My Runescape Diary

To tell you the truth being able to change your name was not much of a surprise for me, the time taken for it to happen was a surprise, the name change thing was being talked about in the P Mod forum when I was a P Mod which must have been 2 or 3 years ago at least, I could look it up but cba.

The surprising part was that well over 50% of the active players on my friends list have changed their names already, when I started playing I had a few accounts that never gained many levels the first I abandoned because I was killed by a guard and didn't know how to get my tut island stuff back, I do not remember the names but must be something like Steve**11, I then found a unique name that I liked and stuck with that as my new account.

Perhaps when they created their accounts they just made do with a random name some with a few numbers after, I know at least one did but perhaps some just decided for a change, my son changed his name, its his account but I did feel quite sad that the name he has used for 6 years has changed, I have found that I am attached to friends names and it is quite strange seeing them as something else.

On the P mod forum years ago there was mentioned changing names that did not meet the acceptable name policy, at the time not possible because the name stipulation was not compulsory when some of the older accounts were created, adding a rule after an account was made would have met with stiff opposition and valid reason for complaint, instead they would be tagged for change when the ability was implemented.

Well I had immunity from ban for offensive name because they modded me and then demoded me with the same name but I did expect to be tagged for change, it hasn't happened yet but I am sure its just a matter of time, by the way I do not hold it against Jagex I believe it was the correct decision even though I was very annoyed at the time, they did apologise after I put in an official complaint, my name was only offensive if you read it a certain way and was rarely interpreted as offensive by younger players.

The thing is what happens now, do all old unused account names disappear after a certain amount of time ready to be snapped up by the quickest hand, will a player called "y" that hasn't been used for 7 years be available for registration by a player new to RS, I can see there being a desire for single, double or triple character names but how to watch and get them may be interesting, what if I take a 1 year RS break and someone takes my name, I am not going to be a happy bunny.

The thing that surprises me is how many unique names are available now, I see so many new names many starting with lower case letters without numbers after them, are they reclaimed from old/expired accounts or are people getting more imaginative, perhaps because many people have played for a while they can make names more appropriate to their playing style, lots of unanswered question that without doubt will be answered over the coming months.

I am not changing my name until forced but I do think the facility is a great idea and a giant step forward.

My son was getting a bit bored of Runescape and tried a few more on-line games, playing club penguin, a nice friendly game owned by Disney but with limited activities, nonetheless he had a few months fun, I paid for his membership for a while being a well known name and had little worry about scammers taking advantage of my card details.

He tried Bin Weevils very limited activities but a few hours of entertainment, no membership option so no worry.
He also tried FreeRealms, I'm not adding a link because the name is far from what it implies, FreeRealms owned by Sony you would imagine to be a safe place to trust with your credit card details, be afraid be very afraid never trust them with your debit card details (maestro in my case).

He found this game and played it for free for a while and with most games there is not a lot to do until you are a member, being a big name I trusted Sony and decided to pay for my sons membership when the Club Penguin one had run out.
I was very nervous from the start because you can not buy 1 months subscription for the game you can only pay for ongoing monthly subscriptions, I thought OK its Sony they are a world wide known name and wont stitch me up and my Son really wanted membership, I paid the money on my Maestro card and thought nothing of it, I would cancel the subscription if he didn't want it renewed.

I went to work the next day and came back to see emails in my inbox thanking me for purchasing Station Cash, I had never authorised it so went downstairs and gave my Son a telling off for using my debit card without permission (not that he ever gets permission I always make payments on his behalf), he was very upset and went to bed in tears, after the initial shock had worn off I took a step back and thought about what I had done.

My son was playing a game that promoted the selling of Station cash on every screen refresh, showed all the goodies you can get every where he went, he is only 10 and the lure of fancy armour, faster cars and better weapons is quite a temptation for many older players to resist let alone a 10 year old.
I wrote an email to Sony telling them what had happened and their reply was.

Thank you for contacting Sony Online Entertainment.

There are parental passwords that can be set up to prevent this from occurring from within the game, also all of our transactions require the CCV2 code on the back of the card to be completed. If your son has this information it is the responsibility of the card holder and not Sony Online for transactions made. Also I do not have the account name that you are referring to as your E-Mail address should have been used to create the parental E-mail. There are several child locks built into this game for parents to take advantage of. Could you please provide the account name and I will cancel your account.

I apologised to my son for being unpleasant as I believe he is not solely to blame for the purchase of Station Cash and Sony should take some responsibility for their site.

With regard to their response above.

a/ There may be passwords available to stop this happening but I spent hours searching for it and could not find any that prevented payment.

b/ They state that a CCV2 number is always required, my son showed me how he did it using stored card details and it never asked for the CCV2 number, my card is always with me and he never has access to any numbers neither would he know what it was anyway.

c/ I tried to remove my card details from the system using the Remove credit card facility, I was totally confused because there was no facility to remove the card number all I could do was change the Start and Expiry date which I did to prevent them charging it again.

d/ If I replied with my Sons account name (Which I did anyway) they would have cancelled the account, that's fine after they had just charged me £60 for in game items that I had not authorised.

In my eyes this is Fraud, Fraudulent Sony Online Entertainment LLC and no way to get compensation.

I have considered taking them to court but they are based in Holland and I am not sure how proceedings would be instigated, where and how much, can I take on a multi million dollar industry to court, I will certainly look into it.

Natwest Bank come up trumps again, Yeah right.

I contacted my bank Natwest to have a stop put on the transactions and they said because I paid with my debit card (maestro) for the membership I have authorised them to take as much money as they want when they want and there was nothing I could do.
How many people would open an account if they knew that every time they used a card that is a legal reason for the company to empty your account at a whim.

My suggestion to anyone thinking of using a debit (Maestro, Delta etc) to purchase anything even from a leading manufacturer such as Sony Online Entertainment LLC DO NOT DO IT.

I have not let this go by far, I will pursue this until I get a refund from someone or I die trying.

So Sony Online Entertainment LLC thanks for ripping me off and thanks Natwest Bank for helping them.

I am so glad Jagex don't have Real word payments for online items, perhaps the above is one of the main reasons it is not an option.

Sony just lost an ongoing subscription because of a lack of security in their payment system and no interest in sorting it out, but hey they just got £60 out of me through immoral means.

Has everyone noticed that the price of everything has shot up recently, take a look at the Grand Exchange and the price of whips, godswords, iron ore in fact almost everything has gone up in price recently, noticeably in the last 4 weeks.

Everyone else has blamed the Merchanting scams, I mean clans, no I don't I mean scams, but even the merchanting scams do not have the power to change the price on everything, in fact the merchanting scams have very little long term affect on any of the RS market.

At about this time last year I noticed that there was a sudden downturn in the cost of expensive armour, with the help of readers of this blog and the Runescape Readers Digest we determined that the price may be caused by the end of the school holidays and likely end of membership and reduced playing time for many players, selling all their member items for cash to spend for f2p.

It was never totally conclusive but the times and price changes did coincide very closely.

As a precaution I have had a spring clean, I sold most of my junk including most of my spare runes, 20K laws, 15k bloods, and many more of my other runes as well as my no longer used Barrows sets, sorry Guthans my bunyip has made you redundant, all in all so far I have made 71m just selling my carp, I may sell my God Sword, I only use it for dark beasts anyway, my best sell was my ranger boots, I bought them when they were worth 1.2m and I paid 1m to a guy who wanted a quick sell, sold today for just over 9m, will I buy in 2 weeks for 5m or stick with my chicken feet? I do not know yet.
I bought 35k iron ore for 100gp a while back because I wanted to get my smithing up, it sat in my bank for over a year and I sold it all today for 126 each, if I havent used it in over a year whats the chance of me using it soon?

If your going to sell it may well be an idea to sell now, the holidays end in 2 weeks and I expect the prices to plummet, the prices are still rising but the rise has slowed, I may well be wrong but it may be an idea to consider past performance and maybe sell duplicates you have.

I was training slayer the other day, attacking black demons I got a mith kite shield, as normal I alched it while I was training, this is a thing I have been doing since I have been training slayer, the difference now is that I did not lose an attack turn on the demon I was fighting with my whip, I have used my Godsword on some monsters and alched while using that not losing an attack turn but a whip is so much quicker and a loss was just accepted, it was a real treat to be able to just fight as normal and not miss a turn picking the item up and alching, missing a turn picking up the item and then alching can slow down xp considerably when performed on a regular basis, this in turn reduces speed in levelling and slows down the process of getting better drop monsters, I have always said it is very expensive to pick up coin drops.

I train herblore when I want to, I am 89 at present and would like to get the magic 90, I can make anything herby so no pressure from that just nice to have another number on my stats page out of the 80's, since the engine update that brought about the above ability I have not tested the cleaning process for herbs, before it took so long to clean the herbs that I sold all grimy herbs and bought unfinished potions, this is fine by me at the moment, you get most of the xp adding the secondary ingredient anyway, they cost more but the time saved by not cleaning and putting in a vial can be spent training what I want to train or a good profit making skill, even if they sped the cleaning process to how it used to be I would still buy unfinished.

I was fishing at the Piscatoris fishing colony, looking at the bank I noticed that the banker could be seen through the window, this is just accepted nowadays but I also noticed that he could be seen through the gaps in the planks the hut was built with, this is a small detail and has no effect on playability but it was a real treat to see it, Jagex took the effort to make it look as real as possible, there are many places Jagex have added little extra detail that will probably be missed by most players but this attention to detail is what sets Runescape above all the other MMORPG's.

As with the good points there are also little things that are annoying, things that don't affect the playability to a great extent but still shouldn't be. three that spring to mind are.
1/ Lapalok (and any other slayer master) can offer as a reward runes for slayer dart, I have never seen a slayer dart spell, is there going to be a new spell or do they mean "magic dart" I reported this as a bug when smoking kills came out and last time I checked it was still incorrect.
2/Another thing on the same lines, you all know the slayer gem? yes? no? there is no such thing yet Jagex still mention it, cant remember when I saw it mentioned, maybe when the ring of slaying turned into an enchanted gem when I had used all charges.
3/ The main annoyance is the ability to run away from the Grand Exchange when you select something to buy, I wanted to buy a pot for the missing my mummy quest, a/ I couldn't find a plain pot listed, b/ it took me 4 attempts to highlight a pot of flour to empty to get the pot, I gave up and went to a shop to buy it instead. the run away when selecting something at GE has been a major annoyance for many people for a long time, is it so difficult to fix?

The good points far outweigh the bad points but the bad points get noticed more, Jagex please sort the GE runaway bug.

Thanks for reading this post, my first for a while, sorry it not particularly well written and probably many errors but im a busy bee at the mo, preferring to play than write about it.

I have a friend who has just started playing Runescape after a very long break, she has started training very regularly and is progressing very quickly with combat and skill levels shooting up very quickly.

She has just reached 109 combat and I suggested we did some Kalphite Queening, I briefed her on what to wear and what to take and we went to a lootshare world and trotted off.

I wore full Veracs for the first form, with piety, protect item and mage protect on my auto prayer settings, my friend wore black dragon hide and whip, we ran in and started to kill queenie and she was despatched very quickly, her first form being killed very quickly we both switched to range attack with our cross bows and the second form followed not far behind.

We repeated and yet again we killed her off very quickly, its been a long time since I did a KQ run and I remember it being a struggle each time even with a friend.

I was trying to work out has the KQ been degraded to make her more appealing against the lure of great wealth from the other bosses, the KQ lair was there for us, no one else tried to take our queening world, that would have been unheard of years ago there were often rivalries over KQ territory, finding her all alone and neglected seamed very sad.
Myself a level 137, a level 109 with no experience of KQ'ing despatched her very easily, I remember when I though I would die and indeed my friends and I have died at her pincers, in those days we could pick up each others stuff and give them back.

There was one attempt when we were bombarded with range attacks and we did take some substantial damage on her first form forcing us both to leave before we could finish the bug off, this was scary but I remember that happening a lot of the time before, I have soloed K'ril who can hit 49's and draining prayer, I have teamed Armadyl and Bandos and I am fully aware of the damage they can do, am I just used to the harder bosses and the attack of the queen has dulled in comparison, I can solo the KBD with the leftover sharks after a clue scroll with a poor weapon and my natural unpotted prayer, perhaps I am a lot tougher now but I have been a 126 (Pre summoning) for a long time now.

Its quite sad that the queen of the bosses has been demoted to a mediocre foe after ruling RS for so long, the lure of the d chain has gone with the value of god swords and armour drawing people away, perhaps she has had her time and is due an easier life away from constant attacks or perhaps she is to be used as a training ground for the up and coming warriors to practice their techniques for a team kill, either way she will always hold a special place in my heart as a memory of my early days in Runescape.

Our drops for that session were
20 zammy wine x 2
Addy spear
19 Bloods x 2
Laws x 2
Rune hatchet

I forget the rest but never covered cost on any run.