Runescape Protest

I've been playing Runescape recently, mainly to do with eudcational content research and 'the big term' that I presented yesterday and talks about how players learn in MMORPGs. However, this also takes me back (and around) more social behaviour questions, since the set up in Runescape is very different to other MMORPGs I've looked at recently.

Runescape is primarily a solo MMORPG; you can assist people, but it's a lot less easy than the grouping systems seen elsewhere. Experience is also gain per skill, not as an overall level; something which feeds into the educational content stuff since people are obsessed with getting the higher levels (they take pictures and download them onto forums, to show what they have done, for example. There is also permadeath - when a player dies they lose everything bar three pieces of kit (later this level can be increased) and are teleported back to where they are hearthed.

This means a couple of things. Firstly, at early levels, people help each other by donating kit a lot. As a lowbie obsessed with farming and chopping down trees, my visible level is actually not very high, and since I chose a name that is vaguely human sounding and easy to type (unlike the majority of people who have a collection of numbers and letters sowed together), so it's pretty common to be hailed with 'Apellis is a N00b', or simply 'noob'. Having said that, this term is used a lot more affectionately. 'are u a noob?' is a pretty common question which is often immediately followed by aid - usually gifting, clearing a dangerous area or offering advice; 'make arrows and sell them'. 'lvl strength' and 'don't go north yet' havebeen the most different so far.

Communication. The world is a lot younger in player attitude, and the conversations are much, much more primitive than elsewhere. A common conversation starter is 'lvls?' (What are your levels?'), with the proviso of them applying to whatever you are doing at the time. There are a lot of static points - farming patches, mines and fishing spots where conversation takes place. Usually this is pretty friendly, but it is also wildly unsafe at times. Jagex have incredibly strong censorship ('phone' and 'email' being amongst their banned words). There is a dungeon devoted entirely to answering security questions about your account, and the tutorial is almost as much about protecting your password as it is about learning to play the game.  The players however, use real names both in their characters and when talking to each other; I heard two lads discussing meeting each other at footy (and directions on how to get there!), and conversations beginning 'who here is 14?'. I wonder if this is simply the demographic (it seems to be), but even so it is a real eye opener about how unsafe kids can be, despite the massively stealthed content about staying safe. Is this because the players feel at home in Runescape? I suspect it may be, but it is incredibly worrying that they are so open about their identity.

I also wonder if the lack of channels means that people are more forthcoming. There isn't a general channel in each zone (the zones all blend into each other anyway), so commuincation is very localised. However public chat is always going on wherever characters are stationary. This is still however, pretty basic 'I need spade' 'selling rune armour' 'why so many noobs here'. Linguistically, the communication is almost incomprehenisible to outsiders and non leet speakers; it really brings home the fact that a new language is evolving (or devolving, depending on how you feel about l33t).

Today, however, I spotted a moderator, and then checked out the wiki to see if there was any information on them. It turns out that the moderator I saw has come in for some fairly serious griefing, in this case in reponse to Runescape's attempts to sort out gold selling (which they do in ways almost as inventive as their attempts to protect their users - when was the last time you saw a gold seller thwarted by modelling balloons - LMAO). There's a good history of the game's development here. I suppose one way of looking at this is the 'it's going to happen if developers have their own visible IDs in the game', but at the same time it's a really strong example of player protest of an unpleasant kind, rather than say, the Gnome Tea Party.

This of course, makes me think...

Comments

[MAC]

but i like it nonw, can do clue on wildy without worried about pker, and yet revenent are easy to escape

[Vaskor]

Very good article! It is always refreshing to see unbiased thinking post like that. Very good observations about Runescape. Thank you!