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RuneScape is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) implemented using Java, with over two million active players using over 130 servers. RuneScape was launched by Jagex Limited on 4 January 2001 and offers both pay-to-play (P2P) and free-to-play (F2P) membership options to players. RuneScape is designed to be accessible from any location with an internet connection.

Overview

RuneScape is a MMORPG comparable to Guild Wars, Everquest, and Final Fantasy XI. Players set their own goals in the game, deciding which of the available activities they wish to pursue. Players can increase their experience (train) in any of the available skills from combat to construction, complete quests, develop skills, and hang out with friends and other players. Players interact with each other through chat, trade, mutual missions, mini-games, and visiting with each other in their houses.

During peak hours, RuneScape usually has more than 100,000 players online. The record for the largest number of simultaneous players is steadily rising. In March 2006, a record 197,000 simultaneous players was reached. This record was broken on June 2, 2006, when over 202,000 players were online simultaneously, making RuneScape the most popular online Java based game in the world. Jagex maintains 133 international servers, or worlds, for Runescape and RuneScape Classic. Each of the 131 RuneScape servers is limited to 2,000 players, allowing 262,000 simultaneous players. The two RuneScape Classic servers are each limited to 1,250, allowing 2,500 players.

The RuneScape servers are located in the United Kingdom (20 servers including the 2 Classic servers), the United States (79), Canada (14), the Netherlands (6), Australia (6) and Sweden (8). RuneScape is usually updated weekly, with the common addition of new quests and items. Larger updates are less frequent and can include additions of new locations, skills, items, or mini-games.

History and Development

Version One: The first version started out as a one man project. Andrew Gower, the developer, started working on the original game in 1998. This version was very different from the RuneScape of today. It had isometric graphics, and was originally titled 'DeviousMUD'. This version was never released to the public, and only a few people ever saw it.

Version Two: Andrew scrapped 'DeviousMUD', and started work on a complete rewrite in 1999. Despite being a complete rewrite, this version was very similar to the first, with the same graphics as the first, but with some name changes. This version was released as a public beta for about one week, and then withdrawn.

Version Three: Andrew started yet again with a third attempt in October 1999. This time, he had some help from his brother, Paul Gower. The isometric view was replaced in favour of 3D graphics and 2D sprites. The game was renamed RuneScape and released to the public on 4 January 2001. This version is still online today, but only for limited RuneScape members. It is currently called RuneScape Classic. This version was also featured on TechTV's show The Screen Savers as a part of Megan's Download of the Day segment on January 25, 2002 On 12 January 2006, play was restricted to members who had logged in at least once since 5 August 2005. No more accounts for this version can ever be created.

Jagex Limited is Formed: In December 2001, Jagex Limited was founded as a commercial operation. Jagex acquired RuneScape along with all related technologies and continued to develop the game further. Andrew Gower became its lead developer.

Members Launch: On 27 February 2002, Jagex launched an optional "members service", allowing players to pay about $5 USD a month to obtain access to constant updates on a regular basis, usually weekly. Paying members had a far greater choice of things to do, but it was still possible to play the game for free. In fact, the amount of free content was also increased. While not a new version as such, since the game still ran on the same game engine, this update did significantly change the focus of the game.

Version Four: Jagex went for yet another complete rewrite. Version four changed the graphics to full 3D and made many other significant improvements. While in development, this version was called RuneScape 2. The name was changed to simply RuneScape, but the name RuneScape 2 is still used to differentiate between it and RuneScape Classic. An incomplete beta of this version was made available to members on 1 December 2003, and the finished version was launched on 29 March 2004.

Version Five: On 16 May 2006, Jagex upgraded RuneScape's game engine, improving aspects of it, such as the chat filter. Version 5 appears to the player to be basically the same RuneScape as Version 4 as the upgrades are much more low key than previous changes; however, this version has major changes in the underlying programming. Most importantly, it reduces the amount of memory the game uses, which will allow it to be expanded and improved in many ways without increasing its load time for most players. This is the current version of the game being promoted by Jagex, and is the version most people associate with the word RuneScape.

Combat

Combat is an important aspect of RuneScape, as killing monsters is one of the most direct ways of gaining wealth in terms of both cash and items. Combat is also needed to complete many of the quests in the game and can be used to fight other players. Combat levels are calculated using the seven combat skills: attack, strength, defence, hitpoints, magic, prayer, and ranged. Other skills increase players' total levels and overall rankings but not their combat levels. The maximum combat level in RuneScape Classic is 123, and the maximum in the current RuneScape is 126.

Combat is subdivided into three primary categories:

• Melee - fighting with close range weapons
• Magic - fighting with magic spells
• Ranged - fighting with projectiles

Unlike many similar games, character classes do not exist in RuneScape. Players are not bound to a specific category of combat, and they may freely change between the three forms of combat at any time simply by switching weapons, armours, and methods of attack. Players can even carry the weapons and armours of all three combat categories in their inventories and switch back and forth at will. Many players also combine combat types to a degree. Players may choose to wear ranger armour and wield melee weapons, as melee weapons are more effective against mages and ranged armour provides the best defence against mages.

Weapons

There are many types of weapons in RuneScape, such as swords, bows and arrows, and magical staffs. Different weapons have different powers, strengths, and requirements. Weapons are generally ranked by attack bonus and speed, but consideration is also given to the availability of special attacks or other special abilities. Stronger players generally use more powerful weapons than weaker players.

Monsters

Many NPCs populate RuneScape. Some of them cannot be attacked by players, such as shopkeepers, but many NPCs can be attacked. Attackable NPCs are known as monsters, whether they are human, animal, elemental, demonic, or perhaps something else. Monsters range from common, low level monsters like chickens to unique, much more powerful monsters like the King Black Dragon or Chaos Elemental. Each type of monster has its own strengths and weaknesses. Demons, for example, have low defence against magical attacks while dragons have extremely high defence against magic.

Player versus Player Combat

Players often like to fight against other players rather than NPCs. RuneScape offers several areas where player versus player (PvP) combat may occur. The most common place is in the Wilderness. In the Wilderness, players risk their lives and, more importantly, their items, challenging other players. Another common area for PvP combat is Castle Wars, where players may simply have fun fighting others, risking no items. Other areas for PvP combat include the Duel Arena and the TzHaar Fight Pit.

Skills

Skills are the abilities that enable players to perform activities in the game. Players gain experience in a skill when they perform activities that utilise that skill, for instance mining a rock would increase the mining skill. In general, the higher level it requires to perform a task, the more experience points the performer receives, and the more desirable the result is. The combined skill level of a player partly symbolises the player's status in the game. The RuneScape hiscores tables can be viewed by all players, and players with higher combined, or overall, levels are well known. There are currently 22 skills including:

• Extraction skills
• Processing skills
• Combat skills
• Independent skills

Random Events

When players train skills, they often encounter random events, which are usually NPCs that appear next to a player, requiring some type of player input. Some random events are simple, requiring a player only to click on the NPC or to leave the area temporarily; others require the player to navigate a labyrinth, answer a trivial question, or imitate another NPCs actions. Players must respond to these events quickly and correctly in order to avoid a negative effect, such as being teleported across the map.

Random events were introduced in order to deter players from macroing, which is the act of using a program to play the game with little or no human interaction. Since it can be difficult for the game engine to distinguish between macroers and legitimate players, random events also target these normal players. In the event of a timeout or broken internet connection, players can be kicked off the server before they have a chance to remove their character from the game. In this time, random events can occur and kill or otherwise harm an innocent player. For this reason, random events are a controversial part of the game.

Quests

Quests in RuneScape are one-time adventures that serve a variety of purposes. The novice quests act as tutorials to acquaint new users with the various skills and abilities they will need in the game and are usually linear in nature. The harder quests are designed to challenge the skills of experienced players to resolve a world conflict of some kind, which might just open up a new area to be explored and exploited for fun and profit. Quests may be started in several places around the RuneScape world. All quests include some kind of reward, such as money, rare or valuable items, or an increase in skill experience. Most quests also give the player a number of "quest points", usually dependent on the difficulty of the quest. A certain number of quest points is required to start some quests, as a demonstration of ability. Some quests are part of an overlapping storyline, the most famous of which is the Plague City story line, which has been in RuneScape for several years and currently contains seven separate quests. On 15 March 2006, Jagex released the hundredth quest, Recipe for Disaster, which is a sequel to the first quest, Cook's Assistant.

Mini-Games

RuneScape has a number of mini-games, which are activities, somewhat like quests, that can be done multiple times. Located within the overall game of RuneScape, they take place in certain areas, and normally involve a certain skill. Many mini-games involve cooperative efforts or allow players to compete with each other. Popular mini-games include Castle Wars and Barrows.

Community

Players of RuneScape represent a wide range of nationalities and ages; however, because the game itself is currently only available in English, almost all players speak English to some extent. Players who speak languages other than English tend to gravitate to worlds that are populated by other players who speak the same language. For example, some worlds have a greater percentage of players who speak Spanish, Dutch, or Lithuanian. It is not uncommon to see many languages on the chat screens throughout RuneScape.

Game language

RuneScape players have developed their own written language, which can be incomprehensible to outsiders and difficult for newcomers to learn. This consists mostly of the proliferation of in-game terminology and the abbreviation of commonly used words. Players will also frequently use common Internet slang when such is allowed by the language filter. The use of slang and abbreviations allows for easier communication between established players despite the small space available in the in-game messaging system. For example, an established player might say "i trade ur r pl8 (g) for r2h and 100k ardy world2" While this would be incomprehensible to new players, established players would know it means - "I will trade you your gold-trimmed rune platebody for a rune two-handed sword and 100,000 gold pieces in Ardougne, on world two."

A word filter is used in both the RuneScape game and the RuneScape forums. When a string of characters is censored, it is replaced by a series of asterisks. The filter is used to censor advertising and "offensive language" such as swear words, hate words, and certain words that could be inflammatory. Over the history of the filter, players have devised ever more creative ways, including use of a modified version of leetspeak, to slip by the filter. This deliberate avoidance of the censorship mechanism is considered a serious violation of Jagex rules of conduct and has resulted in more and more combinations of letters being censored. For example, for a long period of time, the internet slang word pwn was censored, as the "pw" in the word is a common abbreviation for the word password. Also, since advertising websites is in violation of RuneScape rules, all URLs are automatically censored as well.

On 16 May 2006, the chat filter was overhauled. Symbols, such as / and \, which had been completely locked out, are again permitted, and many words, such as the aforementioned "pw", can now be used. The filter was improved to allow additional symbols, such as vowels with accents as well as §, £, and °. Some non-Latin characters, such as letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, which had appeared as asterisks like a filtered word, are rendered as question marks. This update has also caused some problems. Some words were removed from the filters in error while some are now filtered for no obvious reason. For example, in some instances, when pluralizing words, replacing the -s with -z now often results in censoring; also, "thats" is censored unless a space (that s) or an apostrophe (that's) is used.

Fashion

Rare items, such as Santa hats, Halloween masks, various coloured party hats, and other past holiday drops are fashionable because they are somewhat unique and because their scarcity has made them extremely expensive. Their price has also made these a symbol of wealth and status in RuneScape. Party Hats are the rarest of the wearable holiday drops and some cost in excess of two hundred million GP. These items can not be obtained except by purchasing them from another player as they have been 'discontinued'. As these items are dropped, lost, or hoarded by players, they increase in price and become even more rare.

Most armour in RuneScape requires that a player meet minimum levels before they can be worn. As players achieve these required levels, the best armour available to them becomes desirable both for combat and to communicate their level. The best armour, only available to members, has the additional appeal of communicating membership when using free servers, even though the combat bonuses they provide only work on member servers.

Some armours are ornamentally trimmed with colour. Rune, adamant, and black melee armours, leather, blue, and green dragonhide ranged armours, and blue magic robes may be trimmed in gold or a contrasting colour. Rune armours may also be trimmed in the colours of the three main RuneScape gods. Rune and black kite shields may be trimmed with heraldic designs in opposite quadrants. These trimmed armours combine the communication of wealth and "cool"ness with the functionality of armour, but are not in any way stronger or better than untrimmed versions. Players cannot trim armours; they can be obtained only by trading with other players or by completing treasure trails.

Moderators

• Jagex Moderators (J-mods) are the in-game representation of Jagex employees. They typically have "Mod" in their names, such as "Mod Mark". In RuneScape, they are identified by a gold crown beside their names, visible during public and private chat. On RuneScape's official forums, the gold crown is shown under their name, and their posts appear highlighted yellow.
  J-mods may change their skill levels at whim and may generate items within their inventory. They are also known to possess a special "J-mod teleportation ability" that enables them to appear anywhere on RuneScape. However, they do not engage in either combat or trade, and do not appear in the hiscores tables.

• Player Moderators (P-mods) are regular players who have been carefully selected and invited by Jagex to help maintain the order of the RuneScape environment, keeping it safe and free from rule-breaking. P-mods are identified by a silver crown next to their names when they speak in public or private chat. P-mods have the ability to mute players, curtailing their ability to communicate in-game. They also have access to the Player Moderator Center, an area on the RuneScape website that contains tools, information, and forums that allows P-mods to perform their role more effectively. P-mods are not expected to spend greater periods of time playing RuneScape than normal players, and are not even obliged to make use of their special abilities.
  Two common misconceptions are that p-mods have a duty to provide other players with direct playing assistance within the game or that they have easy access to superior or infinite reserves of in-game materials, when in fact neither is true. Furthermore, p-mods are subject to all the same rules and limitations as other players, and any found guilty of infringement of the rules may lose their moderator status or face bans.

• Forum Moderators (F-mods) are regular players who work to carry out the tasks of managing RuneScape's official forums. F-mods are normal players handpicked by Jagex staff. F-mods are given the ability to move and lock threads, hide posts or entire threads, edit titles, and temporarily ban players from posting. Like p-mods, they are given a set of forums that are primarily used to help perform their role more effectively. F-mods have a green crown beside their name, as well as a green background when they post on the forums. F-mods are not identified by a crown beside their name when they are playing RuneScape.

Graphics

Although RuneScape currently has fully 3D graphics, some people argue that RuneScape's graphics are substandard. However, the game is developed using Java, which focuses on having graphics compact enough to be loaded quickly in a browser, and as such, there comes a point where the quality of the graphics cannot be further improved. Like many online games, RuneScape does not sport Next-Gen graphics, but players are quick to point out that the quality of a game does not depend solely on its graphics. Since the game does not require a download or a CD to play, and it is played entirely on the desktop explorer, the game's graphics will never reach the same standard as modern PC games.

Character Appearance

A lot of emphasis has been placed on allowing players to customise their character. Players are given a wide choice in creating character models, from hairstyle to facial features and gender. Appearance can be further optimised by wearing or wielding different items, with each different weapon having a unique image. In addition to these small equipment changes, players may also change their appearance radically with special equipment, or during certain events. All morphs are temporary, and players may not attack while morphed. Players may be transformed to frogs, eggs, mushrooms, and small animals such as chickens and pigs. Players wearing a ring of stone may transform into piles of stone, allowing them to avoid poison or weather effects such as desert heat. In Castle Wars, players wearing armour that conflicts with their team god will be transformed into imps, sheep, or rabbits. Players holding a monkey gree-gree from the Monkey Madness quest may transform into primates in specific areas.

Character Animations

There are many different animations in the game for the variety of things players can do, from combat to the numerous quests. There are also "emotes", which are animations that allow players to express an emotion whenever they choose. Players will start with most of the emotes, but some of the emotes must be earned, either through quests or from random events. Some emotes, namely the "Scared" and "Bunny hop" emotes, were only obtainable during passed holiday events. If players did not unlock them during those events, they will never be able to obtain them.

Detail Levels

RuneScape can be run in high or low detail level. Choosing to run it on the high detail mode gives different things a more graphically intense texture and design. Choosing low detail gives everything a cleaner cut look and reduces in-game latency, commonly called 'lag'. Some monsters and landmarks will also appear less detailed in the low detail version of the game. Some objects that contain moving parts on high detail do not move on low detail, including the water spraying from fountains. Originally, the low detail version of the game was designed not to play sounds (for slower computers), but with a recent update, players using the low detail version of the game can now access sounds.

Area Appearance

Since February 2005, Jagex has put a massive effort forward to update the RuneScape free world cities, beginning with Lumbridge and Draynor Village. In September 2005 they announced that Thurgo's Peninsula, which includes the Port Sarim and Rimmington areas, had been graphically updated. On the 20 February 2006, Falador and the Barbarian Village were graphically updated, along with the Lost City of Zanaris. The change to Falador was criticised heavily, as many players complained there was too much white in the buildings. As of April 2006, Jagex has added wilderness graphics. There are also occasional, unannounced graphical changes to some places such as West Ardougne, the sewer underneath it, and many items. Jagex plans ultimately to improve the graphics of the whole free world without causing more lag for people using dial-up internet connections.

Economy

The RuneScape economy is similar in many ways to real-world economies, as supply and demand play an important role in determining the price of items. The currency used in RuneScape is Gold Pieces, mostly referred to as "GP" or "Coins". Unfortunately, the RuneScape economy is plagued by inflation, as the number of Gold Pieces in circulation is unlimited, and ever-increasing due to NPC drops and alchemy. Conversely, many valuable items decline in price gradually as more of them appear from NPC drops (recently, an upsurge in the number of players in 'members' has seen prices stabilise through greater demand and in some cases, as with the robin hood hat and ranger boots set, prices have actually risen).

Criticisms

RuneScape is criticised for a number of reasons:

• The game's graphics are limited by the fact that RuneScape is designed to be downloaded quickly and run in a web browser.
• Some players take advantage of anonymity and behave rudely and immaturely to other players.
• RuneScape has a mandatory chat filter that often blocks things that are not swearing or bad language and often fails to block things that should be blocked. Players can manipulate the filter in many ways. Jagex was successful in alleviating many of these problems in an update on 16 May 2006; however, many problems with the filter remain.
• Some skills in RuneScape can only be trained efficiently by repeatedly clicking in the same pattern. This repetitive nature of gameplay is often referred to as "grinding".
• Players can manipulate their combat levels by focusing their training on only a few of the combat skills, keeping their combat levels relatively low when compared to the amount of damage they are able to cause. These characters, known as pures, can be used to overwhelm other players in the Wilderness in teams or clans.
• Runescape is also commonly accused of installing malicious software on client computers, because it is a Java game and requires access to a directory on player's systems.

Membership

Players can choose to play RuneScape free (F2P) or to pay for extra content (P2P). P2P players can participate in all the activities available to F2P players; in addition, they also have access to quests, items, map area, skills, shortcuts, and mini-games that are not available to F2P players. The monthly fee when paid by credit card is £3.20, $5.00, or €4.60. Other payment options, including paying by check or money order, charging to telephone bills, and using online cash processors such as PayPal, are available at rates that include additional service fees. In addition to more content, P2P players also have the ability to vote in polls and to post on the official forums. When the paid membership option was first introduced, content was updated usually weekly for members. Updates are still done on a weekly basis, but content for F2P players do receive occasional updates. Paid membership is also required to play RuneScape Classic.

Footnotes

1. "RuneScape new concurrent and active player records" - gamesindustry.biz, 22 December 2004. Retrieved 5 March 2006.
2. "5 new worlds in Stockholm, Sweden" - RuneScape Technical News, 27 March 2006. Retrieved 4 March 2006.
3. "6 new Australian servers online!" - RuneScape Technical News, 28 December 2005. Retrieved 4 March 2006.
4. "Free Download of the Day: Runescape" - g4tv.com, 25 January 2002. Retrieved 31 May 2006.
5. "Nearly 5000 RS-classic accounts banned" - RuneScape Customer Support News, 12 January 2006. Retrieved 4 March 2006.
6. "Game engine upgraded!" - RuneScape Game Updates News, 16 May 2006. Retrieved 4 June 2006.
7. "Weapons Update" - RuneScape Game Updates News, 29 March 2005. Retrieved 4 June 2006.

External links

• RuneScape – The official RuneScape website.
• Jagex site – The official Jagex site.
• Knowledge Base – The official RuneScape guide.

Official Affiliates

• Miniclip (runescape.com)
• Mofunzone (runescape.com)

• RuneScape
• Massively multiplayer online role-playing games
• Java platform games
• Miniclip games
• Browser-based games