Wilderness Updates

Wilderness Updates - Runescape

Runescape is a Java-based MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd.. As part of the game there was an area called the wilderness where players could go to kill each other for gain and enjoyment.
However, as of 10 December 2007, Jagex deleted the wilderness in the wake of a mini-game called Bounty Hunter.

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Bounty Hunter

Bounty hunter is the replacement of the wilderness. In the wilderness, the area was sorted into levels, from one to 56. The difference between players levels and the wilderness level would determined who could attack who. E.G: A level 40 player could attack a level 10 player only in level 30 wilderness and above. There were areas of single and multi-combat. For many, the wilderness was the focal point of Runescape, and it came as a shock to them when Jagex vanquished the wilderness in favour of Bounty Hunter.
Bounty Hunter is about 40% the size of the wilderness, and sorted into 3 categories; Level 3-55, 50-100, and 95+. Bounty Hunter is all multi combat, which means it's very hard for players to fight 1v1 without being `teamed`. Also, when you enter the Bounty Hunter arena, you are given a certain players to kill. You can attack other people, but if you kill them and pick up their items, you can not leave the arena for 180 seconds, during which time you could be killed by other players, losing both your drop and theirs. It was generally thought that Bounty Hunter was a bad update.

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Protests

This update caused a large number of protests, as for many the wilderness was the only fun part of Runescape. The Runescape forums were full of complaints, and many chose to write poems about it. One particular one was called `Twas Two Weeks`, and often when one looked on the forums you would see this poem. There was also many riots, but the main one was in World66 (server), Falador. This riot was estimated to gather up to 1,000 players, and considering there is a max server limit of 2,000, this was quite an achievement. Many players quit due to the updates, or at least unsubscribed from their membership.

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Reason behind updates

The reasons behind all these updates is real world item trading, where players would buy Gold off of websites for real money. An earlier update was when the duel arena, a place where players could stake money in fights without losing their items when they died, was reduced to a 3,000 coins max stake, in comparison with the millions usually staked there daily, to ensure real world item traders couldn't use the Duel Arena to discretely trade money. Jagex also banned players from giving away too much wealth, so you couldn't simply trade it over, and with the party room, a place where players would submit items into a box, balloons would fall, and if you were lucky you would get the items in the chest, they updated it so as if anyone was having a party with too much wealth, everyone who was using a bank of Runescape would be told about it, and offered a free teleport to the party room. These updates, along with the wilderness update, pretty much but an end to Real world item trading.

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Economy

The wilderness updates affected more than just Player Killing; it also affected the market of runescape. PKing funded most of Runescape, as PKers would have to buy food, potions, weapons, armour, amulets, capes, and much more. Now that a lot of people have quit due to the updates, it is much harder for people to earn money by selling items to other players. This isn't helped by the Grand Exchange, an update a few weeks before Bounty Hunter, where players could offer their items at a set price, and other players would offer to buy them, and then the system would set you up with another player, rather than having to stand around saying " selling sharks " or something else. As a consequence of this update, the laws of supply and demand prevailed, and the surplus caused a downward trend on the unit price. This may have caused yet more players to quit.

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