The Tip.It Times


Issue 4599gp

Did Jagex Do The Right Thing?

Written by and edited by Tip.It

December 10th, 2007 for some marked the end of the golden age of RuneScape. However, it also was the mark of something else; the end of Jagex's age old policy of laissez faire. Laissez faire being the policy of allowing events to take their own course. From this point on, Jagex became the proactive company who would make game-alerting decisions for what they consider bettering RuneScape. But was it the right move? This happened over one and a half years ago, which is plenty of time to look back upon and judge if it was the right choice. At first, the major change to the PvP system came as a shocker for all. Spurring thousands of players to riot and rant. It was one of the biggest changes RuneScape has ever seen. However, Jagex felt it was for the better of RuneScape--in the long run that is. But was it?

Today, most do not even think twice about the way RuneScape was and accept the new way, or they have not experienced the old way and accept it as fact. So was Jagex right and the angry players of 2007 wrong? Not necessarily. Without free trade we could no longer loan our friends our whip or partyhat for the day. Nonetheless, Jagex does solve this with finally releasing the loan system. But wait! How were we supposed to share the wealth of that precious Dragon chain?! Again Jagex comes to our rescue and brings out the Coinshare system. Well good for you Jagex, but what about gifts?!? I for one only received and have given a gift in RuneScape once in my entire life. It just never seemed like something I was into, or for the matter of fact most of RuneScape was in to. Well what about pking!!*insert various riots here*! The main point of the removal of pking was to stop all forms of Real World Trading, so Jagex came up with Bounty Hunter. Many see this as a massive flop where RWT was very easily done in the F2P aspect of it. This led Jagex to close it and put their thinking caps on. Finally they come out with PvP, but one big fault was that they explained exactly how to 'farm' drops. This turned into a major problem which spurred many rants and fixes, making PvP seem like another Bounty Hunter. So Jagex is 3 and 1 in fixing things, that's good right? Not really. PvP was a major aspect of the game, which got bluntly taken and substituted with replacement after replacement, each time getting more complex. But I digress, because this is a touchy subject that a non-old school pker wouldn't be fit talking about.

Of course there were also good things that came about from this update. Most of the pre-2008 players remember this sight:

Not a pretty sight at all. What is it some may ask? It means yew logs at 150-200gp each. Something that most of today's skillers can't even imagine. At their lowest point sharks were 300gp each. This of course is great for the people in RuneScape involved in combat, but they aren't the only ones on RuneScape are they? The majority of the resource skills had been affected negatively for skillers before that update. Some may argue: they managed to survive back then on 200 per yew log or 300 per shark so why does it matter? We did not have the big items that we have today, nor did we have the inflation we have today. Items were cheaper due to the lower supply of GP in the economy. However, inflation is something entirely off the subject, so I digress once again.

I want everyone who played during those times to look back and see what you remember. Did it really affect you to the point where RuneScape was seemingly unplayable? Just like with every other update Jagex makes, there are some people who dislike it and swear RuneScape is over. The majority of RuneScape did not quit forever. In fact, only around 60k canceled their membership that following month, not all of which have stayed away from RuneScape. The majority of us go on with our goals and rarely look back at that day which many said would be the end of RuneScape entirely. Jagex stated that due to the RWTers and their ways to pay for membership (credit card fraud) would have landed major UK banks and credit card companies to quit conducting business with Jagex, causing them to have to shutdown entirely in a matter of months. Of course pking will never be the same, but that's not the only aspect of the game; for most pkers the current PvP system is a decent substitute. This seems to have ended like every other game-changing update Jagex has ever made; people got used to it and accepted it as the norm over time, and given the circumstances of this update a year seems like an appropriate time to get used to something. In the end, was all that fuss worth it?


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Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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