Friday, October 28, 2011

Friday, October 21, 2011

Come back, n00b!

Do you  reminisce about the days when a player whose username consisted of several substitutions of English characters for numbers, in the "language" known as "1337," would pester you for stuff?  Do you miss the days when these players would eagerly type their unsolicited sob stories via private messaging or even public chat in the hope of earning your sympathy?  Do you recall fondly when seemingly an endless amount of people lost their stuff in the wilderness, and naturally, as the most experienced person on their friends list, they turned to you for financial aid?

All veteran players on RuneScape, even those who plead their innocence of committing the act firsthand, can distinctly recall a player recently engaged in the act of shooing a "n00b."  "N00b," or equivalently "noob," which technically refers to "A person who, regardless of experience, lacks the skill or [competence] to be competitive in a certain game" [2] is a derogatory term, despite its derivation from "newbie," which simply means "new player."  However, in RuneScape, and perhaps other games, this insult is overused.

Countless times, comments similar to "Go away, noob!" have been reiterated regardless of whether the player is requesting free items or money, or truly seeking advice in order to earn their own money independently.  Together with the inclusion of more higher level game content, the literal (and only) interpretation of these comments created a slow trickle of players who joined and shortly left.  This yielded to a mass exodus via the "snowball effect," effectively responsible for some of the unpleasant changes seen since Free Trade and the Wilderness were released. While song lyrics are hardly a repository for sound advice, they are often quite applicable (modulo a change of grammar), i.e. "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you got 'till it's gone" [1].

These noobs, the influx of fresh players into RuneScape, were the foundation under which the RuneScape economy was set upon.  By performing remedial tasks they generated raw resources, which other players could not be bothered to collect themselves because they sought fast experience in comparison with the monetary gain that harvesting raw materials yielded.  For example, consider rune essence, which is required to train the Runecrafting skill, known for being one of the slowest and most tedious to train (at least prior to the advent of new minigames, teleport tabs, and various other rewards).  To obtain a high level, a player may feasibly have used hundreds of thousands of essence that they bought from the Grand Exchange.

Of course, someone had to mine that essence, a repetitive task which consists of mining one "inventory," or 28 essence at a time, at a rate of an inventory a minute or so.  Formerly, when the price of essence was higher, this provided substantial income (scaled to the needs of a new player), hence providing a good balance.  But as these new players slowed ceased to exist, the price of essence crept up-or at least, that would have been the natural conclusion.  However, some people began to see a way to enrich themselves by creating automated scripts called "bots" to mine the rune essence while paying little or no attention to the game themselves, with the idea of selling the gold for real money to other players.

At first this idea may have seemed preposterous-why would people trade their real cash for virtual currency?  But apparently some new players weighed the calculation and must have found that spending an hour working, or a week of their allowance, to buy their way into the game was more desirable than grinding out money for hours.  Encouraged by the revenue, the companies botting set up even more automated scripts and advertised in all places where players congregated: Lumbridge, the Grand Exchange, Edgeville, etc.  As more and more people bought gold, the market was flooded with the supply of raw commodities and their price dropped through the snowball effect.  Not only did the price of gold in dollars drop (at least according to the advertisers' quoted prices), but earning the same amount of gold as a noob became impossible.  Earning 10M would require 20 or 30 hours of mining rune essence, or less than one hour of wages at minimum wage.  All of this was due to the absence of noobs.

At first, the higher level players enjoying soaring profits from crafting a glut of these materials into more valuable end products, such as nature runes for alching.  But before long bots were also set up for those methods, to earn more gold to sell to customers.  Now, when entering the game surrounded by advertisements to buy 10M for a relatively trivial amount of real money and no other apparent way to make money, new players quickly bifurcate into two groups: they quit or buy money.

The economic stability and future of the RuneSacpe economy may be uncertain, but there is one thing I will declare with certitude: I miss the noobs.

Note: Buying RuneScape gold or items for real money or any other service outside of RuneScape constitutes "Real World Trading" and is a breach of RuneScape's Terms and conditions.  It is strongly recommended that you do NOT engage in such transactions.

References

[1] "Big Yellow Taxi Lyrics."  lyrics007.com.  N.p., 3 June 2010. Web.  21 October, 2011.  <http://www.lyrics007.com/Counting%20Crows%20Lyrics/Big%20Yellow%20Taxi%20Lyrics.html>;
[2] "Urban Dictionary: n00b"  Runescape.com.  N.p., 2 December 2003.  Web.  21 October, 2011.  <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=n00b>;

Friday, October 14, 2011

To Forgive or Not To Forgive

After two years of closely following and reading the articles from the changing format of the list on the homepage of RuneScape, I thought I had (empirically) determined that the probability of Jagex expressing any emotion in the form of regret, or the notion that at anytime in the future they would, was comparable with the success rate of a new player attempting to solo the Corporal Beast with full mithril armor.  The spectacle of witnessing a player whose discouragement for voting RuneScape "best free-to-play game" via a YouTube video directly caused his fall from "grace"-the player lost Forum Moderator and Player Moderator privileges-only reinforced this belief [3,4].  Hence, witnessing the apology [2] recently published on RuneScape's homepage left me flabbergasted.

Naturally, one might be skeptical that I deem this as an "apology."  Indeed, a cursory glance at the title and first few paragraphs yields no new information, and may instead lead disgruntled players to dismiss it and stop reading.  Yet patience is a virtue, and ascertaining this conclusion required not only a close reading of the article, but time to consider its meaning.  Here I contribute my analysis.  An excerpt from the second paragraph is:

The Prodigal Son by Rembrandt van Rijn [5]
At the beginning of the year, when we brought Free Trade and the Wilderness back, we promised that we would couple that with programmes [sic] that would combat the inevitable botting that would result from that decision. [2]
As I have stated above, this is simply reiterating the content in January's article and is prone to encourage the stereotypically impatient player to feel more dejected and angry than before.  However, later in the article Jagex admits, "We recognise [sic] that we have not been the best at communicating what we are doing and that changes today."  This is corporate and professional (two unsurprising attributes), but most stunningly, indicative that Jagex has shown, or claims to be showing, remorse.  In other words, it is the closest in this situation from a company that one can expect to hear to "We're sorry and we're going to do better," regardless of its sincerity or lack thereof.

On the other hand, cynicism will always dictate that people invent (not necessarily illogical or unreasonable) explanations for Jagex's insincerity.  Indeed, in my experience, of the few players that did read the article (which, as a percentage of players seemed low, judging from asking my friends, who are not fresh newbies), most had a pessimistic attitude regarding the amount of change that would stem from these promised updates, and instead cited incentives such as earning votes for the Golden Joystick Awards, selling RuneFest tickets, and providing encouragement for players to renew their membership.


There is more of the article that merits discussion.  In addition to asking for the help of the players, Jagex also seems to strongly endorse a different sentiment by quoting an article from the fansite Rune Tips:

And finally, we would ask that you refrain from using bots or supporting gold farmers. If there is not a market, then bots will not exist. As was so eloquently put in a recent post on Tip.it “Standing up to Jagex [by voicing one’s opinion on the botting issue], one might argue, requires a certain amount of courage, but much more is required to stand up to one’s friends”. The player went on to say, “The community needs to stand up for itself by following the rules and shunning those who do not. Lacking customers, the websites that set up the bots will close, and the only botter will be the isolated real player. Ultimately, following the three pillars of the code of conduct that Jagex set up-“Honour,” “Respect,” and “Security” are a responsibility of the players and the community as much as they are of Jagex.” [2]

Some research yields that the recent post on Tip.it that it quotes above is presumably [1].  In any case, the thrust of the quoted portion of the article is twofold.  Firstly, it can be interpreted as a statement about supply and demand: if there were no demand for "botted" or "rwt'ed" gold (gold generated by companies that practice botting on many different accounts), then the supply would diminish, as these companies would no longer find this practice profitable.  Secondly, it implicitly claims that the majority of accounts who bot either have an affiliation with one of these companies or are not blissfully ignorant that they are violating the rules.  Although it could be argued that the former group is larger than the latter, in a sense it is irrelevant-whether players encourage botting or bot themselves has no effect on the economy.  Either way, excess raw materials flood the market and lower prices.  Jagex has reaffirmed that there is a finite amount they can do by themselves, by asking for our help [2].

The conclusion that I draw from [2] is that Jagex has admitted the flaws in its approach to dealing with bots, especially considering the promises it made with the reintroduction of free trade and the wilderness.  Cynically one can say that they are trying to "buy time" or merely generate more revenue from lost paid subscriptions.  Another point of view is that Jagex is asking for forgiveness and truly cares about improving their game.  Indeed, if one doubts the sincerity of this article, one could certainly say that they do not forgive Jagex.  Also up for debate is the efficacy of Jagex's plea for players not to bot, and almost an admission that by the players who make this rule-conscious decision to bot, they are fueling it and may be the only ones who can make a substantial contribution to resolving the problem-by stopping.

Due to the highly "emotive" nature of this issue [2], one would expect a bifurcation in reactions to this article, which I have detailed.  Some players weary of promises dismiss this as a marketing ploy, while others may give Jagex the benefit of the doubt and a second chance.  Each individual player will confront, perhaps subconsciously, the question I am about to propose.  I need not discuss the consequences of either outcome.  In addition to apologizing for the manner in which they have handled the botting situtation so far, Jagex has promised:

We are committed to ridding our game of bots. We are committed to providing a more open discussion with you about the real challenges that we face as a result of our efforts. We are committed to involving you more in this war so we can win this fight together.
Most importantly, we are committed to continuing our investment in evolving and making RuneScape a great game to play and an amazing community to be a part of.  [2]

Therefore, I ask you, the reader, regarding Jagex and its collective stance and actions on bots so far, to consider carefully the grave dilemma: to forgive or not to forgive?



Note: We attempted to contact the player "Jiblix" who was mentioned in this post and interviewed by Rune Tips [3], but our messages were not answered.

References:

[1] Arceus.  "A fresh perspective on bots."  Tip.It.  Rune Tips, 18 September 2011. Web.  14 October, 2011.  <http://www.tip.it/runescape/?times=679>
[2] Clough, Daniel.  "Update on our ongoing battle against bots."  Runescape.com.  Jagex, 11 October 2011.  Web.  14 October, 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/update-on-our-ongoing-battle-against-bots>
[3] Hamtaro.  "Interview with Jiblix."  Tip.It.  Rune Tips, 4 September 2011. Web.  14 October, 2011. <http://www.tip.it/runescape/?times=671>
[4] Jiblix. "Is this the good deal?"  Youtube.com.  LtdMods, 20 August 2011.  Web.  14 October, 2011.  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-U-vFzw-ic>
[5] van Rijn, Rembrandt.  The Prodigal Son.  1662.  The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.  Web.  14 October, 2011.