What boss hunt competition would be complete without competition? Furthermore, what competition would be complete without the spamming cries of “Visage”, “Tassets” or whatever the most valuable drop is on the list? This author has personally seen enough cries of “Hilt” and “Visage” that, should they be true, the Godswords and Dragonfire Shields would be worth a tenth of what they actually are. Another common occurrence that I remember not so fondly is that everyone and their brother had a “Main account” that was Lv 120+ and had a disk of returning or some such rare item.
The idea of having multiple accounts, each with a different purpose has been around for years and I have been a legitimate case of someone who was experimenting with a low level skiller and had a higher-level main account. Granted, when I showed the person who questioned my “noobiness”, they quickly dismissed me as a high-level friend of myself. I was quite amused by this prospect but can you honestly blame him for his doubt? Either that or perhaps there are more level 120+ accounts with rare items than I previously knew.
Now you must be asking yourself, “Where is he going with this?” and if you know the play in which the title of this article refers to, quit beating me to the point! Throughout anyone's Runescape career there will always be people who will brag, often in vain, about their past experiences, events, and accomplishments. Once quickchat was discovered to not lie about levels, people started to use it to show their actual levels (alas there will always be those that try to fake quickchat but I'm sure you all know it’s painfully obvious). Things like Fist of Guthix ratings and other minigames that lack the respond bubble are still possible to fake and can turn out to be rather intimidating.
The next release to throw off the more facetious players was the adventurer's log. This simple update allows you to track drops, levels and past history of almost any player. Now with a few clicks of the mouse and keystrokes you can instantly see if that guy really did get a dragon chainbody at dust devils. While it can be set to friends, most players don't know or care about that particular function to change it. Now I personally always use quickchat to show my levels and I have my adventurer's log set to public simply because when I say something - I mean it. I was never good at bluffing in card games so I doubt it would come across as any better in Runescape. Coinshared drops however aren't show in Adventurer's logs and neither are rare clue rewards so it’s a toss up as to its usefulness in those regards at best.
That said, I can see plenty of reason to lie. People are more apt to respect a long-standing player's advice and word than one who started six months ago, so why not say you have been around since RSC? If they ask for a holiday event item, say you never did them and go along your merry way. What would be the harm in carrying around a stack of coins at monster hunting to persuade someone that you got coinshared drops and the world is dry? There are still a lot of things for Jagex to do in order to fix those who are dishonest but seeing as it doesn't affect gameplay, I doubt that such a rule or game update would come anytime soon.
So with that, I shall leave you with this question: What really is the importance of being earnest, and furthermore, what are the costs?
