My email to Jagex regarding Botany Bay's "Bot Finder General" -------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Jagex, I am offended by the Bot finder General which was shown in the Behind the Scenes for Botany Bay. I am a Wiccan, which is a modern day Witch, and the Bot Finder general is clearly Matthew Hopkins (Witch finder general). The witch hunts caused the deaths of many innocent people, and now you are using Matthew Hopkins to kill bots. This leads me to believe you are equating bots to witches in the 17th Century. I wanted to voice my opinion on this character being used, as I find it offensive to my religion. -------------------------------------------------------------- Reply from Jagex: -------------------------------------------------------------- Hi there, Thanks for getting in touch with us this evening and for voicing your concerns regarding the upcoming Botany Bay update. Jagex has a diverse and caring development team, with members from a myriad of different ethnicities and religious backgrounds all of whom have a large part in the drive and direction that RuneScape is taken. All of this factors into the decisions that the development team and ultimately Jagex takes in regards to the content placed into RuneScape and all of our other products. While we would love to ensure that no-one is offended by this content we do occasionally have a rare case of a player taking issue with this content. Rest assured that while our developers do draw on inspiration from all areas of the world’s history this is generally based on many different influences and the character is not based directly or indirectly off “Matthew Hopkins”. Obviously it is not our goal to offend anyone however and we will always work with both the community and our development teams to ensure that RuneScape is a safe, enjoyable experience for everyone. I will of course escalate your concerns to the developers and raise your issues with the Bot Master General in the hopes that they will re-evaluate the content. If you have anything else you would like us to assist you with please reply to this email and we will do everything we can to help. Many thanks, Mod Lyon -------------------------------------------------------------- My Email to Jagex after the bot livestream: -------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Jagex, Regarding your recent message, it was stated that "the character is not based directly or indirectly off "Matthew Hopkins". " Tonight, I watched the Jagex livestream regarding bots (Second Official Live Q&A - Bots). At around 00:20:00 minutes in, Mod Mark stated that "It's kind of related pragmatically to witch hunts, you know old kind of, Salem witch trials, those kinds of things are what we looked at and got inspired. These bots, let's not beat around the bush, they're scum." From that sentence I get the feeling that Mod Mark is equating people of my religion (Pagans/Wiccans, AKA Witches) to bots, which he then goes on to call scum, therefore equating Pagans to scum. Also, at 1:10:40 one viewer (Lewis) asked "Why the comparison to Salem, these people were innocent bots" Mark said "It's just a thematic thing, you know the witch trials people say they weren't real, these people were innocent, you know, it's just something that happened in history.. it's a thematic thing"... He also said we base things on mythology, which I also found offensive. This made me feel that Mark believes that the Salem Witch Trials were myth, and he seemed very nonchalant about this. I believe both of these (semi accurate) quotes contradict your statement that the character isn't based on Matthew Hopkins, as it was clearly stated that it was themed on the Salem Witch Trials. I don't want to be excessively aggressive, but I would just like my opinion on these matters to be heard. Thank you, Pete