Runescape, its not that bad , Open Minds Only!
Introduction:
For a very long while we have all seen the heated debate (flaming) between Runescape players and players from other major MMORPGS, as well as back and forth between the players of those games. Until now, all I’ve seen is random criticisms and rants here and there about how one game is better than the other or one lacks something the other has and all this completely unnecessary bickering between players that shouldn’t be arguing which game is better, but instead should be talking about why they like their game and how much they enjoy playing it. Answer this question to yourself, in the end, who does it matter to what you spend your money and your time on? Exactly!
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1.1 - The art of, making, the history.
To truly understand the purpose or reason a game exists, you must first question the beginning of the creator.
Blizzard: Blizzard Entertainment was founded in February, 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by Micheal Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. Adopting the blizzard name in 1994, they have since become a very vast company with a large amount of resources at its disposal with blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft and the Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft series, the company has enjoyed back to back number one selling games, as well as consecutive Game of the Year awards. The company’s free online game service, Battle.net, launched in 1996 for Diablo multiplayer and now spanning to multiple games including starcraft, is now the largest in the world with millions of active users. On November 23, 2004 Blizzard launched their soon to be most popular title yet, World Of Warcraft. Within months it quickly made a name for itself in the MMORPG community as a fun massive game for players to interact between each other and their environment. As of recent, WoW remains blizzard main weapon coming into the fight with well over 900,000 subscribers and dazzling the community with its impressive 3d engine.
For a fully detailed history visit Blizzards official website @ http://www.blizzard.com
Jagex: Jagex software was founded in early 1999 by Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder. The main goal was to create and license java based applications/games for third party websites. However talk of a free java bassed MMORPG followed later in the year. Before the company’s birth however, in late ‘98 DeviousMUD had already began beta testing. In 2001, Runescape was created. Jagex had a few tasks in mind for the game. The first, was to extend game features to the point where they could begin charging a monthly fee for the full game (5.00 USD). The second, was to maintain an updated free version of the game for the large scale community to play without having to subscribe. Both of these goals were archived and the members version (p2p) was released on February 27th, 2002. Gaining 5,000 subscriptions in the first week. Runescape Currently has over 9,000,000 free players and approximately 850,000 pay-to-play subscribers as of July 17th, 2006. Founders Andrew Gower and Paul Gower were calculated to be worth 60 Million USD. Jagex has hevily grown as a company since 1999, now with 2 working offices. One in London, and one in Cambridge. As of 2006, the company has a working staff of 312, and 138 servers (worlds) for runescape.
For a fully detailed history, visit Jagex corporate website (http://www.jagex.com/corporate/index.ws)
or the runescape Homepage (Runescape.com)
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1.2 - Game Engines:
World Of Warcraft: Packing a decent DirecX 9.0 3D engine, allows the creators of the game to have a dazzling display of bright shiny lights, effects, distancing, color and creativity.
A screenshot from World Of Warcraft
Not to say its going to topple Quake 4, Doom3, or FEAR. But its near decent enough to keep many people interested. And is used as a bottleneck against Runescapes game quality by most Wow fans like
Runescape – Many people wonder what allows a game like Runescape to run via a browser window. The answer, Java. Java is a high-level, object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. It is similar to C++ (Another programming Language) but has been simplified to eliminate language features that cause common programming errors. Java is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the Web.
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1.3 – Gameplay
Because of the old Runescape’s introduction and appearance, Runescape was given the “point and click” game name. Leveling skills looked from the outside like a simple thing that even a child could do. However things are not always they appear.
A drink is always good, be sure to ask nicely =)
Combat:
Runescape features 23 experienced based skills beginning at level 1. Seven of which, Attack, Strength, Defense, Hit points, Mage, Range, and Prayer are combat based with different styles and weaknesses. Each style has its own equipment and cost based on your level and skill. Not only does runescape offer many combat styles, it offers a very interesting environment with over 300+ characters and 400+ monsters to enhance and develop them.
Other Skills:
Aside from combat, Runescape has skills all the way from slayer and herblore, to mining and cooking. Each skill has a different way to train with multiple methods and amounts of upgrades; level of use depends on the level of the skill. For example, at a certain level of magic.
A player will unlock the ability to teleport to a certain location. Because of how vast the Runescape world is, this feature becomes almost to important to forget about.
Another prime example is construction, of the more recent of skill releases. As you level this skill, you are soon allowed to purchase your own home within the Runescape world at any number of towns or locations. Players who are more learned, and practiced in the skill, can unlock the ability to build their home in more experienced and convenient areas. In one’s house, you can have any number of rooms for all kinds of purposes. A few for example, are a treasure room, a portal room, a study, a boxing arena, a dueling arena, and even your own player dungeon where you can store some of the intensely powerful beasts you’ve come across in your travels, as well as hide traps, puzzles, and rewards for other players to collect.
The skills from the user interface. You’ll soon learn every one!
Player Killing: (Pking) (pvp)
PK’ing (also knowing as “Player Killing”) is probably one of the most exciting things you can do while playing Runescape. Contrary to the belief that all you need to do is “point, click, and wait” you need to be quite attentive during a PK session. Because of the different aspects of stat boosting, equipment, combat level, and combat style it can come down to being so evenly matched, or so outmatched, that a single second, a single decision, can change the outcome of an entire battle spanning hundreds of players. Making Runescape the game that no one player can truly master.
Different from most MMORPG’s during a PVP game, you actually kill your opponent and depending on the rules of the area where you are, you may keep all of your enemy’s equipment, or none of it. Regardless, your enemy bows before you in their death before being transported to Lumbridge (the graveyard town). Because of this, PK’ing is a main income/profession of players.
A large amount of strategy during player killing is required because of certain things, hot spots, magers and archers, powerful melee opponents, and of course clan battles. During such events, a player can choose to run to a safe area or deeper into obstacles and other buildings to deter your chaser. But during the chase certain spells and effects may last that will freeze your opponent in their tracks, poison them, or KO them completely.
On a final note, before ending this section I’d like to make one thing apparent. You cannot beat Runescape, there is no final quest, no item, no skill once mastered, that lets you say “Yeh, I beat it in 30 hours” I personally have enjoyed other Mmo’s for many hundreds of hours of gameplay and I can truthfully say that if your not interested in PVP (which you should try at least once in all games) and you finish the story, the game gets real dull, real fast. It gets to a point when you log in, that you have no idea what to do, no one is on in the later hours,things you can do for fun don’t just pop up. This, in Runescape is only partially true. You feel like playing, log in, take a gander at your skills, look up a quest you’d like to finish, build your house, increase your knowledge of magic, enjoy a game of poker at the gaming lounge. You cannot do it all, in the 6 years Runescape has been out that I have been enjoying it, I have still only made partial progress. The areas, the monsters, the items, the quests, it is infallible to assume that you can do it all.
The Only Major Downside:
But no matter how much you look to avoid it, boredom will set in eventually. There are truly many many skills, but maxing these skills out, or working for gold, or accomplishing a certain task, can take many thousands of hours. However, like anytime the opportunity will only arise if you choose to make it. You will only get bored if you choose to, by accomplishing quests, and following general guidelines, you can make sure you never have to click your mouse to a single task for more than 5 minutes. On the other hand, players that want to turn their characters into great beings of respect and power in the game, the formula is the opposite. Accomplishing this requires as said above, many thousands of hours of work, many, many, many of those hours can be quite boring if you do not find a way to keep yourself occupied or interested.
A counter to this, and personally my favorite single thing I use to absolutely make the time fly when grinding in Runescape is the players themselves, because I play Runescape a lot, I do a lot of skill training/questing/pking and nothing makes it better than training that skill you’ve been working towards, and just having a conversation with that guy or gal standing next to you doing the same thing. Start a conversation, make some new friends.
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1.5 Questing, The Glue Of The Game.
Runescape features over 130+ quests, you have your favorites and your grudges. I personally find a thrill in Runescape quests, there are very few quests that don’t have a solid background meaning or deepening storyline under them. At some points you can just freeze and tell the craftsmanship that went into designing and creating a certain puzzle, or a certain item reward, or a new area you get to explore is just amazing. For a full list of quests, check out one of Runescapes fansites located in the links at the bottom of this article.
Mini-Games:
Mini-games are just one of the ways that the good folk of RuneScape use to keep their world interesting and you can take advantage of them to earn experience, get some great new equipment or simply have fun. Runescape currently has twenty-seven available games ranging from anything to Castle Wars ( a capture the flag remake) To the Champions challenge, which required you to defeat the champion of each race in hand to hand combat with different rules and regulations. Each mini-game has its own reward; anything from a new outfit, to constant new experience in certain skills. A list of Runescape mini-games can be found on the knowledge base.
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1.6 – WOW Vs Runescape, Videos By Fans Jerks:
This section is purposely my shortest. Most of these poorly edited, poorly thought out, and poorly supported videos mostly updated by video editing rejects who have just recently mastered titles in Windows movie maker. Im a little sick of hearing MC Hammer’s Cant touch this while watching every Runescape Vs Wow Video.
Onto my reasoning..
One thing every single one of these videos do is that they refrain from making an actual account on the Runescape website (showing their laziness as researchers), and find the worst, choppy, bright, ugly, disgusting, youtube or google video they can with the most dull of scenery and action. Then on top of that, they put that in their chopped down, poorly converted and compressed video, further hurting the quality. But not their wow footage, that needs to be captured themselves, then it needs to be put through several video filters and add clean looking text. It isn’t a ploy of course, this is how they really see their game vs boring ‘ol runescape.
Instead of continuing on, I’m just going to ask one thing. Do some research for yourself, make an account, try the game, if you still think the way these video creators do………well….
Id like to list this video specifically because it stands out among Runescape videos, this creator had footage documenting the history of runescape, up to now the modern version. Showing its changes and ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSel8rk0KAk
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1.7 Conclusion
I made this article (which did indeed take many hours to write) to show players who have spent their time flaming or criticizing Runescape to open their eyes a little differently, to show them that Runescape can be fun, and isn’t a worthless pile of malformed code because of its graphics or game play.
A little about me, I’m Josiah English to those in real life, an avid gamer and Computer guru to those that know me well. Ive been playing games like Runescape since the first days of beta testing, and look for many years more.
Peace and Love
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1.8 Picture Gallery:
Here are a few pictures from the game, take a gander.
This screenshot was taken last night at roughly 10pm. I have not seen a game yet to match that number.
Im running 1600x1200 resolution, and I cant even see them all. To put it into perspective, there are 144 servers.
Your passage to escape:
Camelot:
Some of the scenery in Runescape is quite relaxing
Its Arthur! OMG OMG, no…no…false alarm, sorry:
Some of the quests in runescape will take you to far-away lands never before seen:
Penguins!:
This my my character:
How will you hurt others?:
Some of the models in Runescape are quite advanced for its Java engine:
Better not fall:
