W13

In closing, I just wanna thank y'all for giving me an opportunity to do this AMA. Some good questions were asked and I wish I had better recollection to be able to give better answers. Otherwise, I'm honored that people out there still remember me. Thank you all again. Peace.

IKR... ok, next time I'm in M'sia, I'll find y'all. 😄 I'm not sure if that's gay or not. lol. But I like it.

Bruh... I lived in Petaling Jaya for 2 years! Seksyen 17. And I literally studied at PPUM. We were probably a stones throw from each other without knowing. What a small world we live in...

Yeah of course. 🙂 I love Malaysia - it's one of my favorite countries in the world. I really miss the food. (Next week I'll be in Bali for a couple weeks btw.) What part of Malaysia are you from? I lived in KL for 2 years to do my masters degree at UM.

\/ You're asking me to recall minor memories from 10 years ago lol... i don't remember. I wanted a name for my domain for my website for showing off my Javascript code... so I wrote down the word "cyber" and then kept trying different first and last letters.... and like "Xeorox" i wanted it to have the same first and last letter... and eventually reached "Z" and just picked it. I was like 13 years old, so that's why it's lame. It worked in my favor tho because one of the reasons Curse decided to buy Zybez (and not some of the other fansites) is because it has its own brand, and wasn't just "Rune" something. Lol yeah... I get a lot of IRL grief due to an unconventional name... oh well.

Wow cool! 1. Nope. I heard their pay is terrible and it isn't a great place to work unless you're desperate. I never had any formal skills/qualifications. 2. Nope. At least, I don't remember it. 3. I went to a RuneFest 2010 by myself. Met all the personalities including the Gower brothers. It was kinda fun... met up with some people, went out to a bar, went on the London Eye because somebody who worked there came to RuneFest and then took us on for free. 4. Well? English. Bits and pieces of others 😉 5. I've met a few people IRL who had been involved with Zybez. Some were pretty private people and probably don't want to be named. I wish there were chances to do actual IRL meets. Would've been fun.

I have a partially started fantasy novel which I don't think I'll ever finish because now there's AI and I'd be tempted to have it help me write. And it won't even matter because by next year it'll be able to write better than me. Other than that, I'd like to run a small cafe and live on top of it. Seems romantic and European. I would like to get involved in some sort of health-tech startups eventually. Nobody has called yet. We had "clients" before and I've taken apart and modified the official client all the way back in the early days. Zybez also hosted a couple of "clients" (both online and downloadable) - but not ones that replace the actual RuneScape applet (client) because that remained against their rules. Now they seem to allow it. (from what I gather with this Runelite thing) Not surprising. Other games have allowed this for eons. I don't have much sympathy for fansites anymore. If players can get information faster, then why not. I miss the fun times, coding new features, working on the database and server, etc., and watching Zybez/RSC grow and generate tons of content. -- I don't miss the business side of things. I don't miss dealing with Jagex. I don't miss the anxiety of not knowing - or being woken up in the middle of the night because the server crashed or something. Believe it or not, I don't really use Reddit much. I'll use it for specific things I'm searching for - but for browsing, not any more. I used to follow a few news-related ones and some memes related ones, and a few that I can't mention, but I got bored of wasting so much time on them. The same thing happened to me on Quora - but I genuinely entertained myself giving people poor life advice. Reddit is usually more critical of that, but Quora was not. She absolutely did. It was painful. I might play Rs again. I don't rule that out. If there's content that I can enjoy without grinding first, I'd be down. Not now but eventually... I'm not an expert but I think whenever stuff happens organically, it's better. When Jagex or whoever facilitates and forces it, it often fails or loses steam fast. You have activated the "kid holding invisible item in his hands" meme in my head.

It is remarkable how it's clung on. I think it's a great game even compared to many games today. It's very unique still and is instantly recognizable while many other RPGs all look similar to each other. Gaming industry has also changed: competition in the MMORPG market has dwindled as many players moved to casual and MMOFPS. So, even though RuneScape suffered a loss, there were fewer and fewer competitors in the MMORPG arena too and RuneScape is already such a massive game that it's hard to create a totally new game from the ground-up to match it.

1. It was sometimes kind of fun to have "rivals". Competition often breeds innovation. 2. Sure, but it was obvious to me from the beginning: you're signing up to a huge for-profit corporation's website and handing them tons of free content. This is a corporation with no care about your game, the community, gamers, etc. and all they want is to squeeze every last penny. 3. Early on, it was fun to trade and get rich. It was easier to make money - just buying low and selling high, before things got so structured. I enjoyed exploring and questing in the newb days. Later, I enjoyed anything new that'd come out - and speculating on what should come out next. I did enjoy some time in the Wildy... but I was never too good at it. Then later, boss fights were interesting for a while. 4. I had a huge attachment to RuneScape growing up and there was definitely a magical feeling. But, it went away. It's like looking back on a past ex you dont care for anymore. You loved them hard at one point, but now, they're like a nobody and you can do so much better. 5. Get a job working with AI. Pivot your career, take some courses on AI, machine learning, predictive modeling, cloud, etc. and get in on the action. If you're a chem engineering PhD student, you can probably become an RA on a cross-disciplinary study with Comp.Sci researchers working with modeling. (tbh, it was called "advanced statistical analysis" and then it was called "machine learning" and "modeling" and now it's just all called "AI". People are literally calling logistic regression "AI" now. It's a buzz word. So just publish a paper or two where the title says "AI" and then get into a company working on implementing "AI" methods in your industry) 6. Dreams? Like, actual dreams? lol. I often had dreams of mining ore, and wake up angry because I didn't gain any XP from it because it was all a dream. I don't know much about art to have a favorite. I like to look at artwork though. But I ain't no Antiques Roadshow. According to Spotify, I listened to like 80 genres of music last year. I didn't even know there were that many genres. I have an entire playlist of Afrobeats. I have an entire playlist of Country songs, 60s songs, 90s hits, 2000s hits. Heck, I even got Taylor Swift in there. It all depends on my mood.: could be Red Hot Chilli Peppers one day, 50 Cent or Green Day another day, Burna Boy when I feel like it, and Queen or my Indonesian songs playlist another day. So I don't have any favorites. A sack of corn kernels... so when the switch is flipped, everybody gets a nice surprise... No idea - depends on the subject matter. I don't know enough people lol. Biggest life regret ... hmm... probably being lazy in high school. It made life harder after it. When we're 16, 17 years old... we don't fully realize that like the movie Inception, every hour we waste during high school is like a year wasted in real life. I envy people who did really well in high school, and then got scholarships and went to great colleges. Even if they struggled in college, they did alright in the end, and had stable lives. I went to college many years after high school... and medicine takes so long... so by the time I graduated from everything, I was so far behind. I kinda have RuneScape to thank for sucking up all my time during high school lol. Bittersweet. I have other regrets in life. But dwelling on regrets is futile. Or so I keep telling myself. It's always better to worry about stuff that's in your control still. - We will not know what is real or synthetic: whether a picture was actually taken or made by AI. And at some point, we'll stop caring. - Imagine looking through a family photo album and AI has outpainted and inpainted so much that you can actually (using VR) step into the picture as if it's a window... and relive those moments. - Nobody will ever truly "die". They will be preserved forever on their Facebook profile pages like Harry Potter paintings. AI would've created a copy of them using all their life's data. So, you'd be able to speak to somebody who has died. And you'd be able to speak to celebrities who don't want to talk to you. And here's the crazy part: you'd be able to have virtual ceks with them, and we aren't talking just Only Fans models... but even people like Mike Pence. - People won't discuss "new movies" or "new songs" anymore. There won't be such a thing. We'd have these generated for us on the fly. Might take closer to 10 years. - We'll have mind-reading headsets that let us ... (ok, this is a good 15 to 20 years away)... communicate with anyone, anywhere. And we won't use words. Instead, we'll use feelings and ideas and the bandwidth will be huge. Spock-style transfer of memories, feelings, etc. This vastly increased bandwidth, with many connected brains working together in a huge worldwide network, augmented by AI, we'll develop a level of abstraction unimaginable today. Something like nirvana/moksha level of enlightenment. And of course, it'll turn sexual and there'll be brain orgies happening everywhere. My tongue can handle quite a bit - like even Thai-level spiciness. My stomach can handle regular hot wings but nothing that requires a waiver or is called "suicide". My butthole can't handle shit. Unfortunate but sometimes sacrifices must be made and tribute has to be paid.

I'm too insignificant and boring for politics to matter to my life for the most part. And these days, it's hard to even have political opinions without getting ostracized, canceled, or doxxed. We've always had "chat rooms" and we've always had forums too. They say that people's attention spans have been decreasing due to social media... so I can see that people are less interested in reading walls of text on forums. The great thing about forums is that you can have discussions over long periods of time and have some sort of organization. Reddit has done a great job in trying to find a sweet spot, and so has Twitter. My free time is spent mostly hanging out with friends, wining and dining, etc. I like to travel. I play chess. And, when I did have more time, I rode horses, jumped rope, and watercolor painted (I wrote/painted a book).

1. I was dating a Singaporean Canadian at the time and she had family back home in Sg. So we used to visit Sg every now and then. I did my masters degree from Malaysia so I lived there for 2 years. I also went to med school in Indonesia, so I was there for like 8 years. And yes, I'm fluent in Bahasa Indonesia and can understand Malay language. 🙂 2. I think Curse didn't want any PHP-based software on their servers- and forum software is mostly in PHP. If I remember correctly, I think that was the reason. 3. I haven't played for a while but tbh, as a player, I enjoyed both OSRS and Rs3 (I still call it Rs3- even though it's just "RuneScape" now). I like the simplicity of OSRS. I think Rs3 is still very clunky. I'm not sure why they didn't base their game on Unity or Unreal so everything can be fluid and smooth, we can have amazing particle effects, lighting, etc. I guess they were trying to maintain RuneScape's cartooney feel and clunky, choppy animations. As for playing the game itself: I don't like grinding - so that's why MMORPGs in general aren't appealing. I much prefer RTS or strategy games.

❤️ Signed an NDA, can't say 😄 Jagex did communicate with me at different periods over time. They changed management and whoever their fansite liaison was so much that we never had a stable relationship. They would erratically change their policies. It was like dating a crazy girlfriend. One minute she wants to love you and put links to your site on the main site, the next minute she's censuring the mere mention of your fansite (the word "Zybez") in the game and banning people for trying to say it. One minute she's talking to you all friendly at RuneFest and thanking you for supporting the community, the next minute she's having lawyers sending you threatening letters about using the word "RuneScape" and screenshots from the game on your fansite about the game. In my 30s. Well that is disappointing to hear. 1. I think so. I've been at parties in real life where some dude is telling everyone about his deep interests in English bows or whatever ("So, bow strings... you'd be surprised to know... "), and I'd just interrupt him like: ("FLAX... they're made from FLAX.") - and everybody would just think I'm well read. - I also played D&D recently for the first time and was kind of surprised that this game which I thought was for geeks and was a bullyable offense, was basically what was used to create all RPGs including RuneScape. And they other (seasoned) D&D players were surprised I knew so much - without ever looking into D&D before. 2. I think there's room for good. In its current form, as a scientist, I feel that it will create a lot of noise in the scientific corpus of knowledge (i.e., just a flood of scientific articles written by AI which SOUND like research but they're just fluff), and a lot of issues with factuality (i.e., AI tends to lie very confidently). In the long run, I think once we develop smarter AIs and fix some of the hallucination, alignment, and token size issues, we can see lots of innovation in the healthcare field. As for psychological impacts of a AI dominated society: we've adapted to a mobile-dominated society, a social media-dominated society, an electricity-dominated society, etc. - so this will be like that too in some ways: our lives will change drastically: how we do things, how we interact, how we work, and how we think even. I think we'll be spending more and more time interacting with AI. It may cause DIRECT human-to-human interactions to suffer, as it has with social networks. AI will off-load out of thinking and decision-making we do as humans day-to-day. You want to take a trip, well AI will think of everything - the itinerary, the letter to your boss to ask for time off, your schedule, who you'll invite, what you gotta buy, etc. In fact, it may even decide for you that you want to take a trip. AI will become increasingly accurate to a point where we won't even question it. It will have incredible context about us: it'll have read all our chat logs, all your browser history, all our emails, our entire My Documents and Downloads folders, everything we've ever produced, our DNA, our transaction history from our credit card statements going back many years, our Google Maps location history and reviews, your entire Spotify listening history, and anything it doesn't know - it'll simply ask. So, interacting with an AI that is smart enough and one who knows us better than we know ourselves, will be like speaking to a god. They'd be so smart. They'd know everything there is to know. They'd be able to answer questions and give the best answers: "What do I want to eat right now?" <-- it'd know this better than us. That is why I said that I think people will worship AIs like they worship gods in different religions today. Once a week or two. Names don't matter as they're all made up 😄

<_< who's askin'... ? who do you work for? 1. No idea what happened to Aragon or most of the people. 2. Yeah, there was clearly bias. Jagex did some absolutely wild sh*t like randomly having lawyers send us a threatening letter because we were using the word "Runescape". (not kidding). Like, who treats their own supporters/fans this way?! 3. Sure, better than it pointing to a page full of ads as other old domains do. I somehow still own the runescapecommunity.com domain. 😄 HNY to you too. Yes, I still walk this earth 😄

I was never in the pvp scene or the clan scene, I was never high-leveled, and I played Rs on and off. There were many others who were way more knowledgeable, prominent, and relevant. I just happened to be the guy who put together a website early and then it snowballed into something bigger. I'm frankly surprised forums are still a thing in the days of Reddit, social networks, in-game communication features, Twitch, YT, Discord, etc. I prefer the Wiki system for compiling and collaborating on knowledge such as guides, etc. Fansites were able to put out more specific features like calculators and databases. We could've done more of course. I've had a formal education in statistical analysis now- so if I had my hands on that kinda data, there's some fun stuff I could've done with it now. Also, beyond wikis, many people turn to YT to get help with games. I like Discord for chatting - but I don't like it as a store of information. Anyways, I imagine now you can just chat with AI to answer your game questions rather than referencing a Wiki even.

Yeah that looks right. I don't remember players in early RuneScape focusing that much on grinding and leveling up. It was still an "exploring", "adventure" game, or at least that's how players like myself played it. A few players did reach higher levels - but only a very few number. I made a lot of in-game money by supplying and working with those players. It was all supply and demand and was short-lived. Zybez was Zybez thanks to the community, so thanks for the support and thanks for taking interest in me (even though I think I'm pretty insignificant now). Jagex made poor decisions with how to deal with the player community including fansites - this got magnified when Jagex was sold to investors. I like the Wiki model and I think it has been a huge success (i.e. Wikipedia). We always knew about the Wiki model but chose not to adopt it - instead keeping a tighter list of contributors. Perhaps this was a mistake. We could've built up more content, faster, and kept it updated had we went the Wiki route. We'd have to do more moderating but the net benefit would've been greator. Anyways, Wikia and Fandom, etc. have all tried to profit off user contributed content. And Jagex have ended up supporting corporations rather than actual fans (i.e. the original RuneScape fansites made by actual fans/players). In Jagex's defense: they were the pioneers in a lot of ways - just because they got in the arena early - and probably didn't have the experience and often learned after stumbling.

*Uno reverse card* I'd have focused on embracing player-created content early on... videos, streams, fansites, etc. This is great, free marketing for the game and also keeps players glued to the game for years as it builds a sense of community and belonging. Instead of Rs3, I'd have focused on a new game engine for mobile/touch way back in mid 2000s when it was pretty clear that mobile gaming was the next big wave. I wanted something stable. Medicine is stable since people always get sick. But sadly, it's one of the most red-taped. As a doctor, you can go to school for like 8 years, pass all your med school exams, and then come out and then pass board exams, get licensed, and still need a new license to prescribe somebody viagra in a different state/country. Compare this to an airline pilot who can graduate and then load up a $300 million plane with 250 people and fly them over hundreds of cities filled with thousands of people in countries they've never stepped foot in. Personally, I wish I had stuck with IT. I used to think IT would get diluted with huge amounts of IT experts, and software would get to a point where developers aren't building things from scratch every time (e.g., forum software, Wordpress, etc.), requiring fewer developers in the world. I was wrong: developers continue to be in demand.

I think there was one other but they were low-balling and being disrespectful. There isn't a huge market so if it wasn't gonna be Curse, it won't be anyone else. You can see other fansites who remained independent: they're still independent probably. Most platforms don't allow 3-letter usernames, so sadly, no.

Jagex. I never slept peacefully because of the fear that the next day they'd come up with a new way to eradicate fansites or just somehow destroy their own game.

I watch an insane amount of YT. I watch tons of documentaries mostly. And I consume an insane amount of chess content. It never worked. People didn't wanna pay money to a fansite when many of them were paying $5 a month for a whole game. Also, we had nothing to offer them.

They're mostly career goals. In terms of health: I wanna start jumping rope again - something I had done during the pandemic. I'd like to take more vacations - and possibly even a totally remote job which lets me live anywhere in the world, thus eternal vacation.

The world isn't fair and many of us have it better because many others have it worse. So, it's hard to be in this advantaged position and want change for those who are disadvantaged. I'm not a philosopher or lawyer or anything, but if we collectively decided to make all global conflicts virtual, i think it'd be a good thing. No more physically going and hitting somebody. Instead, hop on a game and duke it out online.

Kinda weird how Zuck is totally against remote work for his own employees yet he's pushing Metaverse which is all about remote work. I'm all for remote work. I did remote work before it was called remote work. (Zybez). Road accidents kill a lot of people, vehicles cause lots of pollution and global warming, and we lose on sleep because we gotta wake up earlier for the commute. We pay more in rent living closer to our workplaces. So, I think remote work is great and metaverse technologies will make it more acceptable.

Nothing too specific but like I said, I loved the drama. I faintly remember VR, RoT, DI, TT, TF, Gladz, BK, DS, WG, and Sabres. Good times 🙂

Don't know. I think Zybez got popular just because it existed in the golden window before mobile was a thing and after MMOs gained in popularity. It's also before behemoths like Wikia, Reddit, Quora, etc. which just cannibalized fansites and small, specialty sites.

Thanks man 😄 I'm doing pretty good. SOmetimes I think, "wow I have no problems in life" lol. My outfits are all cosmetic upgrades I have purchased from H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, and Indochino. Imagine if we had started streaming before Twitch was a thing. And even after Twitch was a thing, we had a huge leg-up in terms of traffic but we never used this. We could've flooded Twitch streams with 1000s of viewers and this would've snowballed those streamers to huge success. We should've streamed 🙂 But yeah, we missed this boat despite many opportunities and signs. This is weird but I recently got a new job IRL and my new boss was stunned to find out who I was and that he'd heard of me back when he played RuneScape like 18 years ago lol. I have a few close people on Facebook. I've met a few people IRL. But overall: not really. I have one close friend who still works in the games world (more like metaverse) and he played Rs back then but we didn't know each other then.