Squeal of Fortune

The Squeal of Fortune (also commonly known as the SoF) is a daily activity available to both members and free players, initially introduced on 28 February 2012. Free players get one spin a day while members get two spins a day. The introductory task system must be completed or turned off for the button of Yelps to appear. The Squeal of Fortune resets every midnight UTC. Rewards include armour, weapons, xp lamps, coins, and other items, some as illustrious as godswords. Lucky equipment is untradeable and will be destroyed if you die and choose not to keep hold of it. The "lucky" is determined by the item's rarity and not the value. Spins can also be bought by members for a fee.

When a player logs in, there is a small interface in the middle of the game screen; this can be moved to wherever the player wishes to keep it. Click on the button of Yelps, the host, on the left side of the interface, to begin the activity. Not all items are available in every draw; it appears that players get a selection of 13 items, which always consists of one super rare item, two rare items, four uncommon items and six common items. The selection of items changes from spin to spin, but logging out and back in results in no change.

The list of items is shown in a line of boxes at the bottom of the screen, with the current selected item's box glowing slightly. Click the big red button at the right of the screen to stop the wheel. When the glow stops moving, the player receives that item. Due to the nature of which the prize is calculated from, '''the time a player presses the button does not determine the loot gained. As soon as the button is pressed, the random loot has already been chosen.''' Because of this, players may choose to click the spin button twice and immediately end the spin animation instead of waiting.

Please note that the wheel graphic does not indicate the chance of the wheel stopping on a particular slot. The chance of obtaining a super-rare item is significantly less than the 1 in 13 chance the wheel suggests.

When a prize has been chosen, players then get the option to send the reward to their bank (items such as rune platebodies, etc.), inventory (for exp lamps) or money pouch (if a prize of coins) or to discard it. If the inventory is full and a lamp is won just exit the activity and deposit or drop items. Then resume the activity and claim your lamp.

When a rare or super-rare item is won, a message is broadcasted on the world the player is on (except for lamps). It displays the name of the player and the item won in a short one sentence dialogue under "News:"

Due to an initially unannounced update on 2 April 2012, Squeal of Fortune spins can be bought with JCoins, Jagex's microtransaction currency, and real-life money. This has caused controversy, as the update allows those with easy access to real world currencies advantages not allowed to those without such access. It is also possible to get more spins by collecting spin tickets, which are dropped by various monsters. The paid spins resulted in thousands of complaints in the forums.

Obtaining more spins
On 2 April 2012, there was a game update allowing a variety of ways to obtain more Squeal of Fortune spins. When one of these bonus spins, called spin tickets, are received, are put into your inventory and can be added to your total number of spins by simply clicking on them. The ways to obtain more spins are listed below.

''Note: when buying spins, it is important to remember that they expire in 6 months time. Spins that are obtained by other means do NOT expire.''

Monster drops - F2P and P2P
Monsters, excluding the ones in some minigames and Dungeoneering, have a rare chance of dropping a spin ticket that can be used for an extra spin.

Skilling activities - F2P and P2P
Spins also have a chance to be found while taking part in any type of skilling activity that gets you Shattered Heart strange rocks. This means that training any combat skill would not earn you spins in this way. If your inventory is full, the spin ticket will be automatically be redeemed for a spin, without replacing an inventory item, as a strange rock would do.

D&D reward spins - P2P
Spins can be awarded to a player through Distractions and Diversions. Each D&D will have a week at a time dedicated to offering one guaranteed spin, while the Troll Invasion will always award the player a spin since it's a monthly Distraction and Diversion.

Each week, out of the following D&Ds, doing the one that is listed in the Squeal of Fortune rewards screen will award that player an extra spin on the Squeal of Fortune:


 * The Circus; complete one of the events.


 * Evil Tree; chop, light or nurture an Evil Tree.


 * Shooting Star; mine any size star and gain experience.


 * Troll Invasion; start the event.

Buying spins
Spins can be bought in groups of 10, 20, 40, 100 or 200 spins, with a bonus 5 spins being given for buying 20, a bonus 35 spins for buying 40 spins, a bonus of 100 spins for buying 100 spins and a bonus 250 spins for buying 200 spins. Keep in mind that spins that are bought expire after 6 months. A maximum of $200 can be spent when buying spins.

The prices of spins are as follows:

Quests
As of an update on 24 April 2012, the completion of quests gives the player 2 spins for each. This does not apply for quests completed prior to the update.

Special events
The Mad May event that lasted for the whole May of 2012 gave an extra spin daily, during the whole month.

Rewards
This is a list of the possible rewards. Items marked with (m) are members items - they may not be claimed on free-to-play worlds, if you wish to claim them, you must subscribe.

XP lamps

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Note: The skill may be fixed, if you are free-to-play and recieve a lamp in a member skill, you will need to subscribe to claim the xp or you will have to discard it.

Cash prizes

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Cosmetic clothing (m)

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Pay-to-play

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Free-to-play

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Pay-to-play

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Free-to-play

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Runes

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Ammo

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Resources

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Gems

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Consumables

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Miscellaneous items

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Controversies
On 2 April, 2012, Jagex added the ability to buy Squeal of Fortune spins with real money. This caused several controversies. Players became enraged by this new update and started a riot in Falador, world 66. Mod William posted a thread on the forums about this new update on the Recent Game Updates article, and within a day this resulted in thousands of negative posts by furious players demanding a reverse update.

Real World Trading
Many players view the ability to buy spins as a form of Real world trading, because the spins have the potential to give very valuable and desirable rewards, or hundreds of thousands experience points. Jagex mods, such as Mod Moltare in Mod Mark's friends chat, have stated that buying wheel spins is different from buying gold or items from a third party, because the gold or items are not the third party's to sell but a first party's, Jagex. Thus buying spins is not a form of RWT. Many players, however, disagree, saying that overall negative effect on the game is still the same, and cite Jagex's own policies regarding real world trading. On 5th April, 2012, Jagex changed their explanation for the rule against Real World Trading to make room for selling spins and other future content.

Player Reactions
Despite RuneScape's long history of fighting against real world traders, some players believe that RuneScape may soon become insolvent as Jagex is seemingly rewriting their previous rules.

Within the first week of spin-selling, over fifteen thousand players voiced their objections to the "Wheel-World Trading", and the "Steal Your Fortune" on the update thread or one of the hundreds of other ones. To put this number in perspective, most update threads recieve only two to three thousand posts, most of which are positive or ambivalent. The fifteen thousand replies to the spin update are as good as entirely negative, with only one positive post in the first twenty pages. After one week of consistent player objections, Jagex locked the forum in which these objections were voiced, but opened a special Squeal of Fortune feedback thread later on.

Financial Security
If a member is paying by credit card, and the credit card information has been saved with Jagex, there originally was no identity verification between clicking the in-game "buy spins" button and confirming the transaction. This means that someone with unauthorized access to a RuneScape account could turn up to $200/day of the rightful owner's money into Squeal spins. Since there is no option to disable spin purchasing on an account, it is also possible for children whose parents pay for their RuneScape membership to spend their parents' money on Squeal spins without their knowledge. These issues have provoked accusations that Jagex is violating laws concerning customer data protection. Jagex has replied with reminders to keep your RuneScape login information secure.

Additionally, they changed their Terms and Conditions, effective 2nd April, 2012 to avoid lawsuits by adding a line in the Subscription section:

It should be noted that anybody whose account existed before the Terms were updated were not alerted of this change. However, in the Terms and Conditions it states Jagex does not need to do this, and users are responsible to check for changes:

In any case, if Squeal spins are bought by an unauthorised third party, the issuing bank of the debit or credit card, and other payment providers such as PayPal, have facilites available to reverse charges for disputed transactions. As of a patch note update, however, the security around buying spins has been "tightened".

Gambling
As RuneScape contains no age verification (except confirming that the user is at least 13 on signup), it is possible for children under the age of 18 to spend real money on the Squeal of Fortune.

Jagex has stated that since every spin on the Squeal wins an in-game item (even if only Cabbage or Fishing bait), and since there is no potential for real monetary return, the act of purchasing spins is not truly gambling. Many players maintain that such a low-value spin is functionally equivalent to a loss, and that a purchased Squeal spin therefore counts as gambling. Other players maintain that a loss is incurred when spins are purchased, and that with the hope for a rare item, the Squeal of Fortune becomes a form of lottery.

If a low-value spin is considered a loss, or if Squeal of Fortune is considered a lottery, then the act of selling spins would violate online gambling laws, and the act of selling spins without age verification would violate age restrictions on gambling in several countries.

Precedent
Many players have been concerned by the precedent that this sets for the future of RuneScape. These players maintain that once Jagex makes an update connected with selling items or experience for real world money, they will be more inclined in the future to make updates connected with real world trading, despite having promised in the past that microtransactions would never be added to RuneScape.

The former official Jagex policy on real world trading is as follows:

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape."

Trivia

 * The update was not included in the February 2012 Behind the Scenes; a similar event took place in February 2011 with the Wildywyrm.
 * The name is a play on words of the game show Wheel of Fortune.
 * When the update was released, an interactive wheel appeared on the RuneScape homepage.
 * All of the Squeal of Fortune "lucky" items are greyed out when compared to the real item, this is to distinguish between the two.
 * Following the release of the Squeal of Fortune, the items listed as "Lucky" were believed to be tradable and this caused quite a bit of panic amongst players who had already owned the original versions of the prizes. It has since been confirmed that the items are NOT tradable and do NOT degrade.
 * The icon does not appear in the Duel Arena, in Stealing Creation or within Daemonheim's floors, but it does appear on the exit balcony when you leave a dungeon. The icon does appear in Clan Citadels, however you cannot access the tab to Squeal of Fortune in the citadel.
 * It is possible to have two of the same rare items on the wheel at one time. (i.e. two Lucky Armadyl godswords in two different spots)
 * An odd thing can occur when closing the interface in which the Squeal of Fortune button stays in the top left corner and upon clicking it, you get the message: Nothing happens, as if something has gone wrong.
 * If a player's bank is full and you receive an item to be sent to the bank, a message will display over the Claim Item option saying, "Your bank doesn't have room for your prize at the moment."
 * All items found in the Rare section can be found in the Very Rare section as well with the exception of a Large XP lamp . Just as the Large lamp is the only item from the Rare section not able to be in the Very Rare section, the Huge XP lamp cannot be found in the Rare section.
 * You can't save up more then 13 spins unless you decide to buy them. If you reach 13 and get another spin, a message will say You have missed out on earning a Squeal of Fortune spin as your earned spins have reached the maximum allowed.
 * If a member tries to spin on a free world, they will get the message "As a member you are eligible for improved prizes, so please play Squeal of Fortune on a members' world instead."