|

Rules and cheating
Jagex has put in place a number of rules for player conduct, such as rules against offensive language, scamming, and bug abuse. To enforce the rules, RuneScape employs three types of moderator: Jagex moderators, who are actual Jagex employees; player moderators, who are trusted ordinary players who enforce the rules in the game; and forum moderators, who are trusted players who police the game forums. On the forums, Jagex and forum moderators are identified by gold and green crowns next to their posts, respectively; in the game, player moderators have a silver crown near their name in chat, while Jagex moderators have the same with a gold crown. In addition, any player has the ability to report rule-breaking using a "report abuse" feature; misuse of this feature can result in action being taken against the reporter. However, the effectiveness of Jagex's hunt on abusers has been debated by Twitchguru.
There are also rules prohibiting usage of third-party software to play the game and the sale of game items for real money, known as real-world or real-money trading. In the early days of the game, most cheaters were individual players using special programs that exploited weaknesses in the game's client-server communications by sending false data to the server. In response, Jagex made direct interaction with the client very difficult, so more recently, macro programs like SCAR have been used to automate mouse clicks for repetitive tasks. Random events, requiring human reaction and decision making are one method Jagex employs to attempt to disrupt such programs. According to Jagex, many cheaters are now based in game sweatshops in East Asia, making gold to sell to players for real-world money, an issue in many other MMORPGs. In response, Jagex issued a statement condemning real-world trading, which had already been against the rules. In the statement, they also said that they were seizing billions of gold and banning thousands of accounts every week for cheating. Nevertheless, real-world trading and macroing activities will still continue.
|
|
|