Ok, so WordPress.com has been a great host, but I’ve wanted an opportunity to carve out a better and more centralised web presence for a while.
So I’m now: http://philip.whiuk.com
Please update your bookmarks 
This blog will be deleted shortly after 16/1/2012.
Posted in Uncategorized
Been a busy 72 hours or so from my end and I’m now in a position where I feel I can discuss it all in a considered fashion.
On the 24th I attended, as a friend, the ex-mod Jiblix’s leaving party. Now quitting statements are one a dozen, but he’s been a friend for several years in a somewhat ad-hoc fashion. It also gave me a way to touch-base (to use an outlandishly American expression) with a few others and get a feel for the sentiment.
Normal things happened – I arrived late as per usual. Screenshots and a speech. Jiblix published a typically well written if slightly inflamatory video protesting the death of the bots (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsFExAw6ZjM&feature=channel_video_title)
So that all goes down without any appearances untoward and I log out (I think the context is important though).
Yesterday, Mod Baker messaged me on Twitter (Moe would point out here that I didn’t check my mentions until he poked me hard!). Yup he has a Twitter it turns out (I wasn’t following him at the time), it’s real enough to be considered for a response.
“baker011 @king_runite1 Just read your blog and am a little shocked at your comments and perceptions. Would love to talk more about it”
Someone read my blog?? Mod Baker011 read it? :O
That was my initial reaction and then I thought.. which post. Hopefully not the really really early lame ones. Well given that I’d reviewed his Q&A it was always going to be that. How he found me will be a future question – Googling himself probably as I’m third for: Mod Baker011 – not bad considering this is a tiny blog and the previous two are RuneScape itself.
Anyway, I did a scan through of all the comments I made, I’m a fairly long-handed writer (you have to be to get the points in context I feel), but there wasn’t anything I wasn’t prepared to defend. So RuneFest felt like a reasonable place to debate it.
At this point, I’d like to say my opinion of the guy had improved somewhat. I’m pretty sure Sunday isn’t one of his days in the office, so you get credit from me on that. If it is, well you’re a manager doing shifts and having done shifts I still give him the credit.
Moving to today, Baker responds that it sounds reasonable and advises me to summon him if necessary – I’m pretty sure I’ll spot him though 
Anyway, Baker was in the office today and made a post on the General Forum, to UNLOCK a thread asking him to resign and posting a very coherent response to both some of the thread’s points and mine. I’d not read the thread – nor would I have supported it – I don’t have or want any say in Jagex’s staffing decisions. Some of them are interesting or questionable, but I’d far rather debate policy than people. I’ve not seen barely any evidence that Jagex hires bad people, indeed everyone I’ve met (quite a few) have been pleasant, courteous and decent. So no, I draw the line there. Major kudos for this.
I’ll say now, if you want Jagex-bashing you ain’t gonna get it. There are still issues I’ll raise and questions to answer. But the tone has changed slightly. However, fair warning Mod Gregg Baker011, this is words and talk is cheap, we’ve seen a lot. You’re new, but Jagex and MMG aren’t. Many of the problems are really old and someone hired your predecessor. Some of it’s aimed above!
The format from last time seemed fairly reasonable so here we go again, round 2 
“I have seen a lot of comments of both support and concern for my first three months at Jagex. Thanks for those who realise that change does take time, that other priorities can come along and bump the deadline on projects and that I need to fully settle in and learn the “Jagex way” for some things before implementing wholesale changes. “
Hmm, I’d take bits and pieces from the Jagex way. Like I touched on last time, Jagex-staff an extraordinary ability to pick and answer only the tough questions. For example in a Forum-thread style Q&A they can be seen to pick easy questions (such as those totally irrelevant to what they do at Jagex) ignoring previously asked but tough questions. I’ve seen it in game and on the Forums. Look at where Jagex Mods respond. Look at the thread titles they respond to. If all they do is post the next number or word in a forum game, it’s not Management or Support. The CoverIT system only helps Jagex enforce this ability. The Mods that answer or atleast acknowledge the hard questions earn respect from the community.
Bots/lack of communication from CM around this
We work in a team that is part of a much bigger organisation. As such, we have to ensure our communications and our plans fall in line with the rest of the business. Jagex, as a company, is taking the botting situations very seriously – in my first three months here I have probably sat in over 30 hours worth of meetings discussing the situation, making people aware of our members feedback and suggesting ways to tackle the issue.
Jagex are very far on in implementing a new strategy for the bot situations and as such we are close to announcing what this entails. We have a few things planned right now and while I don’t want to be secretive, its still important that we retain a certain element of surprise when rolling out things. The last thing we want is for the companies providing the bots to be working on a workarounds before we even implement it – we need to stay one step ahead of them moving forward!
We are holding an Insider session on bots at RuneFest and I hope that shows our desire to really open the dialogue with you guys to try and tackle the problem. It really isn’t going to happen over night though as much as I would love it to but as a company we really are committed to finding a solution to this issue.
I wish I could say more, its not because I don’t want to, or because we don’t have any fixes/answers to the situations – it’s simply we need the time to deliver the fix. Every MMO out there suffers from bots, we are not unique in that regard, but we also need your help. If people didn’t buy the bots or they didn’t RWT then these companies wouldn’t even exist.
Again, I’d really love a name. Who heads the Anti-Macro and Anti-RWIT system. Are they under Community Management or Content or what? Is it MMG and then the individual ICU guys responsible. Community Management is taking the flak on this because we don’t even know the head of the ICU team.
Investigation in the Community Unit Team Leaders
Matthew P
Saunders H
Who do these guys report to? Simple question.
Regarding the new strategy, I’ll hold fire. I’ve heard rubbish and good stuff on this. FT/Wilderness removal – good from my perspective. WIPO decisions, generally a waste of time. Gold4RS -> Gold4Fun? Has that really done you any favours? RSBot -> PowerBot.
On the ‘suggesting ways to tackle the issue’. I’ll just let you on a little secret. Most of the playerbases suggestions are one or more of:
a) Duplicates of existing systems you use
b) Thrown out because it didn’t fix the problem
c) Ridiculously irritating to the point of removing the ‘game’ element
Now Jagex stated last time:
Andrew follows with, ”We looked at any number of different possible solutions. We’ve read independent studies and spoken with other people in the MMOG industry. Ultimately, the consensus is that the only way to remove the real-world trading market is to develop your game so you cannot make unbalanced trades.”
http://www.runescape.com/kbase/guid/diary06
Has the MMOG industry consensus changed or have new studies altered this. If not, you’re still fighting a war against people who can operate from any jurisdiction they like, who have more money than Jagex.
Macroing should be an easier fight (and the two ARE seperate) and it’s also a much smaller problem. Heck it barely self-funds.
Here you have advantages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Indus._LLC_v._Blizzard_Entm%27t,_Inc.
That’s the macro/bot lawsuit for the United States. It should easily enable you to follow suit and argue on similar grounds. RuneScape’s even actually better because it’s arguably more of a server based game than WoW.
But instead, GamerLaw reports it’s your IP protection that is screwing you around. You should win the case based on the Berne Convention, but seriously, it would have been summary judgement if you hadn’t messed it up.
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2010/09/setback-for-jagex-in-runescape-lawsuit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works
One final point. RuneScape is perhaps not unique, but you do have several things which increase it, which you may have to look at:
1) A lot of people play for PvP. Many of these don’t care about other skills but they train them to help them in PvP. So they pay for an account/skills for this. There might be a fix for this, but it’s controversial (tip: make a change to a non-combat skill, maybe 40 threads will be created, make a change to the stats of 1 item in combat and expect 200+ – they care, big time).
2) RuneScape takes a long time to max. A year in game and I’m not ‘max’ yet. Inevitably people see the top players and want to be there, without the time penalty. There is no real fix for this.
Ok, I’m done with botting and RWIT. It annoys the heck out of me. I was modded during the first Anti-Macro War and still hate the pests. I don’t really expect you to win either of them, because I’ve seen plenty of games die from them. But keep fighting and I’ll keep paying.
When I say this platform is old, I really mean it. Upgrading it isn’t an option – we need to roll out a completely different solution. The forums are not even powered by a database – it’s that old!
We are looking at how we best roll out a new solution – be that the clan forums or a 3rd party solution. Because of the current setup we cant roll out a 3rd party solution this year – it wouldn’t plug in to the rest of the website/game.
So we are looking at a shorter term solution and that is on-going. You have to realise that since this is a browser based game we are in the same queue as development for any implementations and fixes as essentially the same team is responsible for delivering a lot of the web facing solutions. There are some very important projects on-going right now (including bots) and as such we have to wait our turn.
Hmm, maybe seeing as you have one of the world’s biggest forums this is kinda hard. Sucks to be you here.
Wow. You don’t have a seperate website and game team? I guess your designers never saw: http://mmotidbits.com/2011/03/09/why-mmos-are-complicated/‘s diagrams huh? Seriously, you should split it ASAP, if only so you can get a faster turn-around time for new features. If this is the case I totally feel for you right now.
“So we are looking at a shorter term solution and that is on-going. “
Hmm, be careful. The Computer Scientist in me says the short term solution is a long term problem 
It’s not going to kill the forum-folk if it’s 18-24 months to the new one I expect. It’s causing you pain in Q&As sure, but in reality it’s not a huge deal to most people who use the forums.
On de-moddings,
we do offer warnings if the situation allows it
No evidence of this as far as I’ve seen, we lost Nas and Jiblix both without a warning so far as I know. Nothing else to say here. I can’t back it up completely because I’m loyal right now, but I’m willing to debate this one in person.
We are not expecting them to agree with everything we say or do, this is why we have private moderator forums – they can use this to vent/talk to us.
The problem is that we take flak in game and forums for this. It’s hard one I’ll agree. I spent about 20 minutes today defending ‘the value of P-Mods’ when we don’t mute dicers or doublers, are powerless against RWIT and can’t ban bots. I’ve got legitimate valid answers to them all and some I dicussed but it makes us look like puppets.
At the end of the day you’re problems are my problems, so we’ll get through it – hopefully before we lose all the Mods we have left
Jiblix complained about lack of action though, so we’ll have to see.
Moving on for now Rants (hopefully this isn’t one ), here’s the tail end of your argument:
Now yes I accept there were other options – we reviewed a lot of alternatives believe me! We could have hidden that forum from public view so that it didn’t get indexed for example. However, I really don’t believe in hiding any of our community behind closed doors. I want everyone to see what an amazing place this is and tempt them to get involved too!
Moving onto Marketing,
The problem is that they are getting annoyingly close to RWIT. When player suggestions are put forward, wild allegations are put out – do please explain how membership discounts for referring new members is fraud!, only I’m sure certain British gyms use it, not to mention other areas. Refer-A-Friend soon became known as Refer-a-Bot within certain circles and criticisms started (prior to your arrival) aimed at Bonus-XP-Weekend (BXPW) to be used towards newer projects. I accept you are new to it – that much is fairly obvious.
J-Mod Interaction!
This one concerns me a little that we are still not considered to be engaging enough with our members. I rolled out a short term strategy which basically saw me completely re-organise the team. For the first time ever we have 5 people dedicated to just living on the forums and engaging with you all. We also have other staff who use the forums on a regular basis too so we have so many people supposedly engaging with you each week. We do run regular reports to show how many posts we make each week, perhaps we could publish this on the forums too so that you see some transparency from us and also get a feel for how much time we do spend on here?
I’ve already covered this partially at the beginning as part of ‘the Jagex way’, however there are some points I’ll make.
Okay, so I promised someone a look at dicing. However, I’ve been reading alot of material and think that I can do better than just dicing. I’m going to cover the major factors and issues on an individual and collective basis for the RuneScape economy. I will provide examples, mathematics and economic examples for each issue.
Topics to cover:
). Anyone who is more familiar, feel free to comment and correct me.Posted in RuneScape
I promised this review and here it is. Fair warning, I’m not impressed.
Let’s get started with a quick summary. Someone pickpocketed an item from a J-Mod in Fist of the Guthix which enables J-Mod powers to be used on a character. The item is in Quick Chat and gives options like spawning items, teleporting anywhere and changing stats.
Wow. I mean seriously there is so much fail there. I’ll just list them first then explain in more detail at a later point.
1. J-Mods should not blindly follow players, especially into mini-games they shouldn’t be playing with players.
2. J-Mods should not routinely have this item on them.
3. J-Mods should never be pick-pocketable on server or client side.
4. Items should never be given such powers.
5. It should not be possible to use the item on the standard client.
6. It should not be possible to use the item on a non-mod account.
7. The item should loose all functions and info outside Jagex HQ.
8. No single system should enable access to all such systems.
9. Systems should prevent any use of the item, server-side
10. Systems should automatically ban any normal player in possession of items, server-side, with 0 warning.
11. There should be no disguise of this item to prevent claims of non-knowledge and J-Mod inattentiveness.
12. Players involved in leaking it should be banned forever on all Jagex games via all possible methods.
There is fallibility from almost every single team within Jagex for this.
Posted in RuneScape, Security, Software Development | Tags: fail, Security, system design
I thought I’d make a post to put some feedback down regarding my views on the Q&A by Mod Baker011. It’s not necessarily going to happen for future Q&As, just that I thought some bits were worth looking at, especially given the current situation. The format for the below is each question and answer, followed by an analysis.
However first, I’d like to talk about the new format. By using the CoverIT system, they enable increased access as well as anonymity (almost every question was from ‘Guest’ including mine). However, they also stopped people seeing valid questions that weren’t answered. Unlike the previous system where it was obvious they ignored questions, here it is only obvious to those who sent multiple questions and saw a later one answered (as I saw).
This turned it into something of a PR event. It also meant that to some extent it was about how you asked the question to reveal the information you wanted to know.
With that quite large disclaimer, here are the questions as they were answered, with my comments inline.
8:00
Comment From Aeroxmaster
Why do you and Steve have the same helms? I guess you work closely with each other too?
You said that you was gonna look at improving fansite support. Do you have any details you can release in regards to how you’ll be doing this? Is a new fansite recommendation thread gonna open up again? If so, when? If not, why not? Have you already checked through all of the names on the fansite recommendation thread yet or not? I also heard that you were looking at improving clan support. I asked Kathy a little about that, but she wasn’t able to give details out at the time. Are there any details, however minor/small, available now? Ah yes, you’re head of community management, so you’re in charge of who’s running Stellar Dawn, etc right? How helpful do you think this ‘big plan’ is gonna be? Is the absence of JMods gonna pay off in the long run for us? Do you think the community will eventually see it as ‘worth it’ in the end? Do you think your presence in the future will increase on the forums or not? As the Head of Community Management, could you get some answers about the state of FunOrb and what’s going to happen to it from Mod MMG and the BoD, and then respond with an answer, in the answer to this question please? (sorry for the long, complex question) Just relay some info if he can’t atm. Can we get more videos on the Jagex YT channel please? So not just the trailers, but some of the types of videos you previously used to release. I love ‘em!!!
8:00
Mod Stevew: Mod Baker011 is currently composing a response to the question above and his answer will appear in the chat flow shortly …
8:01
Mod Baker011: Will try and answer this one in stages, its a big one!
8:02
Mod Baker011: Steve was nice enough to show me the ropes when I first started and I instantly fell in love with his Torva, he then told me to go kill Nex and I was lucky enough to eventually get one!
Here’s an answer to a question that’s really not very useful. I doubt he actually killed Nex on his non-JMod account (proved later), so he’s making stuff up. Atleast he knows Nex drops Torva armour I guess.
8:03
Mod Baker011: Fansite support is something I am spending a lot of time on right now with the Fansite team. We have people dedicated to managing the relationship with all our fansites and seeing how we can better support them. We really are putting a big focus on this and I think people will see a fair bit coming out of RuneFest as a result.
RuneFest and fansites? Not really connected. “Focus” is a constant theme of this Q&A, he ‘focuses’ on a lot. Some obvious statements – anyone who knows anything about fansite supports knows they have a dedicated person – ‘seeing how we can better support them’ is code for ‘we know we don’t do enough here’. He can afford to be vague because the question (they picked) doesn’t ask for specific answers. This becomes another theme. They won’t answer questions on specific topics.
8:03
Mod Baker011: Our fansite team are constantly checking new fansites and looking to see if we can or should work with them, but as I am sure you can imagine its not a quick and easy process
I don’t. It’s fairly straightfoward and even their ‘detailed checks’ seem to fall short (see RuneVillage which was gold and then had to be removed following information about the site owner). Minecraft & WoW don’t mess around, they just add pretty much everyone and rank them by amount of use and information.
8:04
Mod Baker011: Clans are another focus, I love clans and everything they stand for and I have been working with Mod Timbo these last few weeks as we look to refine out strategy, support and competitions for clans. We have a lot of exciting stuff being worked on right now
Focus now again.
“exciting stuff being worked on right now” is normally code for “we’ll start developing more stuff I guess”.
“refine out strategy, support and competitions” means “we need to improve I guess”.
“I love clans and everything they stand for” – PR talk. He has to say this – but he doesn’t say he’s in one. Do you like merchant clans, doubler or dice clans? Probably not.
8:05
Mod Baker011: As for other games, its not that I dont want to answer anything about them, but I would rather keep the focus on RuneScape tonight as we have a lot of questions to get through. Thanks for your questions though
This is him dictating the terms of the Q&A. Yes he will get lots of questions but it’s not like they’ve ever done a Q&A for either of those. It means he can ignore lots of uncomfortable questions.
8:07
Comment From Spiker00
How come you guys have stopped recruiting PMods?
8:09
Mod Baker011: Hi Spiker, thanks for the question. We have put a hold on PMod recruitment until we have sorted out a new strategy, set of guidelines and really define how we best use them. We recently did a big clear out of very inactive PMods which resulted in the demodding of around 1200 accounts. Now we will look at how we can really utilise the PMods and support them going forward, once we have this nailed we will look into recruitment again.
“new strategy, guidelines and really define how we best use them” - Big changes for P-Mods perhaps in the future – but this is so open ended it could be very insubstantial.
“we will look at how we can really utilise the PMods and support them”. This means ‘we’ve not supported them enough since I’ve been head of CM’.
Credit however for answering the question (the answer has been given in various forms before however, so it’s not necessarily new info.
8:10
Comment From Guest
Has the role of player and forum moderators changed, are they still players first and moderators second?
8:12
Mod Baker011: Hi guest – love the name Our stance has not changed, we dont expect moderators to sacrifice their gaming experience to be a moderator. So yes, player first
Anonymity. So this Guest is probably a P-Mod who doesn’t want to give their name away for fear of identification by Jagex. Hence this Q&A is designed to answer P-Mod fears. But it’s not really useful because it doesn’t provide boundaries or detail.
8:15
Comment From RuneZone
Why did you remove the Rants forum?
8:15
Mod Stevew: Mod Baker011 is currently composing a response to the question above and his answer will appear in the chat flow shortly …
8:19
Mod Baker011: Hi RuneZone. I know that removing the rants forum was never going to be a popular decision within that community for obvious reasons. However, I still stand by it and say it was the right decision. When I first joined Jagex I did a search in a well known search engine for “RuneScape Community”. The second result was f**k you jagex. I clicked it and it took me through to the rants forum.
I then clicked up a level to check out the rants forum and why I saw some good content in there I also saw some not so good content. A new user searching out our community for the first time will be instantly switched off by discovering such things. I couldnt let that happen again.
I am in no way saying never speak negatively about Jagex, we want your feedback be it good or bad, but I honestly felt like there was better ways of putting across that feedback. We increased our feedback section to allow for more areas to be covered and given the visibility – it it’s constructuve it’s welcome, if it’s just plain abusive then it isn’t.
So, the removal of the Rants forum is a Head of CM decision. This decision overturns Mod MMG’s public statement to re-instate it, which overturned Geoff Iddison’s decision to remove it (probably for the same reason). Personally I think it’s a weak argument – they could prevent Google from indexing the forum, make it visible only to logged in players or many other forms of control. It’s not necessary to remove it. However, I can’t think of any other forum on the internet that has a dedicated place for criticism. They could have even improved the community management of the forum!
I would also disagree with “ increased our feedback section” – it’s not the case in my view.
8:20
Comment From jchaplin2
what is the next forum update planned?
8:20
Mod Stevew: Mod Baker011 is currently composing a response to the question above and his answer will appear in the chat flow shortly …
8:23
Mod Baker011: Hi jchaplin2, thats a great question. Right now the team and myself are looking at what we can really do for the forums over the next six months and what possible updates we can deliver. We are then taking these ideas and suggestions to the relevant teams within the company to get sign off. As I am sure you can imagine it takes a lot of work to develop new features so they have to be prioritised and then created, fitting in alongside game updates.
I would love to reveal what the next one will be but to be completely honest we dont know what that will be yet. We are hopefull it will be a very significant one but the last thing I want to do is promise something and not be able to deliver it. I can assure everyone though improving the forum solution is one of our top items on the todo list and we are working hard to make it happen.
This is the first of the ‘Forums are Rubbish’ Q&A’s. It should be obvious to him by the end of this that he has no choice but to urgently work on this.
“Right now the team and myself are looking at what we can really do for the forums over the next six months and what possible updates we can deliver.” – This is code for ‘We haven’t even started thinking about a forum upgrade’.
“As I am sure you can imagine it takes a lot of work to develop new features so they have to be prioritised and then created, fitting in alongside game updates. ” – No I don’t. Forum updates are website development, not game development. The ability to add bold text doesn’t interfere with the next quest. Minecraft has a better forum than RuneScape. Heck the free forums out there are a hundred times better. Every fansite has a better forum. It’s absurd. He’s trying to think of excuses here.
8:23
Comment From Mess up
Mod Baker011, are you coming to Runefest next month?
8:25
Mod Baker011: Hi Mess Up. I am certainly coming to RuneFest 2011 next month. We may even have a little something planned for all those coming! Who will be buying me a beer?
Not a useful question really. No surprise it was answered. But hopefully we get to put some more useful ones to him if he gets a beer.
8:27
Comment From Guest
What has been your biggest achievement since becoming Head of CM?
8:32
Mod Baker011: That is a fantastic question that is really making me think. We have managed to achieve a lot so far, completely changing the team, bringing in a new way of thinking, moving into the marketing team and so much more. For me personally, the biggest achievement would probably be the way we are better communicating with everyone internally at Jagex now.
This will ensure far more transparency, improved communication between the CM team and the other departments which directly impacts the community. It will also help us as we look to improve the feedback process too. Its all early stages now but we are heading in the right direction!
The first of my questions answered (as Guest ). Certainly not the first I wrote. I realised by this one, that the skill was about asking job interview-style generic questions that revealed far more about him than just the answer to the question and were open enough to force a long answer, without being vague.
What we learn is that he can’t point to a single solid success, that he doesn’t feel responsible for single big part of Jagex’s actual released updates since joining prior to June 2011. He’s had 3½ months and as Jagex’s most visible external department can’t point to anything specific. That’s a big deal to me.
You can always “bringing in a new way of thinking” and improve internal communications. Has that really made a big difference. When he’s contradicted MMG already by removing the Rants forum?
A big point is the statement that they are “moving into the marketing team”. They need to do A LOT more work before they consider this. There are opposing and contradictory viewpoints that this brings. CM is about bringing onboard critics (ranters and trolls) and working with them to develop a strategy going forward. Marketing is often about preaching a message that has been pre-determined, to the extent of ignoring those that disagree. The forums should not be a core part of PR. Advertising, communication and appearance are Marketting. Forums is Community Management.
“It will also help us as we look to improve the feedback process too.” – You mean part of your job is to improve response to player feedback and you are only now starting to look at this. Gosh!
8:33
Comment From Christyn
What is your view on the current relationship between Jagex and the community? I think a lot of players feel as though our concerns about the direction Jagex is moving are falling on deaf ears.
8:36
Mod Baker011: I think traditionally Jagex has had an interesting relationship with the Community, I know a lot of work has been done to improve this relationship previous to me being here but I also like to think the fact they brought me in shows how much they want to continue to improve it.
I do read the forums daily though and I do see the concerns people have/had about this. We could have done better, we can still do better. I guess what I am trying to say is that it’s something we are working on improving and it’s something we absolutely believe in doing. You are all entitled to your opinions and your say and its our job as a Community Team to ensure you are heard.
Because this point is so vague, it means he can ignore the specifics and simply say “we can improve”. Score 1 for Jagex question answering policy. There’s more on this later.
8:37
Comment From Anon
I’m particularly curious about the role of a forum moderator. Firstly, do you expect them to do moderating? Because from what I see, there is a huge lack of moderation across *all* the forums.
8:41
Mod Baker011: Hi “Anon”. I think it would be fair to say there is a certain level of expectation from us that they are involved in the community on a regular basis. That involvement can range from moderation to passing on user comments. I would hope that our team of moderators are around to help guide and shape the community and those found not to be doing that will not be with us for long.
We are looking at ways to better improve the guidelines they work to and the quality of service on offer. Again this isnt a quick fix and something we are rolling out over time.
I do have a great deal of respect for our moderators though. I for one appreciate the fact that they give up their free time to help look after the forums.
Here he has a fine line to walk, a fine line indeed. Jagex can not possibly seriously criticize their very small collection of forum moderators, because they (we) are volunteers and Jagex sustain and choose them. We don’t have a contract and there are limits to what Jagex can ask before we should get a wage. Note that Baker011 recognizes here the anonymity that the player gets. Are they some with a permanent forum mute and a grudge or someone trying to become an F-Mod. However he does state that there are conditions of modship – which is a movement from the past to be honest. If we have to do ‘X’ posts a week, thats not really volunteering, it’s a job.
8:44
Comment From Maturity
Can the General Forum Chat Lounge be stickied? It is used a ton and maxes avoid consistently
8:45
Mod Baker011: Hi Maturity. Sure, sounds like a fantastic idea to me. We will make that happen this week!
8:46
Mod Stevew: Glue applied to General Forum Chat Lounge
This is hillarious and crazy. “this week” shows just how long Baker allows for stuff to happen. Is it poor time-planning that screws over the community? Perhaps. Either way, SteveW serves to make Baker011 look like a fool.
8:46
Mod Baker011: Are you growling?
8:47
Mod Stevew: No boss.
*growls*
No real comment, except that t is the start of the decline of the Q&A, where Baker011 looses professionalism and forgets his audience who have serious questions. It also seriously undermines “we have a lot of questions to get through” – as true as that plainly is.
8:47
Comment From Matt
You said “of our top items on the todo list”. What is top of your todo list?
8:49
Mod Baker011: Hi Matt, my top 5:
1. Clan Support
2. Fansite Support
3. Forum Improvements
4. In game events
5. Social Media channels
Hmm, so who is responsible for the removal of macroing and RWIT. If it’s Community Management it should be on your top-5. Is the lack of action against macroing a result of lack of accountability within Jagex? Is ICU given unlimited resources with no oversight. ICU is a locked door in Jagex (I’ve seen it myself). Few go in or out. Who is allowed to point fingers about the lack of progess.
8:50
Comment From Brandon
In your opinion, what has Jagex, and more specifically, CM, done to create a better community for RuneScape? Also, what are certain aspects of the community that you think needs further improvement?
8:54
Mod Baker011: Hi Brandon. I think CM have done a fantastic job at creating regular in game events and competitions so far. I also think content like Clan Citadels and just Clans in general show how we are trying to make RuneScape a very social game too.
Where I feel we need to improve as a CM team is engagement, actually getting on the forums more and speaking with you guys. I also feel we need to rebuild the trust with you guys too, we have started and I hope you really start to see an improvement very soon.
The forums are becoming a major headache for Mod Baker011. Rants, lack of J-Mod interaction, lack of features. Or is he pandering to the audience. He knows it’ll be forum people on the Q&A. So maybe he’s just saying what they want to hear.
“we need to rebuild the trust” Who lost it? Your predecessor or you? Why? If it’s the marketing bits as many state, well, you’re responsible for them now. So really you’re fixing your own problems.
8:55
Comment From Reincarnated
Why do clan forums have quote and font options why the RSOF stays out of date?
9:00
Mod Baker011: Hi Reincarnated. I am not going to lie and I have stated this before, the RSOF are out of date. We really do recognise the need to bring them up to date. As you rightly point out, the clan forums have more functionality. I would love to just press a button and bring that functionality over to the RSOF forums but sadly it take s alot of development time, possibility of losing all posts/threads/post counts/etc so we need to really look into it and make an informed decision.
What I can promise is that we are looking into it, we have discussed using the same software as the clan forums use and many more options too. I hope that by the end of the year we have something better in place though – thats certainly what I am pushing hard for!
More pain on the forum feature set.
“ but sadly it take s alot of development time, possibility of losing all posts/threads/post counts/etc” I don’t believe this for a second. There is always a method of exporting content. The idea that they couldn’t (if they wanted to) shut the forums for a week with an announcement, export it to a MySQL database and use some standard forum software is absurd.
9:01
Comment From Leta
Will the Classic community ever be listened to or helped with the few things we need? You are head of community management, and we are most definitely a community.
9:05
Mod Baker011: Tomorrow we will be reopening RSC for a limited time which we are all very excited about! Also, we have classic forums which we have no intention of removing. The community there is important to us but sadly the game itself isnt supported anymore. I would love to hear ideas on how we could better support you though, help shape your community!
“Tomorrow we will be reopening RSC for a limited time which we are all very excited about!” – You’re making a very simple change, which has already been done atleast once before. It’s not a big deal.
“I would love to hear ideas on how we could better support you though, help shape your community” – Clearly they are being ignored or she wouldn’t have posted. So this becomes PR-speak for ‘So I don’t look bad, I’ll show I care and tell someone to look into tommorow’.
9:10
Mod Baker011: Sorry guys we are having a couple problems with our internet. Next question coming up soon
Ridiculous. The idea that a company like Jagex doesn’t have redundant office internet connections, and high quality support for it’s connection is crazy. It’s a classic, blame it on the internet while we find a question we are willing to answer – I don’t know this but I speculate it’s the case…
9:10
Comment From Christyn
Jagex says they welcome constructive player feedback. Currently the majority of the feedback expresses discontent in the marketing schemes and ploys. Is our feedback being taken into account?
9:13
Mod Baker011: Hi Christyn. We do go through all feedback and pass it on to the relevant teams. The question is a little vague though so I cant really answer it too deeply.
9:14
Mod Baker011: With regards to hearing your feedback, we may not respond to everything but we do read it. We have people on the forums at all times reading and passing on.
And here’s the second question on this stuff. They deliberately ignore specific questions and then say the vague questions are too vague. Absurd.
9:13
Comment From Maturitt is considered a high level player?
9:14
Mod Baker011: With regards to hearing your feedback, we may not respond to everything but we do read it. We have people on the forums at all times reading and passing on.
9:16
Mod Baker011: Hi Maturity, forums wise its level 99 in every skill. Unfortunately I am not allowed in there as I only have 10 woodcutting *sniff*
9:17
Mod Stevew: *Get 68 and I’ll introduce you to Ivy*
9:17
Mod Baker011: The Ivy is a lie!
Here’s the proof he’s never been to Nex. If his non-Mod account has 10 woodcutting there’s no way on Earth he’s able to go to Nex (not that Nex has a requirement for woodcutting, just that you’d never ever ignore a skill that much for the sake of this). And the joke isn’t funny.
I really don’t buy the ”we may not respond to everything” argument. They could easily have a template reply (and state it was a template) that showed it had been seen and passed for consideration.
9:18
Comment From endy star
Following on from your recent quick poll ‘where do you find out information?’ and the result showing only 5% of those to answer using Facebook do you think Jagex should make all future introducions on their own website?
9:21
Mod Baker011: The quick poll was an eye opener for us. We have used Social Media as a strong platform for us as the viral effect and audience is significant. However, I absolutely agree we should be using our forums and website more to exclusively showcase some of the amazing content we put out there. I will start working with Mod Stevew to ensure this happens more often!
This is really all code for ‘we need to work harder on social media – our advertising probably sucks if only 5% get it from Facebook’. “I will start working with Mod SteveW” shows he’s not really thought about it before the question was raised.
9:24
Comment From Wizzzlle
Is Jaqex going to make the rules on the forums more stricter. Warn less, take action more?
9:26
Mod Baker011: Hi Wizzzlle. We are actually looking at completely rewriting the rules for the forum. I have the latest draft in my inbox now and I have to approve it before the legal team cast their wise eyes over it.
We do want our moderators to feel empowered and comfortable to be able to deal with situations and a strong set of rules and guidelines will certainly help them make informed and balanced decisions. Will this result in less warnings? It’s hard to say when speaking so generally. Sometimes situations do call for just warnings – I dont want us banning everyone for stepping out of line, much rather treat you all as adults and give people a second chance where we can.
So basically no. With regard to the rules in his inbox, I will wait and see. But it just adds more to the ‘Forums are a major headache for Mod Baker011 position’.
9:29
Comment From Matt
Why Clan support? Clans have been the main focus of this year, and ingame events have drastically lost support.
9:32
Mod Baker011: Clans have definitely been a big focus for Jagex this last year and as a CM team its incredibly important we support it too. For me clans are one of the best ways to build strong communities as they are such a social experience. I want to find ways in which we can improve the clan experience for the community and develop on what is already a great success for us.
As for in game events, we have some big ones planned for the rest of the year. I would love to reveal them all now but I really cant – we need some surprises
Basically, no we won’t support in-game events more. Jagex like Clans because Citadels has become a unique selling point – no other game gives Battlefield or Clan Home-like content. It’s also a marketing opportunity – which he now cares more about.
“I really cant – we need some surprises” – I strongly suspect this means ‘People requested this… I’ll get someone to look at it’ – I doubt they had any planned before he wrote it.
9:32
Comment From Dark Moon X5
In your opinion, if there was to be any one forum update to come first, what would it be, also when do you expect the next forum update to take place?
9:34
Mod Baker011: Hi Dark Moon X5. Being really honest I couldnt narrow it down to just one feature. It needs a lot of updating and for me I would like to see some of the basic features put in place. I dont know an exact date for the next update but as I said earlier I am pushing for a significant improvement by the end of the year.
More ‘Forums suck’ comments. The lack of a single feature shows just how little work they’ve done on it to be honest. He doesn’t even have a top 5 or something (however I’d agree, they are so bad it’s difficult to know where to start).
9:35
Mod Baker011: Who brought the coffee Mod Stevew?
9:35
Mod Stevew: There was a fiver on your desk so I just used that – cool?
9:36
Mod Baker011: That was your leaving gift…
9:36
Mod Stevew: Right – so I owe you £4.99 then .. ?
9:36
Mod Baker011: Next question…
Proffesionalism – ever heard of this Jagex?
9:38
Comment From Cavi
Can you at least say something about the Dutch Community, where is our new J Mod ?
9:39
Mod Baker011: Hi Cavi. We are currently recruiting for a new Dutch JMod. This has not been an easy position for us to fill so far as I want to make sure we get the perfect person in for you guys. We are really close now though and I am hopeful of being able to announce a new member of our team really soon!
For reference, Mod Petal was fired and Mod Aiko left so far as I know. Given that they’ve closed the internationalized forums, I really think it’s probable people see it as a non-job. The pay Jagex give for the person they are looking for (a bilingual shift worker) is probably not exactly helping.
9:40
Comment From Dr Madly
Hi, do you have any plans of removing/introducing any forums?
9:41
Mod Baker011: Hi Dr Madly. We are constantly looking at our forums and seeing if we can remove, merge or even create new forums. I will put it back to you guys as well though, if you feel we should remove or add any then let us know in the relevant feedback area.
This should be written “No, would you like us to?”.
9:42
Comment From RuneZone
Love this system! As a Gold Fansite admin myself, the admin team are always wanting to do more in game to help support the community, are there any plans to allow trusted Fansite Admins to do so? See you at RuneFest!
9:43
Mod Baker011: Look forward to seeing you at RuneFest. I love the fact you guys are wanting to do more in game to help support the community. I would absolutely love to find ways to make it happen
Not much to say here, although I think giving Fansite Admins more powers in game/on the forum, is highly unlikely given the RuneVillage debacle (see: http://forum.runescape.com/forums.ws?254,255,119,63164459)
9:44
Comment From Maturity
So it has been leaked that J-Mods can spawn mosnters anywhere, could it be a possibility for J-Mods to spawn high level ones (no drops) for fun events? Would love to try and take down 5 Jads with a team of people!
9:46
Mod Baker011: Sounds like fun and it’s definitely something we are talking about right now. Stay tuned…..
This whole situation is a security joke. I’m going to cover it in a new blog post I think. His comment is really unsurprising, but “it’s definitely something we are talking about right now” simply refers to the fact that you asked the question, so he just talked to SteveW about it – no actual plans probably. Besides, they did J-Mod controlled Strykewyrms and it wasn’t a huge hit, despite the hype.
9:47
Comment From Cold
Is Jaqex thinking for 2000+ worlds for high level game content?
9:48
Mod Baker011: We have suggested this to the content team and they loved the idea. However, we cant promise anything!
It’s not difficult to set up – I suspect other departments probably think they wouldn’t get enough players. Personally I don’t see much attraction – the resource spots for skilling will be crowded because you’re all at similar levels. It might remove bots but i doubt it’s an issue on the 1500+ worlds either.
9:50
Comment From 1carrot
Do you have any plans for the suggestions forums? It seems to go un-noticed.
9:52
Mod Baker011: Hi 1carrot. We are definitely looking at ways to improve the feedback process in general and this has been a big priority so far. We are making some major changes internally with how suggestions are passed on and more importantly how feedback can be given to users on their idea(s). This is a work in progress though and I hope you will start to see this in action soon!
Suggestions is quite tough to manage, because Jagex will have ideas for months and months of future content. Simple fixes are probably the only ones they genuinely look at – quests will be unworkable 99% of the time. Other problems will exist for cool ideas like technical restrictions making it not worth the development time. So I expect ‘action’ when I see it here.
9:53
Comment From Julius
What has been the most difficult decision you had to make so far while at Jagex?
9:56
Mod Baker011: Hi Julius. Great question and a really tough one to answer! I have had to make a LOT of difficult decisions since joining Jagex.
I would probably say closing the Rants section. While I still absolutely believe it was the right thing to do I knew how unpopular it would be with that community and the reaction I would get. No one likes to be disliked but I have to think of the larger community when making decisions like that.
[Sarcasm: 'Where do I put my coffee? What time should I go for lunch? How do I get staff to work harder?] Rants was such a ridiculously obvious answer here, even if it isn’t true, given the previous questions. If this one had been first I’d believe him more.
9:56
Comment From Maturity
Can their be community Battle Fields, possibility created weekly/monthly by J-Mods for the enjoyment of the masses?
9:57
Mod Baker011: I love this idea. We have been trying to work out a good concept/idea around battlefields this week and I think this is absolutely the right direction to head in. Stay tuned…
It’s quite a bit of work to do this, in terms of man-hours and the number of players who are in clans that would use this. But if it happens, kudos.
9:58
Comment From Human Kitten
when will you be having another Q&A?
10:00
Mod Baker011: Hi Human Kitten. There are a lot of questions we didnt get through tonight and I honestly believe in listening to what you guys have to say. We do want to continue these Q&As and continue listening to you guys. We have something planned for RuneFest which we will announce later, but after that we can look to do another one
There were alot of questions which enabled you to not respond and yet get feedback RuneFest 2010 had a Q&A and it makes sense that 2011 has the same sort of thing. I’d be surprised if it’s more than that.
10:01
Comment From Anon
If there was a Runescape Movie, would you watch it, or would you play a part in it?
10:03
Mod Baker011: Sadly I think I have a face for radio only so I would have to watch it
Jagex love these useless questions.
10:03
Comment From Om nom nom
Is there anything planned for the “My profile” on the forums? Like a favorite threads list & threads posted by friends and such?
10:04
Mod Baker011: We would definitely love to do a lot more with the my profile section of the forums and as I said earlier we have put forward a list of ideas and suggestions (based on what you guys told us). We will have to wait and see which ones are going to be possible and when we can roll them out to you.
And finally, more forum pain and another example of Jagex’s forum being years out of date compared to Invision Power Board, phpBB, Simple Machines, vBulletin and many many others.
Overall Analysis
No real question shockers or answers. Obviously the forum dominated due to the environment the Q&A took place. From Mod Baker011, we saw some glaring weaknesses and examples of where some faults in Jagex might lie – indications of ICU independence, time-management hilarity, occasions of time-wasting and un-professionalism and continuation of the Jagex theme to avoid and ignore hard questions, to the point of using chat software that hides the ones ignored from the general public (which has been pointed out on RSOF here: http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/forums.ws?14,15,319,63200614,goto,2)
As stated earlier rotten potatoes and what it shows about Jagex’s well stated (but unproven) secure set-up will be documented in my next post.
Posted in Uncategorized
Recruit A Friend (RAF):
To the latest beast on the block! The RAF currently giving Jagex a bloody nose on the forums, the source of increasingly vile at Jagex, the evidence proffered that the community has been abandoned and ignored.
The interesting part about RAF is the lack of active Community Management defence of the topic. It’s clear that the Forum Mods were overwhelmed by the hostile reactions of the player base and it is surprising that no single J-Mod has been particularly active on the defence of the idea. With BXPW there were champions of the technique, such as Mod Fnord (with whom I disagreed professionally, but like on a personal basis). With RAF, it was launched by Mod Nexus (who is the standard person to launch updates) and has no figure head, no person who identifies and believe in it as strongly.
The existence of other events has worsened the situation for Jagex. Briefly I intend to highlight each:
“No one in the MMO space succeeds by standing still,” he said, “so you have to constantly refresh what you’re offering. At the same time, you have to be very careful about how you read into the feedback from your updates.”
Some people are just angry, Gerhard said. Customers will complain no matter what you do.
“We give people extra free content, some people complain that ‘oh you’re just trying to buy our loyalty’,” he said.
Speaking on stage at Edinburgh Interactive, Gerhard urged developers to listen to feedback but not make rash decisions from it. Hold out and see if your updates stick, he said.
“You’re always going to have trolls, but those who love your updates are completely silent. You have to measure all this feedback. Part of it is quantitative, part of it is qualitative, part of it is gut instinct.”
And it’s also important to get reactions out of the people who are quietly enjoying your game, he said.
“Create the forum threads, stimulate the debate, sometimes kick the hornets’ nest. Don’t just address the trolls.”
“What precautions will Jagex take to assure that nobody will be buying themselves XP bonuses?”
Mod Nexus: There’s no reason why you can’t refer yourself to create a pure or hybrid account. At some point you may want to subscribe with this account or swap ‘mains’ – if that’s in the first two weeks, or in a year’s time, that’s up to you.
“Isn’t selling XP just like selling GP? By giving players more XP, you are actually giving them GP (instead of using the GP to use on that skill, they can use it on other things).”
Mod Nexus: We looked carefully at the XP boosts. In a gathering skill, like woodcutting, you can get to level 30 at twice the speed, but you have fewer resources to show for it. The aim of this boost was to help your friend get up to speed in the skills and closer to your levels so you can enjoy the game together.
“I was led to believe that “real life financial status” shouldn’t affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape. Has this stance changed?”
Mod Nexus: Whilst we try to minimise any abuse, there will always be a few who are willing to pay extra for advantages. It remains to be seen how much XP players will actually gain in a 7 day period from this.
“What is your current stance on RWT and bots? Don’t you think that this scheme will help bot companies to be more effective?”
Mod Nexus: We are fully aware of the negative impact bots have and how they might use this system.
Double XP from level 1 to 30 means that you will get there a bit quicker, but have fewer resources as a result. In the grand scheme of things, level 30 doesn’t really take that long to achieve. We also looked very carefully at the referrer’s rewards and 10% for 7 days was deemed as acceptable.
The overall impressi0n is that Jagex doesn’t really care about the fact that it is ruining the low end game and devaluing the achievements.
The problem is that RuneScape isn’t WoW. It doesn’t have “end-game content”. Most players don’t “max out”. So whereas WoW can easily afford to this, Jagex really shouldn’t because it creates a trend that destablises the economy, the achievements of players and players goals. The impression I get personally is that they simply haven’t bothered to think about how it affects their game, it’s a case of “that game has it, lets do it”. And cookie-cutter idea pinching will do them no favours.
Overall, I think they need to take a look at the internal problems before they aggressively market it. I don’t want to invite a friend to a game full of bots. Nor does RAF really work. If F2P is a game not a demo, they will play the demo and then subscribe to the bonus pack if it’s tempting. RAF is the WoW model of going straight from not-playing to subscription game play.
They need to work on their product focus, address once and forever the purpose of F2P and fix major problems first. It’s simply not possible to continue to push RAF, BXPW and Loyalty out the door without engaging the community and stating the Jagex policy on these. To do otherwise is corporate suicide for Jagex I fear.
So another BXPW’s been announced, while Jagex tries to ignore the uproar (all 15300+ posts of it) regarding Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) or Recruit-A-Bot as it is being styled.
Instead of typing up a bunch about BXPW, I’ll copy my post which I wrote originally. Then I’ll tackle the RAF in the next and look at things to come.
Bonus Experience Weekend (BXPW):
There have been comments that it’s an insult to the F2P community which I struggle to agree with. I’m sure it’ll annoy them, but every change and new update which alters f2p prices will do the same. I don’t buy that argument.
The problem mainly is the contrasting views on how we play the game.
Those who are purely concerned with the destination and find the grinding of skills tedious and boring will, in an idealistic world, find the Bonus Exp Weekend to be the perfect salvation.
For those of us who judge the journey to be important, rather than merely the reward (i.e. the people who go past the level cap and the people who trained skills or planned to train skills prior to the skill capes – which I don’t personally rate, but that’s a whole other discussion), the Bonus Experience weekend is something of a travesty.
I really, really don’t like being told how and when to play. I spot penguins only in passing and do very few repeatable tasks. My farming was levelled primarily by experience lamps until the point where I could pay farmers and leave it for whenever I liked. The idea that one particular period is better for experience is alien to me. It’s a purely business decision. I don’t like features that aren’t RPG explained. I thought I was playing one. But no. Elves partnering with goblins in MA far beyond Arandar, people?
The third and crucial point is that it is ultimately pointless for the vast majority of players. By the time resources are out, the cost of gaining 10xp in herblore during the bonus experience weekend will be at least as high as during the normal game.
The reality is that Herblore and Summoning are either expensive or time-consuming, because the only way to level them is also, naturally the most efficient. In RuneScape there is a trade-off between experience, time and money. Gain more experience and it either takes longer (DIY) or more money (‘buying skills’). High experience actions are never good money (given the necessary requirements) for long.
The fourth point I wish to raise is why? Why are people training skills they don’t like? Is it the reward they get? Is it for quests? Is it for the satisfaction of having completed a now easier goal?
I train skills because I enjoy them.
I train the remaining few because there is content in them that makes those that I enjoy even more fun. The two I least enjoy training are currently: Dungeoneering – because, as I mentioned, organising time to Dungeoneer is not the way I play the game and second because soloing Dungeons is not particularly fun. I’d like to get that bonecrusher thing. But I realise that some people enjoy Dungeoneering and would be disappointed if it were made easier. So I don’t welcome a quick fix.
Runecrafting is in my opinion very warped. It’s a skill in which the only route is profitable but horribly slow. I am not looking forward to doing 173K pure essence (blood runes, best experience, Lunar is not faster in my view) for 4 levels. Yep that’s right 4 (87-91). I don’t expect or want a game-play fix here.
Quick-fixes that aren’t really fixes because they create further problems are an endemic problem of our society. It is my view that much of the issues with the game derive from quick fixes to quick fixes to a inital set of circumstances that could have been tweaked.
I’m sure many players would complain if the drops from all boss monsters were doubled in value. Imagine the furore. Godsword shards and dragon platebodies dropping two at a time.
You might say, well yeh, but that’s because it accentuates the ‘unfairness’ of the drop tables.
But that applies to the BXPW as well. Merchanters and lucky players are all far better primed to reap the benefits of this weekend by using fortuitous existing stock or buying more for low prices because they got deals in first.
The lack of pre-event analysis is also obvious. It is the surge of terrorbirds seen at Pikkupstix last time, rather than any calculations that change the boosts. The idea that any calculation went into the value choice is laughable – no offense but be honest here. Charms are just as difficult to obtain as herblore secondaries and yet Summoning has been cut to a merely annoying 10% boost. You can’t even buy large numbers of vials (granted you can make them, but I seriously doubt that hundreds of thousands of vials will be crafted). Has it been cut? Well no, they’ve not seen what it’ll do to the Herby highscores yet.
There’s probably something in that if you think that Bonus XP weekends make people sign up for members. I’m not so convinced. 3 days of increased experience, essentially 3 days extra membership squashed into the same period, from an economic stand point. If you make the business case, the idea would be they sign up for the weekend and realise other bits are fun – it’s a bit of a leader. But skills are obviously already quicker in members, we’ve got higher bosses, better monsters, more complexity, more stuff etc. So joining just to boost your experience I don’t think so.
In fact this is the problem. If it were simply a matter of making the game more attractive for people to join, then it’d be a much easier debate. We can come up with lots of mutually awesome suggestions for this. New monsters, new quests with voice acting, extra days of membership for people who have quit for ages, that kind of thing. The beauty of consumer societies is there’s a million and one carrots.
The problem is that it is an ideological argument. The J Mods who make the case are about the end game not the path, so they are harder to debate. At worst it then becomes a 0-gain for them, because at worst they pay the same gp per experience. At best they get closer to their stuff. So they actually believe that it’s a good thing. My argument is that due to market forces, their position is nearly always a 0-gain for the majority of players and that for the other segment it’s a major loss.
Secondly, the poll (as I feared) makes it much harder to debate the issue. The result was overwhelmingly positive. We can be pedants and quibble bits but it makes us look like trolls who can’t quit. But we should ignore the poll. Why? Content by Democracy is a failure. There are no community-produced games selling megabucks. Compromise breeds catastophe.
I can only hope Herblore hiscores change as I expect them too. Two skills nerfed would question the system itself, one skill alone can be questioned.
Posted in Uncategorized
So here’s another tale of facts and thoughts. The facts I know to be true beyond reasonable doubt, the thoughts are just my views and predictions:
On Andrew
He first started developing RuneScape Classic (to the extent that it is named RuneScape and the underlying engine has likely changed little) as a third-year project at Cambridge University. All third-year students are required to pick/select a project and this was his. Ian Gower did a project on a ‘rag-doll simulator’. (Paul’s project is MIA, either he didn’t do Computer Science or didn’t do it at Cambridge University).
Whether a project on “A physically distributed virtual environment” was Andrew’s completely original idea is unknown. It employs a customized networking stack and shows great concern for the data transfer rate (understandable given the speeds at the time). The original project includes the beginnings of RuneScript, login, chopping down trees and chat (it doesn’t include skills etc). However he clearly was interested in Role-Playing Games at this point as he was a D&D club member.
He is no longer on the board of Directors per the following image: http://www.stellardawnmedia.com/10939.png
For Andrew therefore, one has to ask the following. Is this just a CS project that he feels he has now finished. Is the lack of a Board of Director role (and majority ownership of the company) going to shortly result in him moving on from Jagex? As Mark Gerhard states, a founder stepping down from CEO to be more hands-on is rare. But a founder with no longer any stake in how the business is run still working there… that’s unheard of.
Now we hear he’s jumped to Fen Research. To me he doesn’t like management or PR (he admitted the later once) and this is him leaving both. No more players to serve and bow to, just games. RuneScape was a nice project but that’s just one project. It gave him a good grounding and toolset as well as financial stability.
A games research company of course is unheard of as well. What exactly is it researching? Voxel-pixel rendering? AI? Because there aren’t many and normally there’s a product focus. In someways it’s the anti-parallel to a start-up – we know we don’t want to do an actual game but we have lots of cash..
So where does this leave Jagex and RuneScape. It’s a company bereft of a founder who was supposedly dealing with Stellar Dawn which is rapidly becoming Jagex’s Duke Nukem Forever with a Beta site going nowhere and hiring replacement staff regularly.
Meanwhile RuneScape continues to use Andrew’s IP which is being pushed to the limit by absurd applet based restrictions and the decline of the applet development model, as it attempts to maintain playable graphics beyond that of Minecraft as well as adding content; while fighting bots which exploit a codebase that’s fully reverse engineered due to the longevity of the game and the experience of it’s initial developers at the time.
FunOrb is dead with no updates since last year. Transformers is sucking out staff for an industry pressured artificial launch date for a game that has consistency to no previous format thus universally pissing off all prospective fans. WoL is the mistranslated copy of an inferior game in a crowded market. 8Realns an artificially limited HTML game which fails to exploit features now even on most smartphones.
Jagex can best hope that RuneScape lasts another 5 years (true to the expectations of Iddison) and that kids tale up Transformers and Herotopia.
They should: launch all current games; remove FunOrb, licensing any decent concepts to MiniClip; develop RS3 to launch in parallel on all platforms with a reworked secure codebase and take advantage of the Android Market which will, by that point, run about 1/3 of all the phones on the planet at a guess
That’s my view.
While Jagex says: “a player who bots is not necessarily a cheater”, I have little confidence in their commitment. I need to find a resource with the cases from the US Copyrights and Patents Office – hopefully Jagex have learnt a lesson….
A company can also be roughly determined on it’s commitment by it’s headcount. It is ICU that attack bots and RWIT. Player Support do the rest of the rules (more or less).
ICU Team:
Anna B, Ben H
Ben W, Christopher S
John B, Michael H
Murray L, Nadia Z
Richard G, Scott T
Simon G, Steve A
Stuart F
Total: 13
That’s quite a few more than it used to be. But:
Player Support Representatives
Alexander C, Alexander L, Andrew D, Andrew S,
Ben C, Brian P, Calum W, Carl B,
Chris M, Chris T, Christopher R, Dan M
Dan M, Daniel H, Darren O, David W
Dhran E, Frances McC, Fraser P, Hugh A
Ikram A, James A, James M, James S,
Jane R, Jermaine D-T, Joe B, Juliet T,
Kevin B, Kristina S, Lee B, Liam G
Mairi W, Michael T, Mike F, Nabil H,
Nicholas P, Olivia B, Paul R, Piers M,
Rachael B, Richard D, Robert M, Robert M,
Ronnie L, Ross B, Samantha G, Samuel M,
Samuel W, Stuart C, Thomas W, Tom M,
William M, Zoe D,
Total: 54
So, there’s 4 times more people in the rest of the rules than Fighting Macro’s and Bots. That seems off-balance to me. By the way, just looking at this makes me think: Jagex is altering the rules and censor so they NEED less people in Player Support so they can be moved to ICU.
For reference, there’s now more people in ICU than true Content Developers (there’s a few odd-job Content roles though [there's one guy just for balancing content - worth knowing when new content is released ]).
Posted in Uncategorized
Reviving this storage of wisdom, I thought I’d make a post on the structure of Jagex and roles of people in it, some thoughts on recent updates and developments and so on. It’s fair to point out that Jagex has an unusual structure compared to many companies, and that an individual player might not realise exactly the layout and so on.
Firstly it’s worth pointing out for the record, that yes Jagex is the name of the company. RuneScape is the name of their game, not the name of the company.
Because the structure is not exactly completely straight-forward, here’s a few departments as well as people and their portfolios:
Player Support
Bans/Mutes and Appeals (Except Macroing). Works with Community Management and ICU.
Investigations in the Community Unit (ICU)
Macroing, Real World Trading, Account Sharing. Works with Legal, Player Support and Community Management.
Community Management
Community Events, Clan Events, High Level Forums, Player and Forum Moderators, Fansites and Social Networking. Works with Player Support and ICU.
RuneScape Content
Designing and balancing of content such as quests, skills and mini-games. Works primarily with Tools and RS Graphics.
RuneScape Graphics
Improvements and creation of graphics (2D concept art, 2D interfaces and 3D content). Works with Content and Tools.
Tools
Cross-game engine-design (Work to support new content and graphics for RuneScape and Stellar Dawn – potientially Transformers MMO as well.). Works with Content and Graphics teams for all Jagex products.
Quality Assurance (QA)
Testing new and existing content to find bugs, checking reported bugs and prioritising them for Content developers/Tools to fix. Works with Graphics, Tools and Content.
Business Development
Marketing, advertising and promotional work. Works with Creative Services and Community Management
Creative Services
Cut-Scenes and other work both in-game and out-of-game for promotional and content development work. Works with Business Development and Content.
Mark Gerhard (Mod MMG)
Job Title: CEO
Role:
Managing the commercial and corporate development of Jagex. Establishes aims for the company and directs company resources to meet the aims. Answerable to shareholders and other stakeholders.
Personal History:
Previous employment includes various technical management roles at companies such as GTECH (National Lottery security), merchant banks and IT solutions.
Jagex History:
Arrived as Chief Technical Officer and was in the role during Geoff Iddison’s time at Jagex.
Andrew Gower (Andrew)
Job Title: Lead Developer and Co-Founder
Role:
As Lead Developer, is the most experienced technical development person at Jagex. Develops and assists in the development along with other employees across the company, but primarily in the Tools team.
As Founder, created the company and therefore owned for considerable period, a stake in the company. Current position with regards Board of Directors as founder unconfirmed.
Personal History:
Went to the University of Cambridge to study Computer Science and graduated succesfully. During his studies created online games for GamesDomain (subsequently purchased by Yahoo) as well as DeviousMUD. Rewrote DeviousMUD into RuneScape along with brothers Paul and Ian following graduation. After a year Paul and Andrew then founded Jagex alongwith business partner Constant Tedder.
Jagex History:
Responsible for writing much of the core engine and much of the engine-design since then.
Mark O (Mod Mark)
Job Title: Lead Designer
Role:
As Lead Designer, responsible for much of the long-term vision of the game in terms of future content, story archs and plot development.
Personal History:
Was in Cambridge (possibly as a student or in a related field) and hired to work at Jagex.
Jagex History:
Responsible for the long term stories (often along with Paul Gower) and the direction of quests and skills as well as future updates.
1) I got my account banned, I want to talk to the boss!
Well you could do this. But the best bet is to use the established systems. Mod MMG doesn’t work with Player Accounts on a day-to-day basis and he didn’t ban you. So really you need to contact either Player Support or ICU and the best way for that is the Appeals forms.
2) I hate Dungeoneering! Who should I rant at?
Probably the best person is either Mod Trick or Mod Mark. It depends on the complaint tho. If it’s the “Minigame” style, then Mod Mark. For specific bits, Mod Trick. If you can’t beat the boss, probably Mod Chris L – who tested a lot.
3) How do you know all this?
Companies have a fairly standard structure so it’s not too difficult to pick apart. After that, I’ve been to RuneFest and talked to lots of people.
Some of this was designed to respond to some recent commentary/critique of the game I’ve seen.
I don’t think it’s sensible or useful to attack the wrong people in a company. Nor do I necessarily think that the changes on the outside correlate with changes at the bottom. Management adjustments are often for lots of different reasons rather than just the percieved issues at the bottom.
The addition of a board of director involved with Venture Capital firms should not for example be taken as a reason that the company no longer cares about it’s customers merely profit. Rather it is a sign the company needs investment for a huge project.
If you have any further questions/comments, post them
Posted in RuneScape
