RuneScape:Wiki Post/Other stuff/Botting Community Protests as Honest Players Overrun RuneScape

RUNESCAPE.COM, the Internet - A group of representatives of the RuneScape macroing and gold farming community filed an informal protest today on the RuneScape official forums over concerns with the recent rise in legitimate RuneScape players.

The protest, spanning some twenty-six posts within its thread and composed in the Engrish commonly seen from Chinese gold farmers, made clear the macro community's widespread displeasure with the increasing number of honest players that are allegedly "swarming [their] rocks, trees, fishing spots, and chinchompas."

"It's unfair competition, pure and simple," a spokesperson for macroers named I0iIloio0il0 added in the protest thread. "Millions of bots work every day to provide pure essence, nature runes, food, logs, and hundreds of other staple goods to the RuneScape economy. Many of them work tirelessly 24/7 without a break. To see actual players come and steal millions of coins' worth of potential revenue is truly heartbreaking."

"These players... their methods are so inefficient. They actually take time to type out their messages by hand. Even a blind man can see the delay in their clicks as they physically move the mouse. It simply cannot be argued that the automatic means employed by our bots are not superior in every way."

For most of RuneScape's lifespan, the macroing community has been responsible for a vast majority of the game's lively trade. Raw materials gathered and processed by macros are exceedingly cheap due to the massive supply, and any macro who creates an account has a good chance of becoming strong, wealthy, and well-known if they work hard and keep at it.

"Our bots truly define RuneScape", I0iIloio0il0 added.

Legitimate players have always existed on RuneScape in some fashion, but for the first few years, their numbers were fairly small and it was quite easy for Jagex to detect their existence. Nowadays, however, their number has grown so massively that it's no longer feasible for Jagex to deal with them on an individual basis.

A number of updates have been introduced in the past in an effort to combat the problem. More recently, in early February of 2011, Jagex reinstated player-vs-player combat in the Wilderness, hoping that the player-hostile change would drive down the number of legitimate players in the game. However, critics are claiming that at best, there has been no discernible change in the number of honest players, going on to say that "there are even more of them than before. Jagex, why can't you get your head in the game and put a stop to this issue once and for all?"

Representatives of the RuneScape legitimate player base were unavailable for comment.

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 * By: AndorinKato

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