RuneScape

RuneScape is a 3D Java based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), launched by Jagex in January 2001 as a free-to-play game.

There are often over fifty thousand players online at once, spread across its 24 free members' and 12 paid members' worlds (servers are located at Philadelphia, London, Toronto, San Francisco, San Jose, and Atlanta). There is a wide range of players in the game. Players are most commonly in their early teens however there are also many players who are adults over the age of forty.

Overview

Screenshot of Runescape

The game is set in a fantasy world, where players control their own avatars representing their own characters. There is no overall goal or objective to the game, and no defined end. However, there are plenty of tasks that people can perform in the game. For example, players can interact with each other, by talking, trading, and even fighting (though fighting is restricted to the wilderness). There are several instances in which a player found his/her soulmate in the game. Quests can also be undertaken, such as Dragon slaying quest. However quests are not compulsory and players have the option of not completing any of the in-game quests if they so desire. There are many other activities such as fishing, crafting, mining and smithing. As these activities are performed, a character will become more skilled at the activity. It is not uncommon for a dedicated player to spend in excess of four hours a day training his character; there are even a few rare cases of players regularly spending over ten hours a day online.

Playing the game

Screenshot of the updated Runescape

The new player to Runescape comes to a tutorial island. Although initially coming to a tutorial island may seem boring to some, Jagex has determined this action to be imperative to understanding future gameplay. For those stuck, moving around is executed by left-clicking on a piece of land. While on tutorial island, players learn about fighting, communication, cooking, banking, doing quests, and other skills. Once a player has completed the tasks assigned on tutorial island, he is transported to the city of Lumbridge. From then on, players can upgrade their characters in the fashion that they want. They could travel around the "real-life" player's world between cities such as Varrock, Falador, Barbarian Village, Draynor Village, Port Sarim, Port Khazzard, East and West Ardougne, Camelot Castle, Edgeville, Al Kharid, Dwarven Mine, Brimhaven, etc., or even islands such as Karamja, Entrana, Crandor, etc.. Players could also travel around by raising their magic level to a level high enough to perform a teleport to some of these major cities.

Fighting

Fighting is a particularly important skill in Runescape, as monsters abound in this world. Many people train their characters in dungeons, castles, and sewers, where powerful monsters with valuable treasures flourish in great amounts. There are also some monsters in between cities although these monsters are generally unaggressive.

Mining

Mining is one of the widely used skills as many other skills run into it. Mining is used to get raw materials for making armour and other products. As a player's level in this skill increases, he will be able to mine more different types of "ore": including, but not limited to, clay, copper, tin, iron, silver, coal, gold, mithril, adamanite, and runite. Players need a pick in order to use this skill.

Communities

Screenshot of the updated Runescape

RuneScape has many communities within it. Many players have grouped together to form groups known as 'clans'. These clans often have alliances, and occasionally go to war with each other; meeting in bloody clashes often exceeding a hundred participants. Sometimes players enter the war zone to pick up leftover items, such as enchanted amulets and armor. It is not only fun to evade higher levels, but profitable as well.

This takes place in the Wilderness area, located in northern RuneScape. The Wilderness has great rewards, but also great risks. This is also where player characters can fight and kill each another, known throughout the game as PKing(Player Killing). As one gets deeper into the Wilderness, they can fight with other players further and further away from their combat level. So a Lvl 60 player in Lvl 30 wilderness can attack players Lvl 30-90. When a player attacks another player in the wilderness, that player is given a skull over his head. If a player with a skull over his head dies, then he loses all of his items (Normally a dead person would lose all of his items except for his three most expensive items). Half of the wilderness only allows 1-on-1 battles, whilst the other half allows multiway combat and the potentially huge team based wars mentioned above. There are many different weapons, spells, and potions available to assist fighting in the wilderness.

However, the Wilderness isn't only for PKing. There are places to mine, smith, cook, train, fish, collect items, and more. The wilderness also abounds with monsters, most of which are more dangerous than monster outside of the wilderness. The deep member's only Wilderness contains the dangerous Mage Arena. Also lurking in the Wilderness is a lever that teleports a character to the King Black Dragon, (often known as "KBD") the Second most powerful monster in RuneScape. Even deeper in the member's wilderness is a quick escape to a members town, where a person can teleport to Ardougne by pulling a lever. In the northeastern area of the wilderness lurks some of the fabled greater demons. These massive beasts are very strong and very hard to train on if there are a lot of PKers.

Developments

On February 27, 2002, Jagex launched a new optional 'members service'. This basically allows players to pay $5 a month to get access to new quests, features and skills. Paying members have a far greater choice of things to do, but it is still possible to play the game for free, and there is in fact still more free content available than ever before.

Over the past three years, players have attempted to develop a variety of RuneScape cheats. When Runescape first opened, cheating was at an all-time high, and was rarely prevented. However when Jagex introduced the pay-to-play members service the additional cash revenue meant they were able to start enforcing the rules better, and they implemented many macro detection routines and protections to ensure that an actual human was playing.

On December 1, 2003, Jagex released a beta version of an improved version of the game, which had been rewitten from the scratch (temporarily called "Runescape 2"). Featuring a new 3D-engine and revisions to gameplay, this beta was initially only available to paying members. Jagex claimed that this will make RuneScape the most advanced Java based game in the world. On March 17, 2004, Jagex released the beta to non-paying players.

Just in time to keep their Q1 promise, Jagex took the new game out of beta, and finally released it to everyone on March 29, 2004, which gave everyone playing Runescape (paying or not) the opportunity to test and try out the new gaming system.

Sequel

Runescape 2 includes a whole new player interface, which separates the main-view, game-options, minimap, and chat into four different screen areas, allowing tasks to be performed more efficiently and conveniently. These areas are:

The main-view - Which now enables players to zoom up and down in order to see the world more clearly.
A game-options area - A new panel on the side which combines all the gaming functions into one space (Level Status, Attack Style, Prayer, Magic, Quests, Armour page, Inventory page, Friends list, Ignore list, Music player, Player controls, and log out function)
The minimap - Now permanently visible in its own area and has extra icons indicating the location of important locations, such as: shops, quest-points, ranges, furnaces, dungeon-entrances, etc..
A dedicated chat / message area

Much improved graphics have been included, the new graphics are now competitive to other popular role playing games, such as Diablo. Shopkeepers and Bankers are no longer jammed when another player is dealing with them. Instead, players can now even trade with them straight away without any conversation at all. Navigation is improved, since clicking on a location now displays a tiny red flag on the minimap indicating the destination, until the player arrives or changes their mind. Magic, prayer and ranging now all include much improved animations alongside with different animations for each kind of action too. Weapon attacks now each have different styles, although these still correspond to the three familiar combat styles from before: Accurate (+Attack lvl), Aggressive (+Strength lvl) and Defensive (+Defense lvl).

Magic requires a certain amount of Runes (Air, Mind, Water, Fire, Earth, Body, Chaos, Cosmic, Nature, Death, Blood and Soul; or requires optional staffs such the three different staffs of the three Runescape Gods: Saradomin, Guthix and Zamorak, or "Iban Staff" for "Iban Blast"). Newly available in RS2 for both paying and non-paying players is the added ability of "Runecrafting", which allows players to craft their own runes. Players can also still choose to buy their own runes from the witch Betty or from Aubury in Varrock, or, (the fastest way), to buy from another player who already has thousands of runes.

For armour, the nine materials of weapons and armours are still kept (Leather, Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamantite, Rune and Dragon), but the rare Black and Rune items are no longer as valuable as before, since new items were added - especially to the Dragon family. Available weapons include: daggers, short swords, scimitars, long swords, two-handed swords, hatchets, battle axes, maces, throwing knives, arrow-heads, etc. Available armour includes: chain-mail body, plate-mail body, skirt armours, medium-helmets, large helmets, etc. Most of these items are available in each kind of metal.

Players in Runescape generally fall into three major classes: warrior, ranger, and mage. There is no actual definition of those classes; people generally level up their statistics in the statistics respective to these classes. Warriors are possibly the most common class; fighting in melee mode increases Strength, Attack and Defense. Wizards are the second most common class and emphasize magical spells. In RS2, magic use has greatly proliferated due to significantly increased damage. Lastly, there is the Ranger, which emphasizes skill in archery and projectile throwing.

RS2 has a class triangle, whereby a Warrior defeats Ranger, Ranger defeats Wizard and Wizard defeats Warrior (analogous to the rock, paper and scissors triangle).

Some people have chosen to train each of their combat skills to the same level. There is no way of defining their exact class, although it is suggested by the armor they wear. If they have a significant level of each of the three class's skills or none then there is no way of making a definitive classification.