Wilderness and Free Trade Vote

The Wilderness and Free Trade Vote was a series of polls created by Jagex in order to gauge the popularity of reverting the updates which removed the old style of player killing and instituted the trade limit. Jagex cited an increase in their ability to combat bots and account stealing as the reason behind the interest in reverting the updates.

Petition
The first step was a petition, opened for votes on 22 December, 2010. It was set up so that players who want the updates to be reverted had to provide their account name and place a "Yes" vote. There was no option to vote against reverting the updates, though Jagex stated that players can oppose by simply not voting. The poll was open to all RuneScape players and was set to close on 14 January 2011, though due to the overwhelming response of 1.4 million votes in under 24 hours, it was closed early on 24 December 2010, and the next step was opened up.

Reaction
The decision to remove the Wilderness and free trade is viewed as one of the most controversial updates to this day. Well over a million players who disagree with the removal of these features have already voted. When the poll was first revealed, so many players accessed the website that it caused server instability and website down-time.

There was also a spike in related discussion on the RuneScape Forums with many players debating the merits of both sides of the argument. Additionally, several gatherings in-game occurred with players discussing the change. In both cases, supporters of the revert became known as "Pink Skirt supporters", as is common for players supporting Jagex in controversial debates.

Immediately after the poll was unveiled, several hundred votes were being cast per second, however the rate at which votes were being cast quickly declined as the majority of players had already cast their vote. Within a few hours, the vote had reached 500,000, and only took 17 hours to reach the 1 million mark, at 12:54 GMT.

Criticism
Initially, the petition page had a footer mentioning the Guinness World Records. This led players to believe that the poll was not genuine and was only an attempt to set a world record for number of votes cast in a given time. There has even been a screenshot of a Jagex moderator post on the forums confirming this, however it was faked and no such post exists. A Jagex moderator stated that it was included for promotional purposes, and has been removed to avoid further confusion.

Many players also noted that, since there is no-publicly stated threshold of votes which would make this motion successful, no matter what the results of the poll, Jagex could decide to take whichever action they saw fit. A number of players took this as Jagex eschewing any commitment, regardless of how the community feels. Jagex had noted that even 1,000,000 votes would probably not be enough. However, this idea was disproved when Jagex later moved on to phase two, the referendum.

Perhaps the most widely criticized aspect of the poll is the inability to vote against reverting the changes. Critics argue that the system places disproportional burden on the supporters of the petition, since any person who doesn't vote has their vote counted as opposition, whether they truly oppose or not. For instance, someone who does not vote because they are neutral, or even because they did not know a vote was going on at all, will have their abstinence counted as an opposing vote.

Another criticism is the inability to vote for either the Wilderness or free trade. If a player chooses to vote for the petition, their vote is counted as support for both, when they may only support one. In some cases a player may feel forced to oppose both changes, despite strongly supporting one, because of strong opposition to the other.

Because the poll does not require an account's password, there is strong potential for abuse. Any player could place votes using their friends' names or the names of banned players, complete strangers, or players who have publicly stated their opposition to the proposed changes. Players also have the ability to vote numerous times, but not with the same username. Once a username is registered by the petition, it will no longer count as a vote if entered again.

The possibility of reintroducing the old wilderness concerned some players due to the fact that it could potentially interfere with quests which took place in the wilderness, such as Spirit of Summer and Defender of Varrock, as well as some activities which mandate trips to the wilderness, like Treasure Trails and All Fired Up. However in his clan chat, a Jagex moderator confirmed that were the old Wilderness to be restored, they would move certain elements out of the Wilderness to avoid them becoming too dangerous.

Concerns have also been raised about how free trade would impact features such as the Grand Exchange.

Referendum
On December 24, 2010, 3 days after the opening of the petition, Jagex made a referendum to rectify the issues of the first poll. The referendum, unlike the petition, requires logging in and has an option for "Yes", "No", or "Don't Mind". After voting, the results are shown.

To view the referendum result and cast your vote, click here.