Runescape - Journey to 99 Magic and Ban
I mentioned before that I started high alching on Runescape again. I apparently did this so consistently and mechanically in my drive to get 99 magic that I got banned from the game.
As I discussed last November, high level alchemy was an attractive prospect for my current situation. It yields a net profit, the materials buy pretty easily and quickly, and it requires very little attention. I figured I would keep going as long as I can. In the process of making money, I would surely hit 99 magic eventually.
Per my post back in 2016 when I started playing again the previous time, I had 3,934,074 experience points (xp) in the magic skill. I know for sure that I didn’t do much magic training during that few month span of playing, especially not the magnitude of grinding that I had been doing lately. So I would ballpark and say I was still under 4,000,000 xp when I started back on October 15, 2017.
On November 8, I started actually recording my current magic xp periodically, to keep up with my pace and see how quickly I was coming along with the skill. On that day, I had reached 6,629,620 magic xp. Given my starting day of October 15, and my starting xp estimate of 4,000,000, I had gained 2,629,620 xp in 24 days. That came out to an average of just over 100,000 xp per day, even including weekends when I didn’t play as much.
With the level 99 requirement of 13,034,431 xp, I was well on the way. To get from where I was to 99 would take about 65 days of my 100k xp per day average. Just about 2 months. Getting 99 magic was no longer a pipe dream that I figured I would never actually obtain. It was perfectly within reach, and in a reasonable time frame at that.
After I started monitoring my xp pace, I noticed a marked increase in my gains. I could do 5,000 casts of high level alchemy on a good day, which came out to a little over 300k xp. Even on a slow day, I could manage at least 2,000 casts to get 130k xp. At the rate I was going, I could easily have 99 Magic by Christmas.
Though there was nothing officially holding me to that estimate, it became my goal. 99 magic was all but in the bag. I even came up with a chart to show how many casts of high level alchemy I needed between each level, so I could buy up my materials in bulk and know that I had enough to reach the next level. This may be a video game, but I had turned it into a science.
On December 4, I had just started branching out into items beyond my standard materials when I noticed that I couldn’t log in. After entering my login credentials, I got a message indicating that my ban had expired. What? I wasn’t banned, though. There’s no way I was, I have always played legitimately. In my 10+ years playing Runescape, I have never cheated in any way. No real world trading, no botting, no scamming, nothing. How would I have gotten banned?
I went to the Runescape website and logged in to check the status of my account. Sure enough, it claimed I was banned for botting or macroing. Supposedly, it was only a single day ban, but another area of my account summary indicated that the ban would expire in a year. Which one was it? Even if I was wrongfully banned, 24 hours wasn’t that big of a deal. A year, though? For something I didn’t do? I’d be livid.
On the account summary page, I requested evidence of my ban. According to Jagex, they do not release evidence for that specific type of rule breaking, “as to do so may compromise our detection methods.” I understand that they need to be able to ban actual bots, and releasing their methods would equip bot developers to circumvent these methods. However, I WASN’T BREAKING THE RULES. I wanted to know what I did that was flagged as botting to at least know that I should avoid that behavior.
I appealed the ban, since I obviously hadn’t committed the infraction that they were accusing me of. I learned that a ban appeal can take up to 28 days to process. A possible 28 day waiting period for a hopefully 1 day ban. Tell me that isn’t irony. (Actually, I genuinely don’t know if it is irony. I have a hard time discerning true irony from other literary devices. So if it is or isn’t irony, I would actually like it if someone would tell me.)
After a little bit of pouting, I figured there was no sense in worrying about it until 24 hours at the earliest. If it was indeed a 1 day ban, I assumed it would either be 24 hours after the ban was administered, or date change at 00:00 game time or 7:00 pm EST. And if it was a year ban… well, I didn’t want to think about that.
The following day after the time that I noticed the ban was in place, I tried to log in again. I didn’t really know what to expect. I crossed my fingers that I would be able to get in, but at the same time, I was trying to prepare myself for disappointment if it was a full year ban. If it was, I wouldn’t be able to play the game until nearly Christmas 2018. That idea hurt to consider.
Fortunately, I was able to log in again. I assume the “ban has expired” notification shows up during the last 24 hours of a ban, but while it is still active. To call it expired seems misleading to me, but that’s neither here nor there. I could log in, so the ban was only for a day. As for the “expiration date” of 04-Dec-2018, I assume that is how long the ban shows up on my account. So if I were to get banned for the same offense before then, I would get the doubled punishment, but if I were banned after that date, it would be as if it were my first ban. Something of a probation period, if you will. That’s my understanding of it, at least. I don’t plan on finding out for sure, as I won’t start botting now, and I certainly hope Jagex doesn’t falsely ban me again.
After this was all said and done, I got an email from Jagex Mod Selfie on December 8. He wanted to let me know that Jagex saw “no evidence to suggest the ban was applied in error” and that they would not be reversing their decision. Ah, that’s great. The ban has already been served, but it’s nice to know that you wouldn’t have reversed it anyway. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, “only me and Jesus know that I never broke the rules of Runescape.”
The fact that my appeal was rejected was insulting. I was not breaking the rules. I realize there isn’t any way that I could prove this to Jagex or anyone else, but I was playing legitimately. The principle of the matter that they would uphold a ban and suggest that I was using a bot is infuriating.
At that point, I was afraid to continue alching. I couldn’t discern what had flagged me as a bot, or how likely it was that I might get flagged again. If I already had a botting ban on my record, would they be watching my account more closely? I hated to abandon my goal of getting 99 magic before Christmas, but it just wasn’t worth the risk of another ban because of their overzealous bot detection methods. Specifically, I didn’t want to get banned again during the Advent event. Considering the free stuff that the event gives out every day, missing anything would suck.
Instead of continuing to work on magic, I decided to go to the Runespan and work on Runecrafting. It is similarly easy to absentmindedly work on, compared to high level alchemy. I considered maybe returning to magic training after the beginning of the year, but it is now well into January and I haven’t bothered yet.
Most of all, getting banned took the wind out of my sails. I was on a roll, but getting banned and forced to stop training for fear of getting banned again was just crushing for my grind morale. I may have made it to level 97 magic, but those last 2 levels feel like forever away now. Eventually, I’ll get back to training and finish out 99 magic. For now, I’m just not up to it.
As I discussed last November, high level alchemy was an attractive prospect for my current situation. It yields a net profit, the materials buy pretty easily and quickly, and it requires very little attention. I figured I would keep going as long as I can. In the process of making money, I would surely hit 99 magic eventually.
Per my post back in 2016 when I started playing again the previous time, I had 3,934,074 experience points (xp) in the magic skill. I know for sure that I didn’t do much magic training during that few month span of playing, especially not the magnitude of grinding that I had been doing lately. So I would ballpark and say I was still under 4,000,000 xp when I started back on October 15, 2017.
On November 8, I started actually recording my current magic xp periodically, to keep up with my pace and see how quickly I was coming along with the skill. On that day, I had reached 6,629,620 magic xp. Given my starting day of October 15, and my starting xp estimate of 4,000,000, I had gained 2,629,620 xp in 24 days. That came out to an average of just over 100,000 xp per day, even including weekends when I didn’t play as much.
With the level 99 requirement of 13,034,431 xp, I was well on the way. To get from where I was to 99 would take about 65 days of my 100k xp per day average. Just about 2 months. Getting 99 magic was no longer a pipe dream that I figured I would never actually obtain. It was perfectly within reach, and in a reasonable time frame at that.
After I started monitoring my xp pace, I noticed a marked increase in my gains. I could do 5,000 casts of high level alchemy on a good day, which came out to a little over 300k xp. Even on a slow day, I could manage at least 2,000 casts to get 130k xp. At the rate I was going, I could easily have 99 Magic by Christmas.
Though there was nothing officially holding me to that estimate, it became my goal. 99 magic was all but in the bag. I even came up with a chart to show how many casts of high level alchemy I needed between each level, so I could buy up my materials in bulk and know that I had enough to reach the next level. This may be a video game, but I had turned it into a science.
On December 4, I had just started branching out into items beyond my standard materials when I noticed that I couldn’t log in. After entering my login credentials, I got a message indicating that my ban had expired. What? I wasn’t banned, though. There’s no way I was, I have always played legitimately. In my 10+ years playing Runescape, I have never cheated in any way. No real world trading, no botting, no scamming, nothing. How would I have gotten banned?
I went to the Runescape website and logged in to check the status of my account. Sure enough, it claimed I was banned for botting or macroing. Supposedly, it was only a single day ban, but another area of my account summary indicated that the ban would expire in a year. Which one was it? Even if I was wrongfully banned, 24 hours wasn’t that big of a deal. A year, though? For something I didn’t do? I’d be livid.
On the account summary page, I requested evidence of my ban. According to Jagex, they do not release evidence for that specific type of rule breaking, “as to do so may compromise our detection methods.” I understand that they need to be able to ban actual bots, and releasing their methods would equip bot developers to circumvent these methods. However, I WASN’T BREAKING THE RULES. I wanted to know what I did that was flagged as botting to at least know that I should avoid that behavior.
I appealed the ban, since I obviously hadn’t committed the infraction that they were accusing me of. I learned that a ban appeal can take up to 28 days to process. A possible 28 day waiting period for a hopefully 1 day ban. Tell me that isn’t irony. (Actually, I genuinely don’t know if it is irony. I have a hard time discerning true irony from other literary devices. So if it is or isn’t irony, I would actually like it if someone would tell me.)
After a little bit of pouting, I figured there was no sense in worrying about it until 24 hours at the earliest. If it was indeed a 1 day ban, I assumed it would either be 24 hours after the ban was administered, or date change at 00:00 game time or 7:00 pm EST. And if it was a year ban… well, I didn’t want to think about that.
The following day after the time that I noticed the ban was in place, I tried to log in again. I didn’t really know what to expect. I crossed my fingers that I would be able to get in, but at the same time, I was trying to prepare myself for disappointment if it was a full year ban. If it was, I wouldn’t be able to play the game until nearly Christmas 2018. That idea hurt to consider.
Fortunately, I was able to log in again. I assume the “ban has expired” notification shows up during the last 24 hours of a ban, but while it is still active. To call it expired seems misleading to me, but that’s neither here nor there. I could log in, so the ban was only for a day. As for the “expiration date” of 04-Dec-2018, I assume that is how long the ban shows up on my account. So if I were to get banned for the same offense before then, I would get the doubled punishment, but if I were banned after that date, it would be as if it were my first ban. Something of a probation period, if you will. That’s my understanding of it, at least. I don’t plan on finding out for sure, as I won’t start botting now, and I certainly hope Jagex doesn’t falsely ban me again.
After this was all said and done, I got an email from Jagex Mod Selfie on December 8. He wanted to let me know that Jagex saw “no evidence to suggest the ban was applied in error” and that they would not be reversing their decision. Ah, that’s great. The ban has already been served, but it’s nice to know that you wouldn’t have reversed it anyway. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, “only me and Jesus know that I never broke the rules of Runescape.”
The fact that my appeal was rejected was insulting. I was not breaking the rules. I realize there isn’t any way that I could prove this to Jagex or anyone else, but I was playing legitimately. The principle of the matter that they would uphold a ban and suggest that I was using a bot is infuriating.
At that point, I was afraid to continue alching. I couldn’t discern what had flagged me as a bot, or how likely it was that I might get flagged again. If I already had a botting ban on my record, would they be watching my account more closely? I hated to abandon my goal of getting 99 magic before Christmas, but it just wasn’t worth the risk of another ban because of their overzealous bot detection methods. Specifically, I didn’t want to get banned again during the Advent event. Considering the free stuff that the event gives out every day, missing anything would suck.
Instead of continuing to work on magic, I decided to go to the Runespan and work on Runecrafting. It is similarly easy to absentmindedly work on, compared to high level alchemy. I considered maybe returning to magic training after the beginning of the year, but it is now well into January and I haven’t bothered yet.
Most of all, getting banned took the wind out of my sails. I was on a roll, but getting banned and forced to stop training for fear of getting banned again was just crushing for my grind morale. I may have made it to level 97 magic, but those last 2 levels feel like forever away now. Eventually, I’ll get back to training and finish out 99 magic. For now, I’m just not up to it.
Comments
Post a Comment