Hey all,

I thought I would drop in and talk about why I fell in love with the idea of Bank Bidders, and what – in reality – it will probably end up looking like.

I love Bank Bidders because of the moments it will create. A player will have won a ‘bank’ - the prospects look good, everything is pointing to it being full of valuable goods – and they begin to open it. Everyone is watching, they’re eager to find out what the player has won, and it turns out to be…a bronze pickaxe.

Equally, it could be an unassuming account with shedloads of great stuff! There’s the potential for wonderful stories.

I love Bank Bidders because it is fun, it’s cheeky and a little bit risky. It’s not your run of the mill event. And it’s important to note that it is an event, with all that entails: it will be something temporary, like The Drop or September Raffles. It will be a shot in the arm of fun, that’s worth logging in for.

I also love Bank Bidders because it highlights, on a very large platform, that botters do not prosper. They get found out, they get their items taken away, and their accounts are no longer theirs.

So, what will it look like on launch? We’re still designing that, but one pitch hits all of the buttons for me. Imagine there are five anonymous accounts in front of you (and they will be completely anonymous – we are not interested in manipulation of the game) and you examine each of them to find out their stats, account age and some other relevant details. You have one ticket and one ticket only: you cannot purchase any more than that, and the cost of that ticket is somewhere within the realms of 100,000gp. So you decide who to place your ticket on; you decide on the account that looks most likely to be awesome. Everyone else does that same, placing their 100,000gp ticket on the account that is most likely to give great spoils.

At the end of the week, no more tickets can be placed. We (Jagex) randomly pick a winner of each account. And, then, one by one, the bank accounts of each of the banned players is revealed, most likely on a stream. We find out – as I said before – whether the player has a bronze pickaxe, or a surfeit of great stuff.

It doesn’t end there: I like the idea of everyone who bet on the most valuable account getting something special, something relatively valuable or perhaps cosmetic. Basically, we reward you for being wise enough to spot the best account.

This would happen once every few months, like The Drop, or several times over one month, like the September Raffle. It’s not a persistent piece of game content.

Would rares be included? Absolutely – there would be no interest and fun if they weren’t. There would be no untradeable rares, however. It is important to note that rares would be, well, rare on Bank Bidders – in terms of the broader economy, Bank Bidders would be adding a miniscule and negligible number of rares. The same goes for resources: we have looked into these accounts and the number of resources that would be added into the economy, and Bank Bidders wouldn’t make a dent on the daily introduction of resources into the game. It doesn’t even nudge the graph.

That’s where we are now. We’re still in the throes of design, so I am eager for your thoughts. But, hopefully, you can see a glimmer of why I fell in love with Bank Bidders.

Mod Osborne

NOTE - It is worth mentioning that I imagined all of the items to be legitimately gained, so I had not imagined that we would use goldfarmer or macro accounts. These would be players banned who were once legitimate.