Pay to PK Riot

The Pay to Pk Riot (also known as the World 66 Riot, the First Wilderness Riot, the End of RuneScape Riot, the Free Trade Riot, and the Falador Riot) was a riot that took place primarily in Falador square, World 66, in December 2007 as part of the Aftermath of the Bounty Hunter update. It began on December 10th and lasted for nearly a week, although it did pick up several times even until early January (some even consider the Wilderness Riot that began on June 4th of 2008 to be a continuation of it). It was mainly in response to the following updates:


 * Wilderness Changes, Bounty Hunter and Clan Wars!
 * Trade and Drop Changes
 * RuneScape vs Real-world Trading

World 66 is where the riots primarily occurred, although there were many other riots occurring at the same time or soon after, such as the Mod Hasmo Riot in World 18, the Unbalanced Trade Riot in World 1, and many smaller riots in other worlds. It should also be noted that the riot's name is somewhat misleading, and that many other subjects were brought up besides pking.

Background
During the later half of 2007, Jagex had been making many updates to control the macroing and real world trading problems. Updates such as the changes to the Party Room, Lootshare, the Grand Exchange, the assist system, the addition of new random events, and the changes at the Duel Arena had all been designed ultimately to stop macroers and real world traders, while at the same time giving players alternative methods of playing that were intended not to hinder gameplay. However, many players felt these updates did in fact hurt gameplay.

The tension had been growing, with an increasing anti-Jagex air beginning to surround the forums and game. Already there had been many rants and several riots, including the Duel Arena Riot. Some players were also inviting others to join. When the Behind the Scenes for December was released, some players feared that the removal of the Wilderness would occur, although these concerns were generally dismissed as unlikely. Tension was growing greatly between players. On December 10, Jagex released the updates listed above, prompting an unprecedented response from players.

The Riot
Many players had felt that the removal of unbalanced trades obliterated Merchanting as well as limited the extent of aid between friends, as well as activities such as law running, nature running, and training methods such as trading cooked for raw food. Others believed that this had severely handicapped Player-Killing, dueling, clans, and pure accounts; some were simply angry that they could no longer reliably transfer items between their accounts, although that was a violation of the Jagex rules to begin with. Players also criticized the upcoming addition Summoning, which some believed was being heavily advertised to divert players' attention from the updates. Still others were ranting about Jagex's recent anti-real world trading updates in general, such as the Grand Exchange, the changes to the shop system, the staking limit at the Duel Arena, and lootshare.

Riots of varying sizes started on many worlds and in many locations, Worlds 18, 66, and 69 being the most notable. Nearly everyone on the worlds were involved with the riot, and the servers were nearly always at the maximum capacity of 2,000 active players. The rioters covered a large area, including Falador square, the Party Room, the White Knights' Castle, both of the city's banks, and some of the forested area north of the city. There were also smaller but still significantly large riots in Varrock. Large amounts of miscellaneous items such as Shears, Hammers, and leather gloves were dropped on the ground, as well as Mithril seeds being planted. Cannons were set up, clockwork toys were released, origami balloons were set loose, magic spells were cast, guards were killed; these, along with a variety of other things, were used with the sole intent of adding to the chaos. Dropped items were often used to spell out phrases, the most common being "PK". Other, offensive symbols were used, which players stopped by picking up the items. Other players purposely killed themselves so that their gravestones would cover the area. Some players planted flowers around the stones, saying things such as "R.I.P Durial", citing the World 111 Glitch that occurred in Falador on June 6 and 7th of 2006. Large amounts of lag was caused due to the massive amount of players.

The most common sayings were: "We Pay, We Say"; "We Pay To Pk"; "No Kills No Bills"; "RuneScape is RuinedScape"; "R.I.P. RuneScape", "Save the wildy", and "R.I.P. RuneScape 1998 or 1999-2007". As in almost all previous riots, there was much spamming and use of the Retribution prayer. Many players used offensive language by using Unicode or symbols, mainly to insult Jagex. The player moderators in the area attempted to stop these rule-breakers with great difficulty, and many other player moderators decided to join the riot. There was much flaming of Andrew Gower and other Jagex moderators and those who attempted to break up the riot. Hundreds of players entered Mod Chihiro's clan chat, the majority of which insulted Jagex and rioted about the updates, although Mod Chihiro was not logged on at the time. The rioters would parade, it seemed, through Falador, to Varrock, and possibly Lumbridge. Much of RuneScape, including the Wilderness, was left abandoned to those not partaking in the riot.

There were also massive drop parties in the Falador Party Room, with items worth up to 23 million coins being dropped. Due to the large amount of players in the area, many players began selling items at the city's east bank. Players began to beg for the items of players that were quitting, and others attempted to purchase retired holiday items such as party hats for one to two million coins; far below the market value. The value of items were forced to be lower or higher.

People started to drop and buy pink skirts and pink gnome robes. These were known as "riot outfits" and some people began selling collections of the items calling them "full pink". Soon, nearly half of the players in the area were clothed with pink clothing, and many more were dropped, sold to the Falador General Store, and released in the Party Room.

There were also players shouting "Support jagex - read the diary" and "Support Jagex" to combat the rioters. "The diary" refers to the Development Diary, explaining Jagex's reasoning for the updates.

During the riot, the official RuneScape Forums were incredibly busy, with over 1700 people logged in. The rants forum alone reached over 1,500 active users and the recent updates forum reached over 400, although it is possible that many more were viewing the forums but not logged in. Many players were posting rants that were rule-breaking, involved ASCII art, spam, or a combination of all 3. This eventually prompted the Forum Moderators to post a sticky warning players that they will be banned if they break rules on the forums. In the News and Announcements forum, the threads concerning the wilderness changes and real world trading reached 2,000 posts fairly quickly. The sticky in the rants forum concerning the updates reached over 40 000 posts within the first two days, eventually being reset twice to prevent the thread from being overloaded. Meanwhile, the sticky in recent updates reached over 21,000 posts. The forums, unable to cope with the large amount of players, went offline multiple times throughout the day.



At 7:00 P.M. (EST), a mass-logout was staged in which players ran around telling others to log out at 7:00 and messaging their friends informing them, so their friends in turn would tell others. When 7:00 came, the participators logged out in massive amounts. The number of players online in World 89 alone dropped by between 200 and 300 players between 6:55 and 7:05. The overall number of players logged on during the riot was also significantly lower than usual, at least partially due to the reduced number of macroers and the number of membership cancellations.

On the evening of December 11, the riot calmed down, although a large amount of rioters still remained. When December 12 came, the riot became centralized in Falador once again, although it was considerably smaller. Many players, however, began to "buy blue and support jagex". Blue skirts began to appear on Jagex supporters in a fight against the pink-clad rioters. Soon the two sides began an all-out-flame war between each other, insulting each other's loyalties. The rioters also began to use other worlds, although the riot in these worlds never reached the scale of the one in world 66.

Players' anger was further fueled when Mod Stuart made a post on the forums stating that Jagex had no intention of bringing the old Wilderness back and merely wanted suggestions on how to improve the new updates so a better outcome than the one at the moment could be thought of.

On the 13th, some players began to wear white to protest the changes to merchanting, brown to "protest the protesters", and green to be neutral. On the 13th, Jagex announced that they had no intentions to reverse the changes. Their views within the update were quite different from when they announced the updates, leading some players to believe that Jagex was no longer trustworthy.

By the weekend of the 15th and 16th, the riot had all but died, with only a few dwindling players in the area. On the 17th, Jagex announced a number of changes they would be making to the recent updates.Although these were designed to resolve many of the issues, the majority of the ranters were not pleased with these, as they did not address many of the problems.

The riot picked up very briefly on January 2nd in response to removal of unbalanced trade, which Jagex had outlined in their previous posts. The riot was much smaller this time, largely due to Jagex's decision to keep the updates, as well as the large amount of potential protesters that had already quit. On January 3rd, the riot grew in size, but was still much smaller than in the riot's early days. The rants forum was more crowded than usual, with over 200 players logged on. The thread concerning the update in the news and announcements quickly reached 2,000 posts. By January 4th, the riot was over.

Although many consider this the riot's ending point, some believe the Wilderness Riot that began on June 4th of 2008 to be a continuation of the Pay to Pk Riot, as the two were very similar in content and rioting methods.

Aftermath
In the coming months, rants, small riots, and public displays were common, and when summoning was added, the riot and the updates it concerned were heavily discussed. Some felt its purpose was simply to take players' minds off the issues, whereas others felt it was Jagex's way of compromising.

For some time, the number of players online was reduced drastically, with peak hours rarely reaching 200,000 active players. Since then, this number has increased. However, the impact upon player numbers was considerable; Jagex reportedly lost 60,000 customers in the month following the updates. Though often overlooked by close to all, several thousand of the once paying members who had stopped paying were in fact macroers themselves, rather than legit players.

The Pay to Pk Riot is, to date, the longest riot in RuneScape history, having gone on for roughly 7 straight days, not including its brief revival on January 2nd through 4th. The updates the riot concerned remain amongst the most controversial in RuneScape's history, and continue to impact the game today. Future game aspects, such as Fist of Guthix, continue to be affected by the updates, and RuneScape's economy has changed dramatically since the changes. Areas that were once prominent also lost face, such as the Wilderness, Falador World 2, Seers' Village, and Edgeville. Even today, players can occasionally be seen starting small protests in key areas such as Bounty Hunter, or on the site of the original riot. Some believe it also had a significant impact on Jagex's funds, and attribute updates such as Gnomecopter Tours and increased summoning advertisment to this.

Today, many mark the updates as a turning point in RuneScape ' s history. Some believe it is a peak, the beginning of a cheat-free, more skill-oriented RuneScape. Others believe it is a point of decline, eliminating many of the multiplayer aspects that the game was built upon.

With the recent release of the PvP worlds, the all-combat wilderness that players wanted back has returned, abeit with lots more places for Pking considering even the non-wilderness areas were made into pking areas, this is believed to, in the long term, repair the gaps between JaGEx and it's players following the riot, and hopefully, re-increase the pre-riot P2P population.