Runescape Gold Selling and Cheat Ads
Warning rant to follow…
OK I just wanted to clarify a quick point before I get into the crust of this article. This site is in no way illegal or against Jagex rules, they just don’t like some of the advertising on it. Also, the sites you visit don’t in anyway endanger your Runescape account, only what you do in the game of Runescape can endanger your account.
OK a little over a month ago Jagex made a very controversial news announcement in there Runescape Bots and Real World Trading news item in which they said this:
Finally, we have noticed some 3rd party sites, which call themselves ‘fansites’, but then advertise black market trading sites. This will no longer be tolerated. By running such advertising these sites are directly supporting these gangs, and are thus causing the botting problems they then complain about! We don’t consider sites that encourage our players to break the rules and endanger their own users to be ‘fansites’. (i.e. They’re advertising things to their users, which, if the advertising works, will serve to get their users banned!) We consider them cheat sites, and they will be treated accordingly. True fans of the game don’t encourage cheating!
This brings us to the last point. HOW YOU CAN HELP! You can help us by:
1. Boycott any corrupt ‘fansites’ which advertise RuneScape gold for sale. There are plenty of genuine fansites out there who don’t support cheating in this way, and we fully support those sites. Use those ones instead. Also, don’t advertise, link to, or talk about any of these corrupt fansites. Obviously, if they stop supporting cheating, you can start using them again.
So when this was first announced there was a big commotion on a number of Runescape sites, there was even an article posted over at RuneHead, here and here, both of which I found reasonably interesting and with the first probably arguing the opposite of how I feel about the issue, on the side of - that sites should be doing everything they can to comply with Jagex’s wishes. Though the second article’s argument is a lot more congruent to my own.
Anyway, soon after the announcement of boycotting sites with Runescape gold selling I made a response to one of my staff member’s questions of what I was planning to do. The general premise of my statements revolved around the notion that this Runescape gold selling and real world trading coupled with the Runescape cheat ads is Jagex’s problem not the owner’s of Runescape related site’s problem and it’s a real low blow to push the blame onto Runescape fan site owners and not actively seek constructive resolutions to the core problem.
Whilst my sites were never made with the intention of making money, I’m definitely not adverse to selling moral advertising to the highest bidder, and unfortunately Jagex aren’t Offering Runescape Sites an Alternative Source of Income nor are they operating a Good Business Model for Runescape in my honest opinion, nor are they acknowledging that it was their own short coming which Created Runescape Fan Sites. Here is my comments to the staff members of the sites we run:
At this stage I’m just going to wait and let the dust settle - thus far I haven’t seen any change in the advertising that is on any of the major Runescape fansites, not to mention there are a significant percentage of free hosted Runescape sites, like InvisionFree forums, that don’t actually get a say in what sort of advertising is placed on their sites and I’m quietly confident the guys over at InvisionFree, and services life them, supplying the forums don’t give a rats about what Jagex thinks about Runescape gold ads or Runescape cheats.
So with that in mind I, at least for the time being, am willing to wait and see what happens in the greater Runescape community. Personally I don’t think anything is going to change.
I mean if you look at the other major Runescape fan sites like Tip it, Sals, Runescape Realm & Zybez etc, none of them have taken the bait, plus Jagex makes out like it is something we can just switch on and off - it isn’t, there are limits to what we are able to do in regards to Google Ads, and the people run these gold selling companies aren’t idiots, I mean how hard is it for them to make new ads to replace the old ones that we have blacklisted, or setup more FREE Google AdWords accounts.
Long story short, us fan site owners can’t stop this problem, but Jagex is asking us to “try” even though it will ultimately be a futile attempt costing fan site owners thousands without offering them Alternative Sources of Income. Now I personally think there are a number of avenues Jagex has either not considered or have chosen to not opt for that would result in a much more positive resolution to the situation - Solving the Runescape Gold Selling Problem.
So what have Jagex achieved out of all this commotion? I’d imagine not a lot other than further alienate Runescape fan site owners, but at least they are consistent - Jagex has always badmouthed fan sites! Jagex have never linked to a fan site, they have ALWAYS told people to avoid fan sites, and they have done everything possible to draw as many people away from fan sites, including making rules against people even talking about them in Runescape.
So forgive me if I don’t care much for Jagex’s approval, I mean it’s not like us fan site owners/users have ever got it.
Those were my thoughts a couple of weeks ago and for the most part they remain pretty much the same today. I think Jagex really needs to sit back and reassess the issue rather than trying the same old tactics that seems to have not only been ineffective, but has also resulted in Upward Trend of Buying Runescape Gold. Maybe it is time they looked at other alternatives to Solving the Runescape Gold Selling Problem.
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(11 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)
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June 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
The disadvantage of the gold sellers is not that they sell gold but that they take up so much trees, shops and in members.
In every tree in free to play worlds you have autoers, in magic shops all of the game in both f2p and p2p you see autoers buying death runes. You see autoers at flax field, autoers mining rune ess and hunting green dragons. I know some of these things aren’t obstructive in a direct way but the result of all these raw materials (logs, ores, flax etc.), will drop the price and is a disadvantage for everyone that also collected raw materials.
Runescape Haven » Blog Archive » Is Runescape Run By Gamers or Businessmen? Says:July 5th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
[…] but extremely questionable decisions from a business perspective and their recent statements about Runescape fan sites and the advertising on them is reflection of […]
John Says:July 29th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
My fellow Runescape players, Runescape hasn’t been the same as it once was. The rate of total people on the game are declining due to boredom because of hard work and labor to earn money and highly valuable items. They therefore have no other options but to consider begging other players for their possessions. There is a mass majority of these fellow players, and it continues to further rise. Due to the retirement of my account and years of playing since 2001, I have decided to help and try to fix this situation. Whether your a level 3-126 you may already know that rare and highly valuable items such as the Christmas party & santa hats, Easter eggs, and Halloween masks are now too expensive or almost impossible to grasp your hands on. In 2001 on the Christmas drop, I had gathered and collected 17 party hats which I did not realize in the time to come would be highly valued in the Runescape market. In these other past holiday events, I have collected 24 Easter eggs, 7 red, 4 blue, 12 green Halloween masks, and 13 santa hats. I kept my very valuable holiday items in the bank and only took them out for show. Not realizing this would only bring media attention from other players that barely had anything at all, I recieved a lot of begging for money. My main reply was “Go away noob.”, but I did not know it hurt their feelings. After many days of thought, I realized it wasn’t their fault because they were poor. I found out that runescape doesn’t provide many options to earn money fast.
Roos Says:August 10th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I honestly don’t see a problem a with money making in Runescape. I’ve been playing Runescape for around 2 months now and already have 186k in my bankaccount and almost 50k in my inventory.
VADIM Says:Simply by using the skills smartly and not selling 20 of the same items in one go. Or in a shop which already has an overload of the specific item.
Also I’m not fussy about picking up valuables of the ground which are dropped by monsters but not picked by the person fighting them because they are only concerned with their combatlevels.
And I honestly don’t know what to do with all that money, since I can make most of the stuff I need myself and only have to buy the things I can’t make yet or are only for members.
I think a lot of Runescape players are too lazy or too much focused on certain aspects of the game too realise how easy it actually is to make money. No way I’m going to pay real money for some k that I can get in half an hour of for example mining and smithing or jewelmaking. Don’t drop the gems given by the mysterious old man or monsters. Cut them, put them in some jewellery and make some easy money! (Although I won’t mind you keep on dropping them ;-))
August 20th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Well i don’t completely agree with Roos because, Runescape could make more money by selling the gold to Runescape members. Most of all, if people want to spend real money on Runescape gold its fine with me, its not like everyone will do it. And what Runescape staff says “real world item trading is forbidden” I myself like it the easy way out, just buy the mils. I bought like 30 mill for under 100 dollars which in my opinion is really great. While I was buying I asked for the company of their that sells the mil and a live person replied “jagex” i was shocked that jagex sells gold, while it says it doesn’t. Anyways, what do you think happens to those accounts that get banned?
Runescape staff or in other words Jagex takes all there valuable stuff and puts it on sale on a web. The people that say its wrong to buy mils I say just sit quietly and play your Runescape while you didn’t get hacked hey. Your just jealous because some people like me actually work to buy Runescape mils, while you are not, so i wouldn’t be talking.
For me Runescape is a cool online game I enjoy it much, but there is a thing or two that i don’t like about Runescape.
One is that its really long and annoying to level up on most of the skills, which people later think its boring and switch to games like FINAL FANTASY 11 ONLINE or WORLD OF WARCRAFT which is way easier to level up.
Two is that, why should Runescape / Jagex care if people buy mils or not, why don’t Runescape make a gold buying store to make even more profit?
Third, which really bugs me is that if you are a member there should be like and extra experience points gain (example: instead of 4 exp per hit per action RS/jagex should increase the EXP gain to like 6-8 EXP per hit/action since most of us are members which I would think since we are, would be a much better advantage than the non-members. It would also impress most of non-members and make them wanna buy a members status.
That’s just my two cents.
Roos Says:August 21st, 2007 at 4:23 am
But the problem that comes with being able to buy runescape gold is that it drives the prices up even further. If someone is selling a rare for an exorbitant high price that no one is able or willing to pay, the price will drop and you will be able to buy it more easily. Where as when people just buy the money they will pay whatever price is asked, thus keeping it high and the problem existent.
I do agree with what Vadim says about leveling up your skills. For some skills it is extremely difficult to ger a higher level, runecrafting/smithing etc, because you don’t get really more xp when making for example bodyrunes (which you hardly need and can find all over runescape) even though you need a much higher level to make them than airrunes, while when you catch a salmon you get more xp than for catching a trout. And this does make some aspects of the game annoying and boring. Something they should really look into.
But to stay on subject: I’d like to know what makes these rare’s so attractive that people are actually willing to spend their hard earned cash on rs gold just so to be able to buy them? What does an easteregg or partyhat or other rare add to the game?
After all, isn’t RS just about having fun and enjoying being able to make yet better equipment, catch bigger fish and defeat even more monstruous monsters? Or is it just about money? Like in the real world? And what then is the point of playing RS if you join the same ratrace there as in real life?
macros suck Says:August 25th, 2007 at 8:16 am
There is another way to stop the black markets, sue them and try to ban macros on runescape. They just want money for buying bad stuff but these macro programs will be extinct in the future of runescape.
vrunewise Says:August 27th, 2007 at 10:20 am
You can’t sue them as they don’t break any laws. Breaking Runescape rules does not mean breaking laws… I suspect that the only truly illegal activity they are involved to is not paying taxes from their profits.
Andjicaboo Says:October 22nd, 2007 at 8:38 am
Look man it dose, my mate were looking at prices on money buyin site enterd name
Increases In Buying, Selling and Hacking of Runescape Accounts - Runescape Haven Says:3 days l8ter i was banned 18th may 2007. -_-
March 11th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
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Runescape Says:April 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
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