, 'I've pwned the lesser demon'. However, I'm a fairly eloquent adult with no reading disadvantages other than not enough time in the day to read all the books that I want to. In the past, before over-exposure to L33t taught me enough to understand it, I could stand in a bank and might as well be back in the Swedish world for all my comprehension. I'm sure I missed purchases because I didn't grasp what was being sold. It took me until last night to work out that <3 was a love heart.

It is a fact of sociology that people crave tribes and that tribes will create their own mode of communication, be it codewords, hand-shakes or an actual language. If L33t has arrived out of a need for a younger generation to converse without adult comprehension, then it is a success (albeit temporary, as adults can learn to speak it too). It can be hilarious to know that outsiders are assuming a lack of intelligence on the part of the L33t speaker, particularly when that's advantageous in terms of being underestimated.

The language's emphasis on deliberately abbreviating or misspelling words, however, can mask learning difficulties. The struggling individual can laugh and declare L33t, leaving enough doubt for help not to arrive. After all, it's embarrassing to not be keeping pace with your peers. For those already diagnosed, L33t can be a nightmare. I've spoken with a dyslexic who has enough trouble with English, but is rendered silenced by L33t.

I guess that the answer for all of us is to watch our language. Only a very small minority of those reading could have reached this far if I'd continued to write it in my local dialect. I switched back to English because it was more inclusive. In the Swedish world, I didn't demand that the whole of Edgeville learn my language to converse, I learned a little Swedish instead. We can take our opportunities to learn but, if we want to be understood, then observing the speech and speakers around us should provide hints of how we should enunciate in order to include as many people as possible.

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Welcome to Autoscape - By: Neo Avatars It's July 17th 2007. Tens of thousands of adventurers with a need to explore the lands of RuneScape are taking part in a gigantic variety of tasks ranging from decorating houses with Glass Orbs to mixing Potions ready to kill annoying Pests to putting flesh and bone into stringing that all important thirty-nine thousandth Yew Longbow to reach stage six on the road to level 99 Fletching. They may have seemed like ordinary things to do on another equally sunny day as the previous one, but they were tasks that future inhabitants of the land wouldn't be able to experience ever again due to the mysterious yellow text that decided to appear in the bottom-left hand corner of everybody's vision...

System update in: 3:00
System update in: 2:59
System update in: 2:58
etc...

'wewt', 'omg im killin jad nd wnt finis in 3 mins I h8 u FedEx!', 'Ooo, I wonder what this is going to be ', were just a few of the many phrases that rushed towards the chat servers, and back out to the adventurers near to the talkative ones. Many kept going, churning out those last few experiences before they were finally hurled out of the way, while others left the lands of RuneScape to check what the true reason of all this commotion was, and whether it would affect them in any way. What they were faced with upon looking were two announcements explaining masses of changes that were happening to the world they knew and loved, one being General , while the other was specific about the Void Knights at their Outpost and the Pest Control they regularly need help with.

So what? There had been over 800 similar announcements made in the past each explaining a change to the world that is loved by many, and these were just two more. The difference here, however, was that the changes would be affecting things already in place, things that many loved, things that would be completely ruined with the press of the Update Servers button hidden deep within Jagex Towers.

Within the General 'Improvement' announcement was one main paragraph that caught the eyes of many...

Fine, some more Do-x options have been added, but then you look closer at what it says, and realise that The Blokes at Jagex Towers (TB@JT) wrote nothing of positive value within that short section of text, actually wanting to write the following instead:

Today we have decided to ruin a number of previously wonderful skills. This means that if you had realised that activities such as pie, pizza and potato making were previously enjoyable activities, you will now completely hate them. Other skills that we have decided to completely ruin on this beautiful July morning include: Fletching, the previously fabulous Herblore, and numerous activities in Crafting. If you think we somehow forgot to ruin Smithing, don't worry, we will do so on your birthday!

Before this, there were a few limited tasks that had been tortured to insanity by being forced to make players Do-x including cutting Logs into Bows and Cooking objects that had been Fished from the sea. Having a Do-x option for cutting Logs into Bows was perfectly understandable - there is more than one option when using a Knife on a Log, and you need to choose which you want to do. It could, however, have been done in a different way, with an option to select what you want to automatically happen when using a Knife on a Log in that session until you Log out, so rather than having to choose each time, you chosen once, and can get on with cutting those Longbows rather than being asked to make Crossbow Stocks.

Why there was a Cook-x option on Fished items is slightly less understandable, although there does seem to be the very basic reason that moving your hand long distances from right in your inventory to left on the fire and back again can cause annoying injuries in the wrist. Fine, make a RuinSkill-x for Cooking, but why does this torture need to be placed upon the humble skill of Herblore?

Previously, a well trained adventurer could make in the region of 1500 Potions every hour, including adding the Herb to a Vial, then adding the secondary ingredient. After RuinHerblore-x appeared, this number has dropped, and the speed isn't even consistent. When adding the Herbs to the Vials, you'll add three Herbs for each animation, yet when adding secondary ingredients to the Unfinished Potions, you'll only be able to pull out a measly two Potions per animation. For someone who had previously been making 1500 Potions hour in, hour out, something had certainly gone wrong.

So, nobody likes the RuinSkill-x options? Actually, due to the other announcement specified towards Pest Control, it is clear that there are some who will complain and complain and complain when their only source of experience for the previous year has suddenly changed. Before Pest Control, people would train combat in all sorts of places, choosing a different monster to kill depending on how they felt, or maybe even getting told what to kill by a Slayer Master. With the arrival of this Void Knight Outpost, everybody started flooding in and easily obtaining experience twice as fast as beforehand. The change was clearly going to come at some point - TB@JT don't want you to just use one small piece of content, but explore a variety of different things instead, and it wasn't the first change that happened to Pest Control since its initial release.

Update 1 , Update 2 . Just because they happened within a couple of months of the initial release, why do so many people seem to know nothing about them? The current version of Pest Control isn't version 2 as many think, but in fact version 4 . So, what is it about this all important Version 4 that so many people seem to hate? Think hard, and there's really only one big consensus among people - it isn't as easy to gain experience!

It may seem completely unlinked, why would a PC Pure be into Herblore anyway?, but there was a deeper connection between the two announcements on that fateful day. No, Jagex wasn't imagining it was 52 years earlier and Disneyland was opening. Actually, it wasn't really Jagex's fault at all. It was the fault of all those lazy 'valued customers' who can't be bothered to do anything that requires them to input any of their own effort.

As Paul once said, Jagex won't make changes for ' "rioting" spoilt little kiddies ', so I guess we're stuck with what exists for a while longer and have to sit with fingers crossed hoping that currently ruined skills will go where Longramble has never been before, and the great skills won't have a curse put upon them like so many of their unfortunate cousins.

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Bank of Doddsy: Not Open For Service - By: Doddsy1992

F2P, those words bring shivers down the spine of all members. The land of the mobbed trees and collapsing docks. This is the main opinion of F2P. The land of F2P will have at one time a great and fun experience to everyone at some point, I remember the first time I realised there was more to Runescape than Lumbridge. However, after 2 and ½ years of Runescape and a mere 90 days of Membership, F2P now means ‘hell' to me too.

My concern is not with macros (they are reportable and disappear quick enough), nor is it with the scammers or the over crowding. My only annoyance is that it seems that the Bank of Doddsy has opened, and no one told me! I have an average combat level, 82, but it seems that instead of seeing Audioworm (level-82) they see Phr33 St00f (level-82) . I may be a level 82 but that is not a necessary indication of wealth. I have gone through almost my entire Runescape career close to bankruptcy, yet the automatic assumption is that because my Runescape name is red then I must be rich! That is the first thing that drives me to renew my membership, for it just to be wasted.

The second factor that rises my blood's temperature is that wearing a slightly expensive piece of clothing seems to radiate ‘Charity Here'! I personally like to keep up a good appearance so I wear moderately priced robes that are quite desirable. However, as soon as I wander into the area of a bank I gain a small conga line. The plagues of ‘hey wizzy, free stuff plzzzzzzzz'; ‘i died, can i hav sum free stuf plz' or even ‘oi 82 can i have some money' infest oth my chat screen and my playing window. I help out as much as the other player but I feasibly cannot afford to help. I stick to the principal of telling them to learn to make their own money as I won't be here all the time to bail you out.

With the large contingency of F2Per's that have this approach F2P in general will never be able to shift this stereotype. Until these lower levelled players understand that higher leveled players are trying to enjoy the game as well and aren't willing to pour all their money to anyone who asks, F2P will be the scourge of high levels and members alike!

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