Talk:Old School RuneScape/Guides/Cheats

RuneScape cheats authors and history
See /History from Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia:Talk:RuneScape cheats

 * This section archives the discussion from when this was a Wikipedia article, instead of a Wikibook page. Remember that Wikibooks is not Wikipedia; the rules of Wikibooks are not the same as the rules of Wikipedia.

Please sign your comments
So that we can actually have discussions about issues with this article; please sign your comments by using four tilda characters '~' after your comment. This will sign and date your comment.Jonathan888 16:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Rules of JAGeX compared to rules of Wikipedia
Several editors have modified and removed portions of this article to bring it in line with the terms of service agreement of JAGeX. This action is not consistent with the article and in fact is detrimental to the article since this is an encyclopedia of knowledge, not a sponsor nor a venue. Links that may be harmful to the user in some cases are deliberately included in the article since they are so tied to the subject matter. A warning has been placed above those links and the tone of the article has been edited to give the strong impression that cheating in runescape can have very negative consequences for the cheater. Please do not remove portions of the article on the grounds that JAGeX would forbid the knowledge contained therein. Thanks. Jonathan888 16:40, 24 October 2005

Rename

 * Please note: Discussion about renaming the article is welcome in the subsection below 'Wiki procedure for renaming an article'. Please do not attempt to move the page until we reach a consensus and please don't page a mod to move the article until that point. Thanks. Jonathan888 15:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Original request for renaming: I think this article should be renamed to something that doesn't suggest that there are cheats in this article, like "RuneScape Cheating History". Link 00:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is kinda misleading, perhaps... no, i guess yous could work, we'll see if anyone has any objections any time soon.Curran919 04:38, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. Possibly a name such as "Cheating in Runescape". Shaun Ee 07:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree: the assertation that "there are no cheats" is disingenious and patently false. Code contains bugs, that is just a fact of complex programming.  Cheat communities such as scar and auto-miner flourish, denying the reality of these issues is obtuse.  This is an encyclopedia and if editors wish to list cheats (that may get the users of said cheat banned) then they would fit very well in this article. Additionally, in game venacular it is common to look for game cheats and guides- naming it 'cheating in runescape' would be to go against a strong and prevalent trend throughout the gaming community.Jonathan888 17:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * We need to get a consistant definition on "cheating." Really, are bots and macros really cheats? They don't exploit game code, the programs use their own code to perform automated tasks. And then there are simple glitches. Those aren't cheats. They're an error in the code of the game, not something intentionally placed in by the developers to give keen players an unfair advantage. Xorjin 08:00, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Cheats would include any activity that is not allowed under the terms of service. Some companies allow cheat codes in single player games but in multi player games cheats are generally not allowed.Jonathan888 06:18, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I tried renaming the article to Cheating in RuneScape, but that name is a redirect to here! I'll go to the Wikipedia chat room and ask for one of those special moves that only admins can do. —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 20:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
 * That would have been me, who also happens to keep things moving on WP:RRM, so I threw the whole bot-and-link-tables jobbie at it, too. Rob Church Talk 15:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, let me express my unhappiness about the rename happening without a discussion as was invited below. Also note that the article changed majorly in content and style on Oct 14 which is after most of the above comments were made. Wikipedia:User:Jonathan888
 * Quite right, which is why I undid the move no less than 30 seconds ago. I do apologise; I responded to an in-channel request to do a move, and just assumed good faith; regardless, I should have checked the talk page. Rob Church Talk 15:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiki procedure for renaming article
If the several editors that have called for name change are still interested in making a name change to this article, lets have a discussion about it here. Please sign your request by adding four tildas: '~' after your comment, I'm asking for this since the article is vandalized several times a week.

First, please read these two articles: Wikipedia:Naming conventions Wikipedia:Naming conflict

If you believe that this article should be renamed please comment here. If we still get opinions to that effect then we will add a name review template to the article header and have a discussion based on the criteria given in the Wikipedia:Naming conflict guideline and then try to reach a consensus decision.Jonathan888 16:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Comments about moving this article
Issues brought up by editors so far:


 * What is a cheat?
 * some editors feel a cheat is only a legitimate code put in by the developers, others feel that a cheat is any exploit that gives advantage in the game.
 * are bots and macros a type of cheat?


 * does this article contain 'cheats'? I feel that it does contain cheats.Jonathan888 15:44, 7 November 2005 (UTC) If other editors feel differently please comment here.
 * other issues that editors may have.

Names and spelling variations
Currently in the 'common scams' section we have the spelling 'armour' which is UK consistent and also the spelling used in the game. This has been changed back and forth by different editors thinking it is a typo. We really should use the version that the game uses. Jonathan888 15:52, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Vote for Removal
By discussing cheating to this degree (a la posting links to cheat sites and the like) you are only encouraging others to help contribute to the degeneration of RuneScape in the first place.

I don't know how to do it exactly, but I propose this article be nominated for deletion. Mike 01:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It's an encyclopedia Mike, it's not promoting a point of view or restricting itself to 'allowable' knowledge. Perhaps if you played in member worlds you'd be less concerned about the degeneration of runescape (I quite enjoy members and the cost is so small as to be negligible - I know an 11 year old who does odd jobs to stay a member).  I'd like to encourage JAGeX to actually DO something about the cheaters and scammers that's more effective.  Knowledge is like water, it flows around boundaries and obstacles - this is a free thought venue and it's better to try to improve the game through positive actions rather than restrictive actions (in terms of knowledge).  IMHO of course :) Fortunately, only wikipedia admins have delete power. Jonathan888 (talk) 01:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


 * If only you knew.Mike 01:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete. Please do so. This is almost illegal activity. Consider this the first vote for deletion.Davidizer13 18:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, there are wikipedia guidelines for removal of pages, you can look them up, this article doesn't qualify under those guidelines as far as I can tell - distaste with or not liking the content of an article doesn't qualify for deleting it. In fact, this section created by Shadowdancer Mike is not the way wikipedia works: wikipedia is supposed to work by consensus, not by one opinion being preferred or forced over another, voting is not how things are done in Wikipedia.  Because of the strong anti-page bias by some editors and the continual vandalism, I am removing unsigned comments as I said I would. Jonathan888 (talk) 13:57, 21 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The information stated here does not fit here. It may fit in a Wikibook (in fact, 3/4 of the articles derivated from RuneScape fit Wikibooks better than Wikipedia), but I agree that this page should go through a serious rewrite according to Wikipedia is not a tutorial, HOWTO or FAQ, or maybe an AFD process due Vandalism (the information stated in the article vandalizes copyrighted work from a third party, which may bring problems to Wikipedia). -- ReyBrujo 06:14, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

AFD nomination.


 * Tell me what you want edited, or where the POV is and I'll edit it, stop accusing copyright violation - everything has been written, not copied, or make a valid basis for your copyright claim. Or explain this term 'vandalizes copyright'?  Does that mean that I can't use information that has been copyrighted in DIFFERENT WORDS??  And sign your AFD nomination today or I'll delete it, just like all other unsigned comments get deleted. Jonathan888 (talk) 16:15, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that this article should be nominated for AfD so this can be debated openly. IMO, so long as this article is talking about cheating in RuneScape (which is both notable and verifiable) it should be kept. Any information on how to cheat in RuneScape should be removed. In fact, I'm going to crop some links right now. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 15:56, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * A vote for deletion cannot take place in the article's talk page, this is why we have WP:AFD. Any votes placed here are largely irrelevant, if you want to get rid of the article, nominate it. Aside from that, the content of this, or any other Wikipedia article, should not be censored in any way. The only legal considerations to keep in mind are the laws of the state of Florida, where the servers are hosted. And frankly, including summary information about MMORPG cheats or exploits is too petty of an issue to put the Wikimedia foundation in any real danger. (This has already been discussed with regards to the coverage of computer hacking)


 * Whether this article is encyclopedic, or notable, is a completely different matter. These cheats certainly deserve a brief mention at RuneScape, but I agree with ReyBrujo that Wikibooks is a much better fit for the rest of the article. --ˉˉanetode╟╦╢ 16:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikibook
Ok, sounds like a wikibook is in order, I'll look into it... is it generally accepted under guidelines to link from inside an ecyclopedia article to the wikibook for more specific information?Jonathan888 (talk) 16:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, add ˉˉanetode╟╦╢ 16:22, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Sportsmanship, Wiki policy, and the law
Being an online gamer myself, I hate cheaters and other sociopaths who take the fun out of multiplayer games. However, this is an encyclopedia, not a site for promoting fair play. Both RuneScape and the cheats found or invented for it are notable, making this article a legitimate encyclopedic entry. If you believe otherwise&mdash;by all means, follow the instructions in Wikipedia:Guide to deletion and nominate the article for deletion.

The claims of ("almost") illegality are ridiculous. Under which jurisdiction is this illegal? Not that this would matter anyway. Wikipedia has many articles discussing activities which are illegal, such as Assault and Robbery. We even have a detailed article about Lock picking, including links to how-to sites. So, if you think RuneScape cheats should be deleted because it promotes anti-social behaviour, think again.

Furthermore, do you really believe you will reduce cheating by removing this information from Wikipedia? Cheaters have dozens of sources for their hacks, most reachable from Google in three or four clicks. This "security by obscurity" approach just doesn't work. On the contrary; by bringing these issues up for discussion in a wider forum such as Wikipedia, we are more likely to get enough pressure on game developers to do a better job at eliminating the possibility for many of those cheats.

I'm unclear what the expression "vandalizes copyrighted work" means; this is not a term found in Intellectual Property legislation. If you believe the article infringes on a copyright, please cite your reference, showing which portion(s) were copied and from where, and we will deal with it promptly. Owen&times; &#9742;  16:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Sportsmanship: I want to clarify here too. I play RuneScape, I follow the rules for the most part (my sin is that I've been known to point other players to help sites for quests or skills).  I don't use any macros, I don't run any scams, in fact I believe that the more people know how the scam works, the less effective it is.  When I got involved in this article, I saw a mess, and I cleaned it up as best I could.  I would like to see Jagex improve the game to make it safer, especially for kids, my boys play the game and my younger son got his account ripped off by a password scam.  I've been scammed twice by various trade scams.  I really believe knowlege is power: if you know how a scam works you can stop it.Jonathan888 (talk) 17:26, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * While I don't play RuneScape, I do agree that this article is informative and alerts players about what to watch out for. The table of rules points this out clearly and is well constructed. I chose a random sentence from the article and tried searching for it in Google and Wikipedia was the only site that came up for it, so I don't see where the copyright violation comes into play. --jh51681 17:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I have mixed feelings about this, as I'm a RuneScape player moderator as well as a Wikipedian. As a RuneScape moderator, I feel that this article would will cause more harm to RuneScape. However, as a Wikipedian, I also value its encyclopedic content. --Ixfd64 18:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Since I have very little legal background, I question whether the Two person team trade scam, Clan trust test or loyalty test scam and [Alt + F4] scam, item duplication scam sections violate the RuneScape Terms of Service, where it states You must not encourage, or attempt to trick other players into breaking our rules. That is why I support the AFD, not because the article should be deleted (for me, it should be transwikied, and the transwiki rules state the article must be AFD'ed before being transwikied), but instead to see what the other people think about that so that I can learn. -- ReyBrujo 03:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The comparison to Lock picking is invalid because Locksmiths by trade are required to be able to pick locks to let homeowners into their houses when they've accidentally locked themselves out. Conversely; cheating in RuneScape or any other MMORPG for that matter has no legitimate/legal basis. Mike 20:40, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Locksmiths do not learn their trade by reading pages of Wikipedia. I am not interested in the "legal basis" of cheating on RuneScape; the fact that it is perfectly legal is besides the point. The only question is about having this article in Wikipedia, and as far as that is concerned, this topic is far more notable than, say, King Black Dragon. Owen&times; &#9742;  21:05, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Continuing vandalism and moral policing
My impression from the previous discussion on Wikipedia is that the decision was made to keep the page but move it to Wikibooks. It was NOT decided to edit the article to conform to Jagex standards or to take out encyclopedic information which could be used to cheat or which balanced out negative statements about cheats.

I now notice the following have been removed:

1) all reference to specific cheating techniques apart from scamming; 2) discussion of motivations for cheating; 3) discussion of common low-level rulebreaking ("griefing/TOS violations"); 4) discussions of evolutions and history of cheating - such as the "knife bug", previous methods of protocol alteration which were countered, etc; 5) reference to specific programs (past and present) such as AutoMiner and Scar; 6) links to sites which discuss cheating, with the sole exception of the "anti-cheat" guides (which thankfully have this time been left intact); 7) discussions of the ethos of "cheat" communities.

It is an important part of any neutral discussion of social deviance to give full consideration to motivations for deviance.

A history of RS cheating should include reference to the cheating techniques developed and how they were countered.

Neutrality implies that sites linked to activities disapproved of by many users not be removed. For instance, the article on NAMBLA has a link to the NAMBLA webpage (rightly so in my view, though I deplore child molesters and their advocates). Anyone who takes cheating at online games more seriously than child molesting certainly has some mixed-up priorities!!! But more crucially, it goes against NPOV to censor links which are relevant to an article because of a belief that they are immoral. By all means a warning should be included as before, that those caught cheating risk being banned from RuneScape, and that people who look for cheats risk getting keylogged or scammed. I don't mean link to every site which claims to offer RS cheats, but certainly sites like Kaitnieks and Sythe which have discussion of cheating in RS are links to relevant sites. (I'm not a member, owner or supporter of these sites, I simply find them a helpful source of information on RS cheating).

I would also add as a secondary concern, that I would rather people go to these kind of cheat community sites, where they will learn first-hand about the difficulties and dangers of cheating and the risks of being scammed, than go randomly searching for cheats and end up getting their account hacked.

The only objections raised by the pro-Jagex lobby here are that "cheating serves no function" etc etc. I, too, find many forms of ingame cheating frustrating. But, 1) at the same time I understand why many players cheat (and I mean MANY - the 5000 just banned from RS Classic being hardly an insignificant number AND THATS JUST THE ONES THEY CAUGHT), 2) I don't plan to censor knowledge of things I don't like, certainly not in a forum dedicated to NPOV.

Many people who cheat at RuneScape (and at other games) do so because they have been, or feel, mistreated by the company that runs the game. Either because they feel playability is reduced for corporate advantage, or because they think they've been victims of excessive or authoritarian practices when playing fairly. I have had my own bad experience with Jagex. I then did some research on this matter and found similar, worse cases of abuse by Jagex, such as one person who had a very high level account banned for macroing when he hadn't macroed. This person then made a new account based on macroing, raised it to very high stats and sold it for real-world money, to get back what he'd lost from member subs to Jagex. (Actually Jagex have a term in their TOS which says they can ban someone FOR NO REASON AT ALL - hardly giving them the moral high-ground they like to claim!) I haven't put specifics in the article because it's anecdotal and personal, instead trying to give general descriptions of these kinds of motives.

Some also argue that cheating is needed to equalise the position of players disadvantaged in other ways (e.g. by not having as much time, or people who can't afford memberships, who buy them for RS gold off other players on cheat sites); and the whole cheat "scene" reminds me a lot of the hacker "scene", in the sense discussed for instance in the Hacker Manifesto, as a kind of reclaiming of technology and altering of the balance of power.

I say this while also recognising that the anti-cheating lobby have their own arguments, for instance that cheating can take the fun out of the game, and that some players can gain an advantage because they have access to a cheat program which others don't. I have seen players get annoyed ingame because a competitive mining or woodcutting spot is overrun by players who seem to be macroing, people who've lost accounts and items from being scammed, and resentment-fuelled speculation as to who might be a cheat. But the point is that there's two sides, and the very un-NPOV dismissal of the pro-cheating side, or worse, of information about its existence, is in my view completely against the spirit of Wikipedia.

So, what needs to be recognised here is that there is a debate with two sides, and that NPOV requires giving coverage to both sides. And an encyclopedic approach requires describing the views of both sides and the history of the conflict between them.

As for the arguments about legality, The only way in which cheating is "illegal", is if TOS violations are considered illegal (in which case, swearing on a no-swear forum, giving inaccurate details to a market researcher, etc etc, are all "illegal" too). If it's an offence at all, it's a civil offence for which one party could sue the other, not a criminal offence (and the wronged party can in theory sue for damages). But, I have never heard of companies suing people for TOS violations. And the article would be... what? Inciting TOS violations? Aside from that it was never actually encouraging anything, just saying it happened - I'd like to see them try to make THAT one stick in court! If reporting on the existence of any activity which could constitute a TOS violation is a criminal offence, then I daresay very little information would be legal at all.

Basically this article needs to be restored to how it was (and if anything extended by those with more knowledge both of past/present cheating techniques and of how these were detected or eliminated in the past), and kept an eye on for further vandalism (since I don't have time to do this myself).

Note that this page is now on my watch list, and I will be paying attention to any edits on this page. I am a regular contributor to Wikibooks as well, so it is something I will catch. It is amazing at how many of these vandal attacks occured, and vandals vandalizing the grafitti of of vandals. Talk about a problem!

As far as the illegal nature of the activity, all I can point to is WB:WIN and WB:DP, as well as a bunch of VfDs where content describing illegal activities was removed from Wikibooks. This content may be deleted according to that preceedence, but it certainly would be up for a full VfD that would take likely a month or two to resolve, giving all parties ample time to attack or defend this sort of content here. Also, you are welcome to make changes to give the discussion a more neutral tone. --Rob Horning 02:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)