Hi,

I'm Sword Kill11. As a RuneScape tool developer myself, I've been going around on multiple forums raising awareness for a potentially major issue that will arrive within the year effecting all fansites that do RuneScape stat tracking. It's very important that the stat tracking community be highly informed on this issue as it heavily effects all of us, and so we can start giving helpful and suggestive feedback as soon as possible.

As you may know, Jagex is preparing to make a huge infrastructure update, allowing players to change their Display Names (see Developer Blog: Display Names - Changing Names). Essentially, a player will have 1 Account Name (a private name identifier only known to that user) which will always remain the same, and a changeable Display Name (the name that everyone else sees in-game when they click on you, and on the hiscores). While I'm happy to see such an elaborate and desired feature coming to fruition, I feel that there's a few things which definitely need to be ironed out first.

Now, the issue: Fast-forward to later this year when this update is released. All of our stat tracking tools that have recorded a detailed history of a user's stats will obviously have to be based off of a player's Display Name, as Account Names will remain private and will only be known by the user themselves.

But, what happens when someone changes their Display Name? For example, Player A, who has a very detailed stat history on RuneTrack.com, decides to change his Display Name to Player B. As there's no mechanism to inform fansites of these instant Display Name changes, when the hiscore stat tracking programs go to capture Player A's stats - they'll get nothing. All future stat history of Player A on fansites will simply be marked with 0's and error messages. The now Player B may decide to create a new stat tracking account, but they'll obviously have to start from scratch with none of their true history being displayed, simply because they changed their Display Name.

Worse yet, what if another account swoops down and picks up the Display Name "Player A"? The stat tracking page for Player A will then show a volatile change of stats, simply laying this new account's stats over a previous owner's stats - and so on in this messy fashion for however many accounts swap in and out of the Display Name "Player A".

As you can see, this update has the potential to destroy the ability to accurately track someone's RuneScape history. With players' Display Names being swapped around, it would be impossible to have an automated system to merge and swap stat tracking accounts along with it, as there's simply no way our programs can know whether someone changes their Display Name, much less what they change it to.

Fansite Admins/Developers: Your stat tracking pages would become messy, inaccurate, and corrupted.
Players who use any stat tracking website: Every time you change your Display Name, you would have to create a new stat tracking account, and all of your previous stat history/awards would not be carried over, and may even be overwritten if someone else snags your previous Display Name. All of that interesting stat history and analysis you get from stat trackers would be no more. Even if you never change your Display Name, the stat history you look-up for other players would be inaccurate, because you won't know how many different accounts with different stats have held that Display Name in the past.

Now the good news is that Jagex is aware of this issue, and thankfully looks to be taking positive steps to come up with a solution. Mod Duncan, one of the update developers, has posted a thread in the RuneScape Forums thread, Dev Blog: Changing Names, where he is kindly answering questions and looking for feedback.

Here's a few quotes that stand out, relating to the issue:
^ Unfortunately, this is exactly the cause of the huge issue I've outlined above - unless something is done, there will be *no* way for us to know 'if' and 'to what' someone has changed their Display Name to, as Display Names can be temporary and changed without warning. ^ While this is all good information, it clearly reveals that Jagex still do not yet have any working solution.

The key solution I believe we need is a new kind of hiscores lite feed that will preserve an account name's stats for a limited amount of time on a player's previous Display Name, for users that have recently changed their Display Name. In addition to this, the feed would inform the user that this Display Name has been abandoned, as well as what that account's new Display Name is.

This would still keep Account Names secret and secure, because it would only show their future history as "This player is now known as X" for a limited time until someone new takes the abandoned Display Name, instead of past history as "This player was previously known as X" (which was Mod Duncan's initial proposal from the above quote that was shot down). The safety feature in this suggestion would be that you couldn't back-trace a Display Name, only forward-trace from the initial Display Name. Fansites would be able to trace initial sign-up Display Names forwards to learn their new Display Names, but hijackers *wouldn't* be able to trace new Display Names backwards to their original Account Names. You can click here to read more of my suggestion in further detail, or of my later follow-up post where I offer some additional analysis.

Now that you know the potentially damaging impact of this update, we need YOUR support! What can you do?

• Formulate and post suggestions on the Dev Blog: Changing Names thread, and give constructive feedback which lets Jagex know how important this issue is.
• Spread the word to other players - while they may not understand the exact mechanics of how stat tracking fansites work, be sure to let them know that if this update goes live without any solutions, all of those fun and interesting stat trackers they use will be no more.
• Spread the word to other fansites in the stat tracking community. The more support we have the better.

Thank you for your time and support!

~ Sword Kill11
RuneTrack.com Administrator

Firstly, only allow name updates within a reasonable time frame, say within 4 to 6 weeks. Players that monitor their stats do so regularly. It is unlikely they will front up in 3 months time and say oh btw, I am ... and if they do, they coudn't have been all that interested in their stat history.

Ah, but that's the very thing I feel I need to emphasize more - a User Profile isn't merely for that player themselves, but serves as a public archive of knowledge for everyone to view and refer to. Just because someone wouldn't care about updating their own Display Name, doesn't mean a lot of other people don't care either, especially when it comes to top ranked players

RuneTrack's principles are somewhat similar to that of the purpose of a search engine - RuneTrack collects, stores, and analyzes tons of information on a daily basis. And to keep everything running as smoothly as it has been, the collection process really can't rely on a specific user manually telling RuneTrack to update their name information at a specific time. For every account to truly be covered and for none to slip through the cracks, the process needs to be automated.

The records were achieved by the names you have recorded. That they might have assumed a new name is of no concern.

Just because someone else feels they would *like* to know doesn't necessarily mean they have the *right* to know.
...
They key thing I cannot stress enough is that you must not under any circumstance attempt to display both the old and the new name. This would be a gross invasion of privacy and would completely negate the whole purpose of the name change update.

Your account creation process requires that someone has their sig viewed by multiple ip addresses. I presumed this was done in an attempt to ensure people only created profiles for their own usernames.

One of the key reasons behind this update was Jagex felt it would help account security. What is the point in them doing this if you go and display the name change history - especially when a lot of the people you are tracking are those with top level accounts - the very ones that have repeated hack attempts made against them.

There are also other genuine reasons why someone might change their name. For example, some people (especially famous ones) are constantly harassed and abused in game. I know of many high levelled players that have quit RS because of the never-ending personal attacks from strangers. Others may just want to move on and make a fresh start without having to lose all their hard work to date - this is a game after all, not a lifelong career.

I think we'd see is a sharp decline in player accountability and responsibility. Just as a general example, a clan member in a clan could act up and get himself banned from the clan - then just change his Display Name the next day and rejoin, without anyone ever knowing that it's him because they won't allow us to view past name history.

The a major thing I believe that keeps people in check on the internet is their personal reputation - if they act up, they have to deal with the consequences in having that associated with their name - be it on a forum or in-game. All this is going to teach people is that you can do or say whatever you want, then just change your Display Name, and Jagex will back you up so you'll never have deal with any of the consequences.