I know of the section, but how do I check to see if someone is a gambler there?



I see, thanks; I'll think about it for a while and make a decision. A temp ban would be acceptable, but I'd rather not get a perma

this will be unhelpful advice but you might have a job that makes it worth it to just spend an extra hour at work and buy bonds from jagex and sell them for gp which is a guarantee safe and secure method to buy gp.

And for the bans, sometimes they are within 24h, sometimes your account gets flagged for the next ban wave which might happen in a few weeks or months or year. Some people get a 1 day temp ban, others get an immediate perma ban (often the new accounts), it seems to me very luck based/random. It's a lot to do with a mix of jagex incompetence and the excuse "we don't disclose our methods" and also there was a huge wave of bot bans ban in 2010-2015 (there was a video about it on youtube) where jagex proved that they CAN ban 99% of bots, but they obviously choose not to. And same goes with RWT. They probably want a small steady stream of people getting "random" bans just to keep people scared and pretend that jagex is against RWT. But from the numbers, I think all the bots/RWT is making jagex more money. For one thing, they always brag about their "high player count" but never mention half of those are bots. And yes bots and RWT go hand in hand, that's why I keep mentioning it. Jagex was threatened about 15 years ago from credit card companies, due to all the scams, that they would pull out from their game, so jagex pulled some major moves. The biggest moves were around 2010 when they REMOVED the wilderness AND put trade limits. This killed the game for a huge chunk of players who quit including me, while the dineyfication continued and the devolution of combat. It's the reason we got osrs in the first place and became more popular than rs3 itself. This whole issue is actually quite big and jagex understands this. They understand RWT and botting are a big part of the game. But if I were in their shoes I'd just offer better deals on bonds rather than yet another "oh we're raising the memberhip prices again" (which they did btw this week). Reason why RWT is still around is because jagex prices are terrible.

On a side note, this week I played some game called ass shores made by the original dev of runescape, andrew gower. Kinda terrible game. He left around 2010 ish when he sold his soul and company to the investors which turned the game into disney mobile game microtransaction garbage rs3. Can't say osrs is so much different when max gear feels like minimum requirement for bosses like dt2, yama, delve, raids... since bond prices went up in $$$, they might go back up to 15mil especially when raid 4 will come out, which is probably this year I assume? They made a post about it. Sure, you'd get more gp for your $$$$ but the melee gear (and some mage) will also go up in price. Everyone will want to try raid 4.

usually can just go to their profile & look at the recent posts / recent topics section

Yeah the exchange rate through bonds is pretty horrible; I was also laid off somewhat recently, but even if I wasn't I was never interested in doing that through bonds. I think my concerns have somewhat relaxed though, since it seems I likely wouldn't get a perma ban.

I've been aware of the botting scene since around 2009, and I understand jagex definitely can't just ban everyone. It's an interesting nuanced song and dance. But it's a shame the company is semi-frequently sold between investors. It causes turbulent shit every so often. If it wasn't for Mod Ash, I doubt this game would be a fraction of what it is today. The employees there are underpaid and are everything holding this ship together.



Gotcha, thought there was some additional trick; thanks

I'd probably say something like... indie games are the ones unspoiled by the investor problem. I also call it "career managers" similar to the soviet onion "career politicians" and this is a global human problem that transends nations, races, genders or religion. You won't get rid of it. If you go to indie game developers, often times you get these really high IQ high quality positive people, and then there's autistic devs like andrew gower who come up with insanely bizzard illogical ideas and are extremely stubborn, narrow minded and don't listen. For example:
Pass Duration,Price (approx.),Monthly Equivalent
30 Days,$5.99,$5.99
90 Days,$23.99,~$8.00
365 Days,$74.99,~$6.25

so... CHEAPEST option is 1 month. Most expensive is 3 months. Mid expensive is 1 year. Did you see this happen anywhere else on the planet? Does sound logical to you in any way? This mindset is taken all throughout the game. You either run into the investor problem, or the self abosrbed/narcissistic/ego dev problem. And to be fair, andrew gower did spend over 3 mil of his own money into the game. But that doesn't automatically make the game good. Most people measure these games by player count. His game runs around 100-200 active players. Runescape probably 200k half which are bots.

It's similar in real life... you either work as a slave at someone else's company, or you make your own company and run it how you want. And it's easier said than done.

I wouldn't put too much faith in one single guy mod ash, he's part of the machine. He's still an obedient lapdog. And the people at jagex are severely overpaid and underqualified. I could single handedly make the game a lot better. They don't want to. They're arrogant. I worked 2 years in offices in england, I know these people. Leftists who pretend they are pro lgtb, not racist, not xenophobic, but whenever I applied to office jobs, I always got rejected. I only got accepted at one because the manager somehow was a long time blue collar worker. The "extreme right wing" people who the media constantly points fingers at. In the eyes of jagex, you NEED to have a BRITISH college diploma, otherwise your opinion is worthless. They'll never say anything to your face, this is white english culture. That's why people mistakengly believe "english people are so polite" completely wrong. They talk shit behind your back more than anyone else. In fact, white english people are some of the most racist and xenophobic people in europe. If you want more open people, it's the mediteraneans. Portuguese, spanish, italians, greek.

So no, jagex people are severely overpaid and underqualified. Very arrogant. They can run their game however they want and I can choose whether to play it or not. Same way people choose not to play ass shores. You can try it yourself if you want, it's a free game on steam.

I'll also have to give an honorable mention to the nameless devs and contributors of the rs wiki and runelite. If these people ran jagex, game would be x100 better. Similar to heroes of might and magic 3 complete or deus ex revisioned. Some people do it for money, some do it for passion.

Let's remember that Andrew Gower studied compsci at school, and struck thunder with runescape while he was basically still a kid. Sure he had plenty of years to accumulate the additionally needed skills in running a company, but that's obviously something he wasn't equipped to do. From what I remember he tried being hands on for as long as possible, thus delaying the accumulation of faculties he needed for running a company well. There are so many aspects that go into it, and when you're so razor focused on one area for a couple months, it's easy to lose sight of other aspects (such as the players). This is why becoming publicly traded is a death sentence for genuinely good companies. It essentially becomes a legal requirement to try and make more money than the previous quarter, and it only gets worse when larger investment firms get even bigger chunks and have a bigger influence. Jagex isn't a public company, but it's tossed around between owners in an equally toxic way.


Maybe jagex adjusted their salaries, but when I last looked into it (granted that was a decade ago) they were only paying like 35k pounds. They were underpaying the market rate, because they could. Every kid wanted to work for jagex.

Where did you get your degree from that you've faced discrimination in the UK?

Also curious to hear what you think about Valve as a separate subject.

it's a pattern that I saw with many devs and you run into this issue if you ever run into programming. It can be so complicated and difficult on the brain, that it's usually the people with severe autism that can handle it. And on average, autistic people have very low social skills or perceive the world differently. Being headstrong is part of that. So for example you might ask them a simple issue and they start throwing their special programmer high tech jargons around, and they don't care if you understand or not. It's your fault if you don't understand what they say. Or just throw you a big pile of code without any explanation. Programmers are notorious for not explaining things properly, making it hard for outsiders to understand, "doing it their way regardless what everyone thinks", they get stuck in their own world. Any average person can eventually learn to drive a car. Not just everyone can learn to code. Andrew gower is a good example, he is good at coding, but terrible at social skills or listening to people. Heck, just from a few posts ago, you mentioned you know oda, and he did admit he has some autism. You HAVE to be autistic to do the same thing 1000000000000000 times. And yes he became good at this one single thing and that's how the world works. Being the jack of all trades, master of none, means you're some "Handyman" good for nothing. Being specialized can get you a lot of money. Back in his day in 2000-2005s, programmers were high value. Now in 2026 those days are gone, demand for programmers is very low, while the super ultra mega 30 year experienced "full stack developer". We got software and ai that can make the code for us now. Templates.

"he accumulated experience" did he? Go play ass shores and let's talk about his "years of experience". If he is so experienced then why is his game dead and full of negative reviews? We can talk in detail about the specific programming and design issues that he made, if you want. Just because a person spent 20 years on something, doesn't mean they're good at it. In fact, I run into this issue a lot at my work... people who think they're great and amazing because "they got experience" meanwhile they can't communicate, document or organise their work place. Plenty of examples that I can give. I learned this back in 2010 on a different game, "world of tanks"... some people learn slowly, some learn fast, some never learn, some "unlearn", some are good at only certain things and bad at others.

You're giving credit to the wrong person, there were hundreds of employees working at jagex back in 2006 and if you do the quests again and look up the devs, you will see the stark difference in the way quests get played. Each person has their own way of doing it, even when the decision is guided by a single person like "mod mark" - who is yet another incompetent moron who didn't even play the game, youtube the clip of him dropping iron ore.

Again, I worked 2 years with english people in england, I know how offices work. You got some incompetent idiots, some highly skilled people, some who care, some who don't, some who do care but can't do anything right, some who are so slow, some who goof around but do a good job. Andrew gower should've stuck to what he did best, programming. And to be honest his programming sucked hard. I remember 2006, java was TERRIBLE. Consumed so many resources, couldn't get it to run faster, not like you could get a better gpu or ram, couldn't even change the resolution until 2010 (when some OTHER programmers came and fixed it for him), a reminder that diablo 2 was in 2000 and gothic 1 around 2001, I think you don't have a perspective here. Runescape 2006 looked AND RAN like it was from 1990-1995.

Andrew gower simply got very lucky with the recepie, like quests, skills, open world, mmorpg, replay value, subscriptions to make money and keep it going, and despite the fact that I hate it, the grindy nature kept people on the payroll for their company.

I don't know which country you live in but 35k for a cozy office job is pretty decent. It was 10 years ago for me but I think lowest was 28k pounds. England is actually a POOR country with POOR people who can barely afford their mortgages. And judging from the videos I've seen, jagex doesn't seem to have stressed staff or bad conditions. Actually clean offices with lots of brand new equipment. Mind you, they're a GAMING company. You can google the stories of blizzard. I've been a few months at L'oreal in london and that was a huge scam for the women, bunch of "interns" writing articles for free. Heck, I worked 1 day at subway because I couldn't believe my ears, they called the job title a "sandwich artist". You came in, made sandwitches and got paid ZERO. Halfway through my day, a college kid came. He told me that he was there for 3 months unpaid but "soon he will get hired". Subway. Minimum wage. He was 100% serious about it, no sarcasm. I think you don't realize just how riddled with scams on top of scams on top of scams UK is and I could give many more examples. I unclogged toilets in offices for less than 35k a year.

Jagex can continue their blizzard strategy as much as they want, back in 2005 we had our flash games but the big tech monopoly came in and destroyed it. No word on the news. Tons of free flash games made by kids, wiped out. Adventure quest remained. These guys like jagex are part of the machine. And the employees there just keep their little slave heads down. So no, I won't offer sympathy, the same way I don't offer sympathy to the germans who "were not nazi" but just "minded their own business" when the nazi took over, and did nothing.

Sooner or later jagex will fall too, game servers will shut down, private servers will pop up more and more and we will pick and choose until those private servers die off too.

And the investor issue is not limited to video games at all. Look at "dragon's den" on youtube. Those are REAL investors.

I can't mention details here but I'm going to say I'm from eastern europe, the part where in england, we get called "gypsies" despite being white. That word that was put in concentration camps in ww2 and hundreds of thousands died but nobody mentions them.

I don't have much experience with valve but I got a few examples, I remember years ago I Tried to play blood omen 2 or soul reaver 2 and valve basically sold me these 2 games without being tested. Didn't work. Didn't bother to patch the games. It was cheap and on sale, I didn't bother for refunds. But they got their corporate mentality too. Another example when I asked for a refund for a different game, I didn't actually get a refund. I got their version of the "forum gold". Should be illegal but isn't. Plenty of companies pull this crap with their "company credit". People give valve too much credit, they don't understand that they just do it for the money. They grab some licences for some old forgotten games, make huge profit off them, but don't bother to patch or update any bugs on them - it's always the community. Another example of a broken game, "knights of the old republic 1", I put a review there probably, discussing the unplayable bugs... I think like game crashing? I also noticed they incorported "dos box" into some other games like "constructor" that I recently played and it actually worked fine. But I think people don't realize that valve inserts a VERY tiny percentage of the profit they get from these games, into making the games playable at all. Just so that they're playable. They're not interested in improving games or fixing bugs like communities are - again with heroes 3 and deus ex examples. People praise valve simply because all the other companies are absolute scumbags. Like EA, ubisoft, blizzard, ask an ai chat bot and they will tell you stories and stories. That's what you get when you hire "career managers" simply because "they got a degree in it and 5 years experience in an office!". Also I noticed their "equity" in england... professional co-worker didn't get promoted to manager even though he deserved it in my oppinion, disciplined guy, knowledgeble, cared about the work. Random bimbo in high heels and big tits came and got hired. She never spoke to us, she never introduced herself to us, she just sat in the manager's office and listened to music all day. I asked the white english 60ish year old guy about his opinion on equality. "oh yes we definitely need more women". I got more examples. Differnet co-worker woman, engineer designer job... her background? Was a kindergarten teacher. Some other young girl, she had some engineering degree, I forgot. When you looked at her work projects, they were absolute total garbage. A reminder that jagex will ban you if you criticize LGTB.

Also, we saw the circus of muh big streamers go to jagex HQ recently... and I say okay, you goofed around with stupid arcade machines or oversized toys... are we gonna talk about the game? Nope. It was all for show. Never touched the issue of botting, cheating, "clienting", updates, oda constantly admitted to RWT in the past but somehow isn't permabanned. And I mean HUGE ammounts of RWT, billions. But if one of us peasants RWT for 10mil and got caught, permaban. It's all superficial same as politicians. That's why I got zero sympathy towards these snakes. In the eyes of white english people, if you say something to their face, you are being "very rude". It's similar to kyoto culture in japan, look it up. Bunch of snakes who talk shit behind your back.

English culture stands on censorship, they arrested 15k people last year for comments they made online, look up youtube channel "crime bodge". I got banned too permanently without notice from facebook and they demanded my real life ID "to verify my identity". In germany when I had to buy a sim, I had to prove my identity in front of a real person with my passport, to a real person. 10k arrests last year in germany. The censorship is the main reason why the racist xenophoboes in england voted brexit. It was so bad that I had to leave. I wasn't gonna make a career there from unclogging toilets. They voted brexit for a reason and I will respect it. So what was the outcome of that? They imported probably x5 more people from africa, india, asia, to compensate for the eastern europeans who left. And the racist xenophobic tensions got even higher, look up channels "lotus eaters" "modernity" for their propaganda, but they never have an actual migrant outsider like me tell them the truth. Look up WesleyWinter for actual footage of the protests, this isn't some mainstream media BBC propaganda.

England is torn between these 2 sides, the racist xenophobes and the extremist LGTB. They're not interested in civil discussions. It's either their rules or you get out. You are a "guest" in their country despite paying taxes. Sometimes even more taxes than them (emergency national insurance tax scams, different story).

And for the "migrants" who "steal welfare", okay, then don't offer welfare. But the majority are white english people. Migrants aren't the ones deciding these policies, it's their white english people. Policies such as, google "how to become a magistrate uk" - oficial governemnt website says "no qualifications or experience required", magistrate is like a small claims judge. Different stories and examples.

All of these problems and more are part of their culture, which gets reflected onto their people like jagex. So, in summary, don't believe their lies. Zero sympathy to them. And mod ash is part of the machine.

You're misquoting me. Where did I say he accumulated experience within the context that warrants that response? I said there was time that could have allotted for "experience" (as you put it) to accumulate a broader range of relevant skills. I at no point implied he actually accumulated said skills. We were on the same page, yet you seem to be fighting a strawman here.

Who said I don't give them any credit? Are you assuming I thought the entirety of runescape in 2006 was handled solely by Andrew Gower himself?

You are making wild assumptions about me

I've worked in the software industry for over a decade, but let me tell you this is how the world works across most industries

You went to the wrong place; there are tons of kiosks where you can get a sim card without needing to provide any ID at all

Man, this sounds severely bitter; if I felt this harshly towards the team handling OSRS then I don't think I'd play it at all

This post was edited by Vuff on Mar 11 2026 11:36am

I'm sure the games 200-250 peak concurrent players would agree with you.
I'm surprised he didn't get sued by Jagex for even trying to make such a game that was obviously the same exact thing only much worse.

Sorry, I completely misread, my bad, you're right.

Then I misread that too, sorry.

You're right, sorry. The topic was irritating me and I lashed out on you despite the fact that you were completely not at fault for any of this. Sorry.

I still appreciate many aspects that are positive but I prefer to talk about the negatives. The negatives are where you can talk and discuss to make it better. If you asked me about factorio, I'd simply say "perfect game" unlike the manuscript I wrote here. Don't get me wrong, I criticize jagex and runescape because I want them to be better. But a lot of the people are very bad. Each with their opinion.

Also yes you can buy sim cards from supermarkets in germany but that wasn't my issue. After buying, I also had to get a high speed internet connection and a HD camera too, just to prove my identity. And register on the internet. Otherwise the sim card won't work. I assume it's german legislation, not company policy. I wouldn't fathom them wanting to do this.


yes, the 200 players won't agree with me. The other 20000 who quit the game would probably agree with me. https://steamdb.info/app/2791440/charts/#max If you like it, go play it and I hope you enjoy it. I enjoyed some parts of it but I couldn't stand the grinding even if I were to bot the game. Literally x100 more grindy than runescape. Go try it, it's free.

I don't care if it's a literal clone or not, I only play games for fun. I don't care about muh investors losing money because muh copyright. I shamelessly watch pirated movies. I'm not gonna shed a tear for hollywood millionaires or gaming companies like blizzard that have the money to give the CEO 200 mil usd.

In fact, if it was up to me, I would just make a literal clone of runescape, like a private server, and fix it the way I believe it should be fixed. But that would be a waste of time.

I'm not sure what you mean by getting sued by jagex. It's ridiculous to sue the guy who made runescape, and also ridiculous to sue "because it's a combat + skilling game" whereas andrew already copied that idea from other 90s games like scepter of goth, abermud, ultima online, nethack and rogue. Not that I played any of them, I'm just citing.

just because runescape got popular doesn't mean they hold the copyright for RPG with skilling mechanics.