A Word About Our Updates, 13 December 2007

Even though this week has been one of the toughest ever for everyone involved with RuneScape, it has been tough for so much longer than one week. Bots, gold sellers, scammers: these are all problems that both us and you - the players - have had to put up with together in recent months.

These occurrences were becoming so frequent that they seriously threatened RuneScape. A solution was needed as soon as possible, so we had to come up with the one thing that would successfully stop real-world traders – stopping unbalanced trade. It will be tough for law-abiding players, but it will also be tough for us, as we will certainly not be gaining money or members with this update. Instead, we are doing this for the good of the game, which is as dear to our hearts as it is to you.

Soon, the hard part will be over and done with. The last of our major changes will be made in January and we certainly don’t plan any more hard changes in the foreseeable future. Together, we will deliver an enormous blow to real-world trading, and the game has already seen a dramatic reduction in their numbers.

We have always planned to release the real-world trading updates and then improve them further by listening to your feedback. We were also aware that the updates may not have been perfect the first time around, or that they may not have functioned as an ideal replacement for what we have changed or taken away. This is not a reason to roll them back or remove them, but it IS a reason to keep improving them until they DO work as a full replacement.

The hard choices we have made are the best ones for the game, and we must not do anything that allow bots, gold sellers or scammers back into the game. What we need to do is build on these first, large steps and use your feedback to make improvements, so that they better fit your needs and activities.

We would really like you to make your feelings known, not in a negative manner that offers no potential solutions, but with constructive criticism and suggestions that we can draw ideas from. For example, if something is broken, don't just demand that we put it back to what it was - instead, tell us your ideas to make the new system work. In summary: we would like you to think about how we can make life in RuneScape more enjoyable for you, while ALSO keeping out real-world traders and bots.

It’s going to take a lot of patience and effort from all of us. Saying that, we have not been sitting around hoping for you all to come up with ideas. We have been putting together a plan. This is a schedule of ideas for improvements that will build on a number of our changes: the Grand Exchange, new player-killing games (including other dangerous ones), LootShare, Assist System, trades and so many other things that we have introduced to combat real-world trading. We aim to have the most important improvements ready in time for the unbalanced trade removal in January, and to continue adding more throughout the start of next year.

We are currently assembling the best ideas from the Forums and our own staff. We will release another newspost early next week, listing the improvements we plan to make to address your concerns.