Wilderness Riot

The Wilderness Riot, "Second Pay to Pk Riot" or "June Riot", as it is called among some players, was a riot held on 4 June 2008 (5 June in some time zones). The aim of the riot was to express dissatisfaction with Jagex's decision to remove player-killing from the Wilderness and general unbalanced trade on 10 December 2007. It lasted throughout the whole day from the early hours of the morning until around 3:00 GMT the following morning.

Many consider the Wilderness Riot to be a continuation of the Pay to Pk Riot, a larger riot that occured in Falador on December 10th through 17th of 2007. The two riots were very similar in terms of subject matter and rioting methods.

Overview


The riot was planned several weeks beforehand. It was supposedly started by spam comments being posted on any RuneScape-related YouTube videos asking players to join the riot at Varrock Square in Worlds 1 and 2. Soon many other people join in the spamming.

The riot was continued on June 7th. The riot was still going on at 10:00 GMT, which shows a persistence in this riot meaning that it could go on for a long period of time.

Some of the comments advertised backup worlds however in the general chaos of the riots these were generally forgotten with the primary focus being worlds 1, 2, 3 and 4 although 1 was the central focus of the riots. Later on in the riot, the rioters started spreading to other places and worlds, occasionally saying "We want wildy back".

On the day itself, hundreds of players flocked together, spamming repeatedly and criticising Bounty Hunter and Revenants.

One of the most striking features of the riot was the huge numbers of spam 'trains' which consisted of many people following one 'leader' and repeatedly spamming using autotypers or attempting to spread the riot to places such as Camelot and Edgeville, but those attempts were, for the most part, unsuccessful, and the riot remained concentrated in Varrock Square. Furthermore, the boundaries of the riot seldom, if ever, extended beyond the Square itself; many players in the eastern and western banks were playing the game as normal.

Small groups of people spread to Camelot, Catherby and so on. There was a system update (bug fixes) at 12:23, however once the world came back online the riot resumed. Some clans even made long lines to riot in, some even having hundreds of people.

Throughout the course of the day in the affected members worlds several high-level mages cast tele-other spells on players to remote locations such as Waterbirth Island, such a large number of players were sent to these islands that mini copies of the riot ensued there.

On the day of the riot, a lot of people wore either blue or pink skirts. Pink skirts represented hatred of Jagex for the update almost six months prior. Blue skirts were pro-Jagex, blaming the autoers for the updates. The General store near the square always had a enormous stock of pink skirts, while very little blue skirts could be bought from it though. The upstairs of the General Store also served as a base camp for pro-Jagex supporters, putting blue skirts on the table and making suggestions on how to make the game better. However rioters would come up there from time to time and spam. On the third day of the riot, the camp was abandoned.

In World 3 at a certain time the rioting stopped, that was only because there were Player Mod's standing around and reporting people. In the end, after the Player Moderators went to check on other places, the riot started up again.

Groups of high level PKers went on Revenant hunting trips and killed many Revenants, however the lower level rioters were less fortunate when various Revenants killed many rioters in the low level Wilderness. There were many level 3 players in low level wilderness created especially just for the riot, but were killed by the level 6 giant rats. Also, low level Revenant goblins and imps came and killed off large numbers of those players. Because of that, and other Revenants hanging around low level wilderness, many players speculated that the Revenants were being controlled by Jagex and sent to kill off the rioters. Several other forays were made into the Wilderness but most ended when Revenants attacked the rioters.

Near the end of the day many switched to support Jagex though the riot was still going strong. Tensions were frayed and more swear words were coming out of both rioters and anti-rioters. Many anti rioters distributed blue skirts while neutral parties wore black to show their stance. On 6 June parties paraded around the circle in the center of Varrock chanting "Wildy Wildy" and using autotypers to spam.

A mass logout was planned at 24:00 GMT in an attempt to crash the World 1 Server. The logout had no real effect with very few people actually logging out of the worlds. This was possibly because of the time zone confusion, and the fact that people wouldn't want to be tricked into leaving the riot by logging out, Although a second logout was planned but it was mostly ignored when the time came.

Even on 7 June, 3 days after the event, the riots were still going on in World 1 (GMT, EST). Every now and then, there are players attempting to start the riot once again, although none of the attempts were successful.

Common phrases
As the rioting continued, many phrases where used as follows.

Pro-Jagex phrases (blue skirts)

 * "It's not their fault!"
 * "Rwt is abolished!"
 * "Blame the autoers!"
 * "Think of a solution to both the problems!"
 * "Help Jagex, Not hate them!"
 * "Jagex rulez!"
 * "Go Jagex"
 * "If it weren't for Jagex, we wouldn't be playing!"
 * "Jagex knows whats best, this will help!"

Anti-Jagex phrases (pink skirts)
(There was also some mod impersonation and adult content being shouted later on June 8th).
 * "We pay to play the way we want!"
 * "We want free trade!"
 * "Lets make Jagex hear us!
 * "Trading is ruined!"
 * "We want Wildy!"
 * "Faqex ruined RuneScape!"
 * "No wild no RuneScape!"
 * "We wanna merchant!"
 * "No PK no play!"
 * "We pay to PK!"
 * "We pay we say!"
 * "BH = BS!"
 * "Log out if you want wild!"(which might not be used much as it tricks people into logging off and not protesting)
 * "Welcome to ruinedscape!"
 * "We PK to play!"

Significance
The Wilderness Riot occurred just days before 10 June, which would mark the 6th month anniversary of the 10 December 2007 updates. This means even after 6 months, many players had failed to become accustomed to the removal of player killing in the Wilderness and free trade, despite the addition of in-game updates such as Bounty Hunter, Clan Wars, Fist of Guthix, and the Stronghold of Player Safety. Furthermore, Jagex had already stated that they will not remove the 10 December updates, as doing so would give real world traders another method to cheat, hence the players may eventually forget the updates, but it will probably take a long time to forget them, as they used to be a popular part of gameplay.