Runescape Verboten

Well it only took 12 minutes of post-tutorial play for a some trailer-trash to raise a 'kill the nube' battle-cry and I had to vacate the hill-side smartly. My youngster had heard about Runescape from school friends and although he is under the 13 year age limit I thought I should give it a proper test drive before positively turning him down. Being an avid D&Der in my teens I must admit a soft spot for swords and sorcery, so maybe that is my excuse for giving it a whirl. The interface was above expectation - a responsive 3D landscape, animated avatars and an acceptable level of detail; the controls extensive, intuative, responsive. But I have been knocking about in virtual dead-ends not to recognise one. With the account sign up so straight-forward (and with no verifications of any kind) the world was just about as full of nubes and nube-vampires as you could expect. After the tutorial sequence I found myself wandering through a town of carnage, with characters shouting advertising, killing each other randomly and wandering around bored and aimless in equal measures. A sort of medieval housing estate with all the hoodies decked out with swords and beards. The gaming system seems designed to reward long hours spent performing aimless activity to accrue experience, with the highest rewarded activity being random violence against other players. I have no desire in spending long long long hours to reach the status of 32nd Level Half-elven Mugger myself (or promoting the vocation to my descendants). I explained this to my youngster and told him that whatever his friends' parents may allow, this was not acceptable to me. I did say I would play it with him if he really wanted, but that I really believed a conventional and off-line adventure would be more rewarding. Even if he was within the official age range I would set a hard (and low) limit to the time spent on this site - and enforce it. Reading through the parents guide and googling about a little I am rather amazed to to see the site promoting itself as educational with a straight-face. Runescape is a phenomena - no doubt about it, but it's a money making phenomena More later...