What is Going Wrong with Runescape

Runescape has always been a hobby for thousands upon thousands of people. However, lately, it has been getting, well, bad. Although it is still fun for me and is a great source of entertainment, I wanted to point out what is going wrong with runescape. So, here goes, in rank from least noticeable to most noticeable, from least annoying to most annoying:

5. THE KIDDISHNESS AND BAD GRAPHICS

The site has been growing more and more childish. Have you ever noticed the friends and ignore lists now? Experienced players will notice that it was not always as bad as that. Also, many of the buttons are now pictures…but that's fair enough, since not all the people speak English. Furthermore, the inventory button and the person next to it are drawings that could easily be better and more appealing to teenagers (the main demographic, I assume). As for the graphics, if you play, you know what's wrong with them.

4. THE CENSOR

The censor has gotten out of hand. While it makes sense to make runescape a “happy” environment, there are too many ways around it. Now, you can't say everyday common expressions because there is bound to be some abbreviation of a bad word hidden inside. Try sticking the face “=s” in front of some of your sentences, and you will quickly discover that the censor considers this profane language.

3. THE COMBAT TRIANGLE

Although Jagex has been trying hard to keep this in balance, it really isn't (at least for nonmembers). Mage is the least balanced. At low levels, mage dominates. Later mage, quite frankly, is terrible. Range used to be so underpowered. Now it's overpowered to a degree. Melee is the most overpowered of all. Melee can stomp on range most of the time, and there are two melee stats available. Three strength levels has the same effect on your combat as two range or mage levels. Two melee stats means two melee prays, and they happen to be at a lower level than range and mage.

2. MACROERS

Macroers really spoil the game for everyone (though I have noticed that many people support macroing; if you have something bad to post because you believe differently on this topic, politely say so). Recently, there has been an incredible jump in the number of macroers-in Betty's, at all trees, in the mining guild, and even fishing. What makes it worse is Jagex has imposed a rule that restricts the number of reportings to be limited to one a minute. Well, since there are about 10 macroers at any given moment on your screen, people like me who are irritated by macroing can do very little about it.

1.INFLATION

Inflation is the worst problem yet. This is in no way Jagex's fault, but if Jagex doesn't come of with a solution, runescape will deteriorate exponentially. When I began playing, rune scimitars were 35k in nonmembers worlds. That's right. Now they are 20k and 25k if you're lucky. Full rune sets are falling as well. Where they used to be 200-205k, they are now 170-185k. So what can Jagex do? Well, very early in runescape history, they took drastic measures when party hats were duplicated; they destroyed every fake party hat; about half of them. This caused an uproar, since no one knew which party hats were real. Keeping a party hat was a gamble. Soon enough, jagex will have to take similar actions to undo the inflation that has plagued runescape (destroy 1 in 5 rune items?). Although this would lose many players in the process, the problem is growing, and there is no apparent solution.