Not long ago, a large amount of RuneScape players were thoroughly disappointed and fed up with Jagex for their frankly greedy business and marketing ploys. It seemed that left and right, Jagex was releasing some new way to get people paying for their merchandise. From card exclusive items to the 'Refer A Friend' programme (which many people jokingly referred to as either 'Refer A Bot' or social suicide), it became evident that Jagex was more focused than ever on making as much money as they could as fast as possible.

A few months ago everything changed; Jagex lost the Golden Joystick Awards and with RuneFest right around the corner they almost seemed to 'wake up' and actually start paying attention to the complaints and frustration of much of their fan base. A combination of factors including the Golden Joystick loss, RuneFest, and the rising outrage of players over the botting problem seemed to finally get through to them. Thus bot nuking day was staged.

After weeks of skeptical chatter around the web, Jagex actually pulled it off; removing roughly 99% of the bots from their game. For days, people wondered when the bots would be back, until one of the biggest botting sites on the web officially closed down their operation. As their fans rejoiced over this new victory, Jagex turned to a method of development they hadn't utilized in years - actually creating content that players wanted and would enjoy.

It's clear that Jagex has actually started listening to their players instead of making new marketing ploys to draw in newbs. Great examples of this include the bot nuke itself, as well as the Dominion Tower and the Polypore Dungeon. The Dominion Tower was a higher-levelled content release which was something that many people had been begging for. The Polypore dungeon was a great attempt at rebalancing the combat triangle by introducing new, more powerful mage gear to the game. The Christmas event for 2011, although a bit try hard, was a good attempt at creating new content that wasn't overly ridiculous or focused on something that many players didn't want to do (Dungeoneering during last year's update comes to mind).

It seems that RuneScape is 'on the up' so to speak, now that the company and developers are focusing on good content that players will enjoy, rather than milking their fan base for money. If Jagex doesn't appeal to their players now, they could be in hot water considering that they lost over 200,000 active accounts during the bot nuke. If you watch the RuneScape homepage now you'll find that only anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 are ever only at a single time. Before the bot nuke there were often upwards of 300,000 accounts online at a single time, meaning that 2/3rds of active accounts were illegitimate. This translates to a huge loss in profit after removing them from the game and, in effect, the monetary chain.

It's a New Year for Jagex and a New Year for us, and with that new year comes the promise of a bright new future for our game. With great new content in the future, a reduction in grinding, and a lack of bots, it seems that for the first time in years RuneScape can easily be enjoyed by just about anyone. I, for one, am looking forward to the future.