Many of you will have heard about Duke Freedom. Particularly popular on RuneScape Community and Tip.it, he was a great player, who would always endeavour to help others. He has helped the entire RuneScape community in many ways, particularly in his expert market analysis. He was regarded as one of the richesnt players in RuneScape, or at least the player with the greatest net worth, with party hats and santas and halloween masks to his name, as well as a rather impressive skill total. He was also a Player Moderator, so not only was he helping those who play runescape, but those who make it.
A few months ago, Duke decided he'd risk his account and sell some of his money for real-life cash. He was caught, and banned, no ban appeals allowed. Hundreds of players Runescape-wide asked the question, Is this fair?
Hell no.
And there have been other cases of this, as well. People with impressive skill totals, millions of gp, party hats, santas, masks, christmas crackers, banned, because they jokingly said "noob" to a friend, or because they made a joke about ashes being worth 100k or something.
This banning has to stop. Now.
Im going to make an analogy. Its from a post i made in
this thread
Imagine a crowd of people moving along a roadway. This great crowd of people want to move out in different directions to the road is going, these different directions being them breaking the rules. There are two possible solutions to this problem.
Either, put great fires on either side of the road, and so all those who wander out will quickly be burnt to a crisp. Or, you can put shepherds on either side of the road, so that anyone found wandering off the path can be gently moved back onto the path.
Everyone wanders off the path at some time, risking the flames. Some dont get burnt by the flames, some do. No-one deserves the flames, really. They should be put back on the path.
With the chat censor, jagex have put some walls next to the path to try and stop people from breaking rule 1. But these are bad walls. They are walls that narrow the path and annoy the sh*t out of people, and people want to break out of them.
The solution is simple:
Dont ban anyone, ever. Yes, you heard me. Ever. (And remove the censor, too, except for racist comments)
Banning people makes Jagex look like idiots. Banning great players, who have helped so many people, or who have been working on their accounts for years. Its just not fair.
So what is the solution to this problem?
Each and every Runescape player has three basic rights within the game:
1. The ability to talk to other players of runescape.
2. The ability to trade with other players, because the prices in general stores suck.
3. The right to appear on the hiscores, so everyone can see how good they are as a runescape player.
These rights, however, can be removed to stop people from breaking the rules. 99% of macroers do it for the money. Remove their right to trade with other players, and *pop*, 99% of macroers are gone.
Lets have a look at each individual rule on its own.
1. Offensive Language - i dont mean the swearing. This is the internet, people are going to swear, get used to it. I mean racist remarks, or comments against one group of people or something. The solution to this one is simple. Mute them. Mute them, and they will never be able to make that racist remark ever again.
2. Item Scamming - The solution to this one is simple. Stop them from trading, and if necessary from talking as well.
3. Password Scamming - To be honest to be a victim of this one you have to be horribly gullible. But for those who do it, mute them.
4. Bug Abuse - This one is difficult to place, because of the different natures of the bugs. If its a bug that allows you to have lots of money, trade-block. Other bugs would have other rules.
5. Jagex Staff Impersonation - As with 3, to be a victim of this, you have to be an idiot. But mute the offender.
6. Account Sharing/Trading - I think with this one, those found doing it should be trade-blocked, and the accound itself that is being traded should be muted, trade-blocked, and removed from hiscores. With account sharing, you simply trade-block it.
7. Macroing - 99% of macroing is for the money, so, trade-block. The other 1% or so who actually do it for the levels, remove from hiscores.
8. Multiple Logging In - This was a difficult one to place, but I would say the simple solution is to do a triple-block (chat, trade, and hiscores) on the account with the lowest skill total.
9. Encouraging others to break rules - Mute. They will never be able to do it again with a mute.
10. False Representations - This one is the misuse of the report abuse or the customer service, and the simple answer is that if anyone does, stop them from using the customer service or the report abuse button.
11. Advertising - Mute. Simple.
12. Real World Item Trading - Trade-block for a couple of months should get the message accross. Im sure if Duke Freedom had been trade-blocked for a month, he would have learnt his lesson.
13. Asking for personal details - Mute. But people shouldnt give out the personal details anyway.
14. Misuse of official forums - Stop them using them, duh.
15. Advert Blocking - So many people block the ads from the F2P Game, and not just those ads, also any other ad, with Firefox's adblock, or a little Opera hack which can be seen
here. Who cares if they block the ads, they're annoying. The runescape ads might be better if they actually had some interest to the players. Put something up there about website hosting or whatever, and you might get a few hits. Put something up there about Girls who dont like science (yes, i have had that), and you're not.
So there we go. That is my solution to all the rules, if they are broken. Jagex seem to like banning people, and are making themselves look more and more stupid. Simply do these things, and it may solve all the problems.