I know that Runescape isn't the most respected and admired game in the world, but it has always been a nice way to kill some time for me..

But when you play a game for a while, it really sucks to see that all the progress you have made the last few years now suddenly could be made in less than a week, if you just have the money for it.

The rule against real world trading has been one of the oldest and most respected ones in this game, and now, out of nowhere, they now they not only allow it, but do it themselves.

And the "squeal of fortune" affects every part of the game.. it has almost no limitations. The rewards are huge cash prizes, some of the most expencive gear and lots of experience points which players might have to spend years to achieve.

Not only is this wrong in the way that it devaluates runescape for others, it will also encourage minors to start gambling (as the majority of players are between 13-18 years old)

I just makes me sick.. and tbh I hope that someone is going to sue them..

I play Runescape, and I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. First, the more vocal players are the ones giving the most negative comments, but this update has been panned by a fairly large portion of the community, not just a vocal minority.
I'd also say that 'Squeal of Fortune' is not a popular minigame. It was introduced a short time ago, and met a fairly large amount of negative press as well; it is also completely apart from any content released before, with almost no connection to story or the game world. However, it goes beyond changing a small part of the game. Many of the possible rewards from this 'minigame' include experience and beneficial items, which are core parts of the gameplay.
In short, from the viewpoint of someone that already plays the game, it is a failure of an experiment. I, and many other players, were willing to pay a monthly membership fee to avoid microtransactions that have become so important to the gaming world.

Sure, in the short term this gambling scheme will generate a burst ofprofit for jagex, but it also cuts into the longstanding egalitarian spirit of the game - that no matter how rich you are irl, you would not gain an advantage in game. As players have tested out, with enough 'spins' bought, you gain so much experience that it literally makes regular gameplay pointless, not to mention the odds of getting in game items worth millions. In the long run, more and more players will quit this now money hungry game made by developers who would kowtow to their investors and abandon its players. I don't think this is what Andrew Gower would have wanted. But then again, he sold jagex to the hounds himself.

Jagex claims that Runescape has a million plus subscribers each paying at least 5 dollars a month for their subscription, yet they still feel the need to try to wring even more revenue out of their fanbase. It's a sad day when 5 million dollars a month is not enough. They also are making massive quantities of money from the banner ads in the free version of the game, but yet they are still doing this devious microtransaction nonsense. Another example of how greedy outsiders that Jagex has hired are ruining the game.

It seems surprising given their position on micro transactions that Jagex have decided to embark on this strategy. Criticised by leading CCP developers as double payment, this strategy has seen vociferously hostile reactions in EVE Online and has been since reversed.

Fate will yet decide on RuneScape, however it is absurd that Jagex have decided to 'experiment' on their sole profitable product in this manner with little user engagement prior to the update.

A breakdown of the update is available here: http://philip.whiuk.com

Truly Sad that this is what RS has come to. I have found a new game that I am checking out. The graphics are unbelievable and the concept of the game is similar to Runescape. If this update is not removed, I know what game I will be paying to play! GL GF R.I.P. you greedy bastards!

I agree with all the above comments. The SOF is not popular at all, and even since it's surprising release, which was not mentioned in the Behind the Scenes, by the way, players have been ranting against it, because it gives you a chance to earn items and experience that other have worked so hard for.
These 'lucky' items that you can win in SOF are in fact, some of the best weapons and armour in the game, and yet they do not expire. Even worse, you can gain 'xp lamps' that give you Experience in various skills, or even 10 million coins. However, most of us accepted it.
But now, out of nowhere, they add this. Just go check the forums and you'd be lucky to find a thread that isn't ranting about it. With this, players may get fast experience, items, money etc... which is not fair at all. And yet, not a single Jagex Mod post. Real World Trading (RWT) is against the rules, and Jagex broke their own rule. Congratulations, you money hungry bastards! Even the people that don't post on the forums in game are complaining about it. You'd be lucky to find 1/500 players that support it.
This is even worse than 'Refer a Friend' *cough* refer a bot *cough*!
Finally, I'd like to add a statement that Jagex said, long ago, before becoming the money hungry bastards they are:
"We don’t want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn’t affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape."
Just go the the Recent Updates Forum.

In 6th grade I was introduced by my peers to this new and insanely fun game called Runescape. I remember sneaking into the library at school and playing. Played on 4 accounts before finally choosing Motley as my main. Since then I've had 3 other member accounts as my noobs. Needless to say, over the years Jagex has gotten plenty of my money.

Along the way I've trained my skills, never in much of a hurry as I didn't want my Runescape experience to end, but I've always trained the right way. I've gained some of the greatest friends a guy could have, and earned the trust of my clanmates in not only one, but two great clans. I've fought in the old wilderness, seen a time when you actually merched single items and there was no grand exchange. I've seen the wildy ditch form, the wall spring up, and the revenants take over. I witnessed free trade be abolished, only to see it return.

This game has kept my attention for years, mostly due to the fact unlike many other RPGs you couldn't buy your levels and the money you made "irl" didn't shape your ability in the game whatsoever. I've complained over updates, but stuck with the game through it all. Today however, Jagex decided to go against the very thing they stood for. Today they introduced microtransactions into the game. Real-world trading became legal on the game, as long as you were paying Jagex to do it.

When the SoF was introduced, people thought it wouldn't last. Then we realized that you could only do it twice a day, and even though it was slowly affecting the game it wasn't a huge upset. However, now you can get more and more spins by paying cash. Not runescape coins, real CASH. I've seen people getting 100k exp/hour in runecrafting without ever touching essence. That's more experience than you could ever attain by training the skill legitimately. Wasn't this why effigies were nerfed?

I haven't seen this much backlash on an update since you removed the wilderness/free trade, and you brought it back Jagex. Congratulations on not only turning your back on your veterans, but on turning your back on your own word. What's next? You start selling gold/armor/exp packs? Don't say it's insane to think that, you said it was insane that we thought you'd bring in microtransactions and look where we are. Now on top of this you've changed your terms of service to say that we're responsible for any fees charged to our account by third parties. This means if we're hacked we could end up paying large sums of money, or you could even charge us and claim we were hacked. I can't say that I'm quitting. I'm giving you a month to change what you've done. I can't say that I'll even quit after the month is up, I have a loyalty to my friends and clan mates that goes beyond the "loyalty" you had for your players Jagex. Though that's something you probably don't understand, loyalty and honesty.-Motley

Former Jagex CEO Geoff Iddison said that he wanted to merge the premium subscription model with micropayments. How do you feel about the idea?
I don’t think you can take a game like Runescape and retrofit microtransactions into it. The game’s just too big, and I don’t think it would add value for our players. Obviously that system could be more remunerative, but I think it would price a player experience too far up.

This is actually really bad I did training in customer service 1 displeased customer will tell on average 8 people. So those 10k on the forum will tell 80k potential customers of there displeasure.

Meanwhile on the other hand 1 appeased customer will tell 0 - 1 people that there happy.

Really bad for marketing to have 10k people saying bad stuff about you.

We would like to remind our users that buying/selling RuneScape accounts is not allowed, and that buying/selling RuneScape items for real money outside of the game is also not allowed.

We did once consider selling runescape money and items in an online shop on our own site for real cash. However we decided to sacrifice that extra revenue for the good of the game, since we felt it would devalue hard-working players achievements if another player could then just buy their way past them. We don't want rich players to be able to simply buy their way to the top. This is clearly not how the game is meant to be played.

There are also practical reasons why we can't allow this. For instance if we allowed players to sell accounts outside of the game it would become very difficult for customer support to tell who the rightful owner of the account was, which would undermine our password support service.

We are checking auction sites such as Ebay on a daily basis, and all auctions found there are removed, so if you try it you will lose your money. We are also making all efforts to track down buyers and sellers of items/accounts and will ban any accounts we find linked with these auctions.

We have 10 years of news saying that you wouldn't do this to work with.

This is fraud.

1. You payed for a chance to win something
2. Jagex retains ownership of all items under intellectual property laws and there terms of service.
3. You there for cannot Win anything as all items remain the property of Jagex.
4. Seeing you cannot win anything the claim of winning something is fraudulent.
5. If you did win you now own the item in question and have the right to sell it as you have legally obtained ownership of the item.

Info about Jagex investors:
Private equity companies need growth, because they’re built on the idea of buying, restructuring, and then selling. They’re never in any business for the long haul: instead, they want to make as much money as they can as quickly as possible, sell out, and keep all the profits for themselves and their investors.

This is why there doing this greed nothing more nothing less. There going to milk us for all we got then take the money & run.

A huge problem is that it allows you to unlock abilities in the game without ever having played the game. Lets say someone wants to unlock the ability to make Flasks out of red sandstone for instance why train mining & crafting using time/supplies/gp when you can use this instead & get the exp + gp with ease. Then you've unlocked a high level money making ability with in a short period.

It could be worse with thousands of people now flooding the market with items that were previouslly covented by a much smaller population items will crash.

Hey Thanks for trying Rob Smith but as you can clearly see we are not happy. Thanks

This update feels like an utter slap in the face. Talking to people who play Runescape (myself included) all you get is despondency. We've all put in the time and effort over years, then this comes along and people can buy their way to 99. It's not fair. Moreover it's an insult to the intelligence and integrity of those who've stuck with Jagex over some really dodgy decisions in the past.

Insight Venture Partners are downright toxic to this game and the long-established ethos surrounding our player community.

I'm a mature 53 yr old Runescape player, It was my first MMORPG I found after I was able to get internet in New Zealand, many many years ago.
I had limited time then and dial up made it very hard to play (30 mins cost an arm and a leg) but I stayed with the game and made a character and paid members.
I loved the Game the way I could play at my own pace and have all sorts of interesting content, reasonable graphics and support through clans/friends system.

But.....Then they introduced SOF the buyable spins on a wheel the same as any gambling wheel in a casino,
Not only has this made it easy to "buy" any experience you want, but the gold farmers (botting companies)are laughing all the way to the bank as they buy spins for their bots to get them to the required level needed to farm items for RS gold.
The way to purchase said spins is also at question because the transaction has no authorisation screens and uses stored credit card details (parents pay for kids accounts via cc) which Jagex changed Terms and Conditions stealthily to make the cc holder accountable for all loses of said card.
My agreement with them should have included a statement to the effect if they change the terms and conditions then they should notify me, which they didn't.
Not to mention the gambling feature which Jagex denies is gambling...of course it is!

So I'm playing other MMORPG and seeing that many previous P2P games have ventured out to be F2P, sure with MT's but not actual buying of experience.

I'm one of the long-term players of RuneScape. This update was a massive slap in the face when it was released almost a week ago. Words, and especially decent words, cannot express my hatred towards what IVP and Jagex have done to the game. Those not initiated with RuneScape and what it's all about might think that all the negative feedback stems only from this latest update. This is not the case. There have been very suspicious updates the past two years and 'Squeal of Fortune - Buy Spins' was the one straw that broke the camel's back.

I cannot fathom how Jagex can justify this update. Claiming it is not gambling. Claiming it is not RWT, only to later say it's an approved RWT as long as they are the ones that do it. Letting minors gamble is illegal in several countries. There's a huge security risk for everyone who pays with creditcards.

What are they waiting for? A Law suit? Is that what it will take to get rid of this abomination?

While the games industry might agree that micro-transactions is quite profitable, the way it has been introduced into Runescape is quite questionable. Allowing minors to have direct access in spending real cash off their legal guardian without their consent in a game that requires no skill to win is something that the Gambling Commission should investigate. The way Jagex changed its terms and conditions to claim legality on unsolicited transactions is also something that should be investigated by the European Trade Commission. Although Jagex denies the allegations, but a very large number of long time customers from Jagex consider it fraudulent and a deceptive means of doing business. It comes to no surprise that such accusations arise since the company has undergone changes on different management level under the supervision of their major stake holder Insight Venture Partners Inc. which have a long history of liquidating companies they acquire through large investments.

agree with all the above comments. The forums are in uproar and it will not go away as they hope.I have cancelled a subscription that has run for 6 years and my friends are doing the same. There are not many games that have so many members that have played and paid for so long and that was because it had core values and history that we were happy with. I would never have imagined that they would bring in a gambling wheel for irl money, thats tacky and pretty creepy.Add to that it upsets the whole dynamics of the game, there is no point in doing anything if you can just buy it.plus a lot of the game requires that you know it iside out, how will you be able to set up a team to fight bosses with a bunch of players that have bought their lvls with the horrible spin? Add to that all the creepy marketing ploys in free to play where you are reminded at every turn that you could do xyz if you paid ,i doubt that they will get many new players with that.what they did before was quite sensible they realised that kids paid for cards at school holidays and when they planned to play but there was no pressure or stigma in being ftp, now there is and kids don't like that. Would also like to mention another marketing ploy was removing ftp from highscores removing a great chunk of the history of our best players ever.

Over 10,000 people complaining that have signed a petition against this Jagex you have to either remove this or rework it to a point where theres no advantage what so ever.

I feel sorry for the Js. Don't take it out on them. They most likely had not even heard of this before it happened and had no say in having it implemented. Had they been consulted, it would likely not have happened.

One of the most appealing things about runescape, as opposed to other online games like wow, has always been the lack of microtransactions. For me, it's been one of only 2 reasons why I have stayed with runescape instead of turning to WoW like many of my friends did. When comparing runescape to WoW, in my opinion, there are only 2 things in which runescape does better, those being the storylines featured in quests, which are completely absent in WoW, and the absence of microtransactions in runescape. On all other aspects, WoW has a (significant) lead on runescape. Because of those 2 things, runescape has been a big player in the MMO business, but now microtransactions have found their way into the game, it's falling behind. The sole two advantages of runescape were enough to make it better then WoW, but if the only advantage becomes the storylines, they actually gave the victory to WoW by degrading themselves to a much lower position. Add to that the fact that the general opinion about jagex now is that they're sellouts and traitors whereas the opinion about WoW is that they're greedy, but at least they're honest about it, and the conclusion is quite straightforward. When transferred into figurative speech, one could say Jagex has lost the race against Blizzard (both the races of product quality and company esteem), not by being slower, but by cutting off their own legs because they thought it would make them faster.
I know for sure that if I made such a bad decision in my life, my parents would disown me.

I also am a long term player, having held membership for some 7 years. Jagex has for that time offered a game I can play within the limitations of my disability, and I have met many wonderful people along the way. I have seen good and bad changes to the game, but the recent changes to the game bely description. Runescape has always been based on 'reward through effort applied' - ie - work hard to develop your character to get rewards. The squeal of fortune and runespan require no risk, no effort and no skill - yet the rewards can be astronomical. How is this not gambling? Where are the Jagex values we admired..those we as players and parents wanted to present to our younger players? Gone.....all gone.
How is it legal to encourage kids to gamble? How is it legal to so completely do a 180 degree stance on real world trading, but so adamantly decree that we cannot sell our accounts - its our time WE HAVE PAID FOR! I think a class action would be most appropriate. Players unite!

This is amazing! I have so many credits already http://www.freerunescapemembershippins.com/

This is a good idea imo, I have made a lot of runescape gold from it.