Potions, good or bad?
One or two things about Runescape bother me and the first is the use of performance enhancing drugs (potions). Take the strenght potion and up goes str lvl by three points and that means you can hit harder in mellee combat, but there is no physical price to pay, no downside to taking the drug! There are potions for agility, fishing, attack etc. and none have downside!
If you drink wine or beer you gain some healing value but you lose some attack ability. In fact your character can get so drunk it cannot operate, try it!
So what message is this sending to the young and impressionable people playing the game? Is it alright to take drugs and the only cost is money and that drinking beer and wine is injurious to health but only for a little while!
Does the game teach that if you can afford them, using the perfomance enhancing drugs is a good thing and can give you an advantage over other players? Would the game lose any of its appeal if it did not have these potions, I don’t it would as all it would do is bring the game back to a level playing field based on players acheivements and that would be a good thing.