Submitted by Michael on 2013-02-21 18:51:52
Lack of Support for Old School RuneScape Could Benefit Botters and Gold Farmers
Old school servers are making a comeback in RuneScape, but there is a chance that it will not have the same robust anti-bot and anti-gold farming
system found in the normal servers. The reason: Quite anemic support for old school servers.
Jagex had previously asked RuneScape fans to vote for the return of old school servers, which run the 2007 version of the long-running mmorpg. The
number of votes cast will determine the level of resources Jagex will throw behind developing and maintaining the old school servers, including the
roll out anti-bot and anti-gold farming upgrades.
As of this writing,
there have only been 251,000 votes cast in
favor of old school servers. Jagex required 500,000 votes before guaranteeing the anti-bot and anti-gold farming upgrades.
With less than a week left before voting ends at 00:00 GMT on 1st March 2013, it seems unlikely that 500,000 votes will be reached. Jagex themselves
admitted that among the 2 million unique visitors who visited the old school servers poll page, just slightly more than 10% have thrown their votes.
Conditional upgrades
At 250.000 votes, Jagex promised that old
school servers “will receive basic maintenance for bug fixes and little improvements, with the possibility of integrating our modern anti-bot
technology over time, if it becomes necessary.”
The emphasis here is “if it becomes a necessity” which suggests that Jagex will only clamp down on gold farming and bot activities when things go
out of hand. Gold farmers and bot users could potentially take advantage of the situation before the big purge.
Not enough funds
Jagex is being financially realistic when it comes keeping order in the old school servers. Policing them from RuneScape gold farmers and bots cost
money. Since only a fraction of the RuneScape player base voted to keep and possibly pay membership for them, Jagex will have limited funds to spend
for this specific feature.
Anti-bot and anti-gold farming upgrades are a relative luxury. More important than these are the maintenance costs of keeping the servers running, as
well as the bug fixes that make the game fun, balanced and playable.
Additional protection
But gold farmers and bot runners should not celebrating just yet. Jagex mod Pips answered in the
most recent FAQ that the 2007 old school
servers will carry additional protection from what it had half a decade ago.
“We’ve started to add in our modern anti-bot technology into the 2007 game, so even the early access phase of Old School RuneScape will have some
additional protection beyond was what present back in the day,” he said.
“We will progressively add more of these elements over the next few weeks and months. Our stance of fighting aggressively against RWT and botters
remains the same for the Old School service too,” he added, insinuating that regardless of the votes cast, Jagex could still enforce its strict
anti-bot and anti-gold farming regime.
