The reason why I lost interest in RuneScape is because the game was going from a sort of of socialist economy, where you work and get paid for your work, into a more capitalist one where you spend a bunch of up-front money to make passive income. Eventually the amount of passive income you get just dwarfs playing the actual game and it's like "why bother?" All you do is log in, collect your Kingdom, then collect your Ships, Load up your machines, harvest your animals, do your daily and that's it. No gameplay. The most fun I had playing the game was actually earning progress in the game rather than having it handed to me, not roleplaying as a fucking landlord. It's kind of insidious how the game slowly turned into a lord simulator. I'm thinking of all the features which basically boil down to "You're the boss, make these people do work for you and you'll get free money/xp while you're away." How long until the MC becomes a slave owner?

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Every time I got curious about why such and old and janky seeming game remained popular and had such a startlingly high amount of players I would then look again and see the 2007scape civil war lines drawn again, with most people I see talking about it still :frothingfash: raging about a LGBT event that apparently caused the great schism. Maybe there were other reasons, but that's the one I keep seeing from the point of view of an outsider looking in. :nyet:

    • Omega_Haxors [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      OSRS actually advertises directly to fash communities which is why there's so many of them playing it.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I was assuming that I didn't have the whole story, but apparently what I was missing was worse than what I was seeing. :deeper-sadness:

        • Omega_Haxors [they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Oh man if you're in for a wild ride, check out the whole Mod Jed fiasco. Guy literally ran a runescape mafia and used his position of power to literally steal from people's accounts directly. Got away with it too. Despite being blatantly corrupt, nobody did anything to stop it. His updates are still in the game to this day, though a few of the worst ones were deleted due to issue with Venezuelan gold farmers.

          Shit, that's a story in itself as well. One of the areas Jed made (the Revenant Caves) was designed to be a gang-controlled area. It was run by Nazis for years, but literally the instant the Venezuelans organized a union and took control, they deleted it. Basically, OSRS has deep ties to the alt-right and I would be surprised if they weren't funding literal neo-Nazis.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            That sounds like the dev-level corruption in Eve Online, where the devs picked favorites for 0.0 territory wars in everything from "roleplaying events" that handed out unique blueprint originals that were basically licenses to print game currency, to resetting servers to reverse catastrophic losses to the devs' favorite players and alliances, and even building entire patch days around stopping tactics that were effective against the devs' favorites. Oh yeah, and evidence of said corruption got the whistleblower a permanent lifetime ban that was vigorously enforced.

            That said, while the Eve Online devs were Randroids from the start and didn't exactly hide it, the nazi gang stuff you mentioned with OSRS is disturbing yet I can't help wondering what else you knew about it.

            • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              even building entire patch days around stopping tactics that were effective against the devs’ favorites.

              Only tangentially related but this reminds me of the Dota TI '13 patch where they used a nerf bat to beat the heroes used by tournament winners Alliance into unplayability, team wouldn't win again after that.

            • Omega_Haxors [they/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              A lot of the information about OSRS drama is easily available on youtube. My favorite is the Rock Climbing boots situation where they changed the stats and price of an overpowered PVP item but instead of the existing Climbing Boots keeping the item ID of the now statless variety, they instead converted them into the new Rock Climbing boots which had the same stats but a much, MUCH higher price. Obviously this meant that PVPers suddenly had the value of their banks septuple overnight, and there was lots of talks of the devs being in on it. (buying the item in advance) This wasn't helped by the fact the gold economy exploded overnight with insane runaway inflation. Yeah, nothing going on there. 👀 Oh yeah, for context PK clans tend to lean heavily fash with most of them either gambling it or selling their gold for real life money. They of course go soft on white people who RWT often looking the other way but when someone from China or the third world does it? Instant banhammer.