For a long time, many people have claimed that they can “Cheat” Runescape to gain unfair advantages over other players who are using the game. Whilst there are debates about what the term “cheating” means, according to TheFreeDictionary, it means ” To act dishonestly; practice fraud.”. So, how would this rank against the majority of players opinions on cheating?
The most common type of cheating on Runescape is scamming, this is when a player makes an unfair trade with another, permanently takes an item which they offered to return or not paying a person for a service that they have completed for them. Scamming is a large issue in Runescape as even with the large amount of fool proof methods to prevent known scamming methods, there is always another way to get around them thanks to the mischievous minds of players, where word of mouth travels as quick as a bullet.
Jagex, the company who have created Runescape has highly publicised that they will not tolerate scamming in any way and those who wish to do so will be banned from the game permanently. However, this does make one wonder, whilst Runescape received over 100,000 scamming reports last year, only 9,284 accounts were banned (A personal source request). Why do they only caution people when 99% of those cautioned re-offend and are then banned.
Another type of “Cheating” is using Macro’s, Bots or other similar programs which automate the process of skill building and/or item collection, which the account holder then sells on for money. A popular type of bot offers to automatically mine an ore in Runescape known as Coal, this is easy to mine, common in mining area’s, sells for a decent price as is mineable by most users. Not surprisingly, these tools claim to have Anti-Ban protection on them and high reliability claims. Since July 2008, a new set of Random Events have been added, nearly crushing the entire bot industry within Runescape. So far, only one bot (For fair play purposes, this will not be named) has managed to overcome all these features and again, not surprisingly made by former Jagex employee’s and a team of gaming specialists who are getting paid for what they do.
The final common type of “Cheating” are Stat Changers and game exploits. So far in the history of Jagex, not 1 bug/glitch has been found which can enable a user to change their own stats or others’. All of these are simply after your account details, claiming to need your Username and password to enable the program to do it’s job. I have downloaded 20 of these programs myself for testing purposes, all of them have turned out to be viruses and account thieves, 18 of which started to display pornographic advertisements on my screen whilst the other two simply stole my password (which was a test account).
I would therefore like to proudly announce and add to the collection of similar reports, that there are no such thing as a real “Cheat” on Runescape, only failing attempts made by low lives who find ruining the real challenge of the game fun. From personal experience over the years, I have found that playing the game compared to using bots is much more fun, much more rewarding and far more enjoyable way to go about the game.