Bots and Real World Trading

Jagex recently announced a severe crackdown on the runescape cheats that have blighted the game for a long time. The scale of cheating significantly increased and got to the point where Jagex had to act to maintain the integrity of runescape.

In total, 19035 accounts were banned last week for bot usage. This figure shows some of the extent that the cheats had on the game economy. It is unknown whether all the accounts banned were throwaway accounts that were used to harvest gold to sell online via cheat sites. This should act as a warning to any player who thinks they will gain an advantage by using a bot to train their account - Jagex have massively stepped up their bot hunting.

On top of the 19035 banned for using bots, Jagex banned an additional 2300 players who were buying runescape gold from cheat sites. These were actual players who had spent time training up their account and have now been permanently banned.

It is a shame that players had to buy runesape gold as their accounts are now useless - not only did they spend considerable amounts of money to acquire virtual wealth, but they had invested a lot of time over years to build up their characters. All of that time wasted because they wanted to try and gain an advantage.

Overall, it is good Jagex have started to clear out the cheats and have improved their mechanisms for bot detection. Hopefully players will now realise that they should not risk their accounts, either by using a bot or buying runescape gold. Jagex will eventually catch up with you and all the effort will have been wasted.

Jagex Blocks Your Password Scam

Runescape creators Jagex have updated the game today with the aim of helping prevent people from divulging their password ingame. It is against the rules to either tell someone else your password or to try and obtain the password of another player.

The update is a basic ingame protection against one of the longstanding runescape scams that almost every player will have come across at some point. The basic scam being that someone would walk around saying, "Jagex blocks your password" and then try to prove it by typing in asterisks as if it was blocking the password. This caused some people to try it out and they would foolishly type their password only to endanger their account.

Basic security from this update is aimed at eradicating this well known runescape password scam. However, Jagex have stated that it is only a basic check and that players should not attempt to try it out by typing their password ingame. It is a new security update and it may still leave player accounts vulnerable to other runescape scams. Although with the recent introduction of the wilderness ditch that was aimed at resolving the wilderness trade lure scam, Jagex seem to be tackling one scam after another.

If the current trend continues of eliminating one runescape scam per week, this time next year runescape may well be scam free. That is not saying that there are only 52 possible runescape scams, as there are numerous scams that are not well known and Jagex cannot effectively code all known scams out of the game. It is player education and awareness that needs raised in order to totally eliminate scams from runescape.

Overall, it is another step in the right direction by Jagex and along with educating people on their account safety, Jagex are making it harder for both scammers and players to become victims of scams in runescape.

Runescape Password Scams

Runescape password scams have been the bane of many players since Jagex first launched the game. It is something that all players should be aware of and is in fact part of jagex rules on the game, players should never reveal their password to anyone.

Recently I received an email from a player who had been scammed out of all their items. They contacted me through my main runescape help site instead of contacting Jagex directly. I do not always check my emails and as such it was a couple of days before I was able to get back to them and set them straight.

I will point this out - I am not a member of Jagex team and the role I have is simply running a runescape help site. I cannot access information on runescape player accounts and I cannot help players with any issues related to the game. Players who are a victim of any runescape scams should contact jagex via their main website - www.runescape.com

Anyway, back with the runescape password scam. This player had revealed their password to an ingame friend who later raided all the items in their bank. They obviously regretted giving out their password - but they had revealed it.

I feel sorry for people who get duped into revealing their runescape password, but there is nothing I can do and nothing that Jagex will do either. It is against their rules and they may end up banning both the person who revealed their password and the person who obtained it.

One of the easiest ways to avoid scams is to not reveal the information scammers are trying to extract. It will make it a lot easier for everyone concerned, players in general, me and Jagex. Runescape scams and scammers will continue to exist, but players should learn not to voluntarily give out helpful information to scammers.

Ebay delisting Virtual Items

The good news for runescape players is that the chances of them being scammed by users of paypal and ebay has reduced considerably as Ebay is actively delisting many virtual item trades.

The amount of virtual trades being listed will gradually drop off as more and more people are informed of the decision. This is also good news for Jagex and many other MMORPG game companies where they did not intend virtual currency or items to be traded for real life currency or items. It means the integrity of many MMORPG games can remain intact.

Ebay quoted legal complexities surrounding their decision. This is due to the intellectual property rights of virtual characters, currencies and items still belonging to most MMORPG companies such as Jagex. All runescape players agree that Jagex remain the owners of all characters, currency and items found in runescape when they sign up and therefore cannot effectively sell them or they are in violation of the agreement.

Legal complexities may have been the reason Ebay obliged to delist such trades, however, many players will have also been a victim of the fraudulent trades in the past. This will not appease them fully, but will prevent many future victims.

A notable exception is Second Life, where the Linden dollar is able to be traded in exchange for real USD. The signup process for this game is different to most other MMORPG's and therefore is able to be listed.

Player Security

Jagex have now started to proactively promote player security and awareness to help reduce the amount of scams that have plagued the game and seen many naive players carelessly give their password information to 'friends' they had only just met.

Players should always make sure they are fully aware of Jagex rules for playing RuneScape as sticking by those rules WILL reduce chances of you becoming a victim of a serial scammer or a chancer.

In any walk of life there is always the small print. In this instance, the small print appears to be the game rules whereby many players simply do not educate themselves and become aware of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. READ THE RULES, simple but effective if followed to prevent you compromising your computer security.

When a computer has its security compromised, it can have some serious knock-on affects that can cause a lot of further problems, especially if using a shared computer then it can give access to confidential files that can include credit card information, bank security details and so forth.

Runescape may only be a game, and it may only be kids looking to scam items from each other. However, the potential consequences of compromising your computer security can lead to all private information being sent to unknown sources.

Playing by the rules will severely reduce chances of you receiving a computer virus therefore reducing the overall risk of compromising your computer security.

My motto, play safe, stay safe.