Why have parents when you can have Jagex?
I’m not going to needlessly attack Jagex for some of their recent actions against a forum moderator when they perm banned his account over a misinterpreted joke. However, I think that although a perm ban is a very harsh punishment, Jagex are really trying to do the best they can in the worst way possible. In order to understand why they’re so strict when it comes to warning/banning, you have to realise that they feel that since the majority of RS players are under 18, they have to protect them.
This sense of responsibility is annoying to everyone, frankly. We all know cases where the Jagex report readers have unfairly banned/blackmarked someone for something absolutely silly. I think that these guys maintain a zero-tolerance attitude to things like real-world item trading. Because of this, they do not “get” that some of the things that are reported are a joke. The reason why they’re pursuing real-world trading so scrupulously is that if they could potentially be held accountable for things like identity theft.
No, they can’t really be sued since it’s against their rules to do real world trading. But, it really hurts the game’s reputation if they let it seem like they’re not doing anything. This seems understandable from their point of view, but it’s outrageous to most of us. Jagex are not going beyond Runescape when it comes to addressing real-world trading. They do not push for legal action against sites who sell RS gold or sites which sell items for real life money. Instead, they go after their players because it’s easier for them.
They’re using the lazy method of getting something done and it’s negatively impacting people who only made the mistake of joking about something that probably shouldn’t have been joked about.
Tags: RS Community, Runescape |
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Hi Kristina,
I also agree that they’re lazy…
In fact, it’s got to the point where I personally am going to ask if I’ll get sued if I make my own “server” for RuneScape and charge for membership (as I could add new pieces to the map with software that I have), seeing as Jagex have not pressed charges on anyone else, I’m pretty sure I’ll go ahead with the idea, I’ve already calculated if I charge $2.50 per month (half price of RS) I’ll get many MANY more members with the modifications I’d do to RuneScape itself… Who knows, might even run the real RS out of business lol.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Agreed. From what I’ve seen about people getting banned, a large number of them didn’t even really do anything wrong. While they should be strict on some things, sometimes they should look closer to the reports and take some time to decide whether the report really does break the rules or not. If they don’t have time to read things over once or twice, then they should probably hire more staff.
And thanks for the comment
I do most of my articles a few days (in some occasions, hours) before the deadline (bad me, bad), so I find it interesting that people have a positive opinion on them.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I honestly don’t see why someone would report it if they knew he was just joking. You do know that those fancy little report buttons create an illusion of power and they can most certainly go over their head.
As for the gold farmers problem.. along with the other problems including macroers, Jagex just decides to look the other way. Rather than going after the cause as you said, they go after the player.
It’s all about the money… and not the customer. That’s why these new web 2.0 companies do so well. It’s all about the user, if your product/service isn’t good well they aren’t gonna come. So you have to make sure they stick around.
Honestly in the past few months with witnessing what Jagex is doing and other things like this in the real world I can say that I do not want to work in a large corporate company. I HATE bureaucratic shit.
Anyways maybe I need to write something on the blog…
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Well you can’t entirely blame Jagex. I’d put most of it on the fucker who sent in the report.
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:47 am
At least Alex 43 had the priveledge to be unmuted.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:43 pm
It would seem logical to cut the plant at the roots, would it not?
Gold farmers are usually members, people who buy gold are usually members, now it’s getting to the point where macroers are usually memebers (in certain aspects of the trade).
But if it gets Jagex money for each person who does it, why would they stop it from existing totally? That would be absurd to lose that much capital (to them) so they let the people pay the membership, ruin the game, then ban them only to be succeeded by two or three more malicious accounts in the place of the one they banned.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Many good points listed, but the main problem is in Jagex not going after each and every gold farmer site and threaten to shut them down (if Jagex had ever done that we would have heard wind of that by now). So they obviously aren’t going after it in the way they should.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I doubt Jagex can do anything legally against those sites. Unfortunately… They don’t break any laws, they only break rules of the game.
September 4th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
The legal side of it is pretty murky, Vaskor. These gold selling sites are violating the Terms of Service that Jagex requires each player to agree to. I don’t know if that gives them grounds for legal action (beyond account termination) or not. Either way, there has to be more that they can do.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I agree that current steps do not address the cause of the problem. But I don’t see many other options either. The only thing that would resolve it once and for all is Jagex starting to sell RS gold officially in game by themselves. There are good and bad sides to it, but I don’t think it would ruin the game as many fear it would.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Personally, I think JAGeX *does* have the power to shut down gold-selling sites; how would the site owners have the gold in the first place if they didn’t agree to the TOS?
Thinking about what you’ve said and my own opinions, I believe the absence of shutting down gold-selling sites is sort of a hybrid of laziness, them not wanting a lawsuit, and them having doubts of whether they have the legal right to threaten those sites.
If JAGeX really wanted to stop gold-selling, they would’ve stopped it a long time ago.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure Jagex cannot shut down the gold sites. Why? The TOS only extends as far as the game is concerned. Plus, since Jagex is basically an internet company, most of these companies are in foreign countries.
Further, the rules on the internet are fairly loose as is, and most prosecution for criminality on the internet is done by governments that have multinational resources…none of which Jagex have. The best way for Jagex to fix the problem is to tighten up their macroing codes algorithms. They could have some really sweet Mathematical formulas that calculated the probability that someone was macroing. Thus having a self reporting system that temp banned suspects. In fact…probably the best way for Jagex to control the problem is to have random “system updates” all the macros are kicked at that time…and they aren’t going to log themselves in. I’ve written a lot on the forums on this, there are a number of things they good do, but in the end they want the money, and that is why the macroers will always be there.