RuneScape

History

RuneScape began as a one-person project in 1998 with the name DeviousMUD. Several early versions were scrapped and re-written from the ground up until the 2001 version (now known as RuneScape Classic) was released.

At the end of 2001, Jagex Ltd was founded to take over commercial operation of RuneScape. The original programmer, Andrew, joined as lead developer.

Months later, Jagex launched a member's version of RuneScape that featured extra content and more tasks to complete. Users could pay $5 a month for access to these bonus features but were under no obligation to do so. Some users migrated to become members, but a massive free user base continues to this day.

RuneScape was again re-written from the ground up, this time incorporating 3D graphics as opposed to the isometric view of before. This version was released in 2004 to the public. One year later, the original RuneScape Classic was restricted to paying members only due to the large amount of cheating taking place on the servers.

Playing RuneScape

An important part of the RuneScape experience is combat. Killing monsters is the easiest way to gain money, and players can even engage each other.

Combat is handled based on several different skill levels that can be increased over the course of play.

• Attack
• Defense
• Strength
• Hit Points
• Prayer
• Magic
• Ranged Skill

Combat is further divided into three primary categories:

• Melee (close-combat)
• Magic (spells)
• Ranged (long-range weapons)

This combat triangle works as a rock-paper-scissors game where each category is weak to one type and strong versus another. Magic tends to beat melee, ranged will beat magic, and melee will beat ranged. This is only the inherent strengths of the types, however, and players can develop as they choose.

In addition to combat, RuneScape also features a host of mini-games, weapons, random events and community interaction opportunities. Quests are available either as stand-alone adventures for items or money, or as overlapping plots in a larger story. Completing quests rewards you with rare treasures or other skills and are the meat of the RuneScape game.

Extras

Skills in RuneScape must be strengthened individually. Some are available only to members, some are in newer versions of the game, and some must be acquired by completing certain tasks. Skills are increased by using them repeatedly, such as climbing trees to increase the Climb skill.

As with all MMORPG games, RuneScape has had a cheating community working against fair players and the Jagex programming team. Cheaters find and exploit loopholes in the game's code and use them to level their characters skills, become stronger and kill other players, give themselves items, or even do impossible tasks (such as killing non-player characters). Jagex has always learned of these exploits and stopped them within hours of their discovery.

With a large community of users, a strong history, free play and classic, addictive gameplay, RuneScape is set to be an enduring game for many years to come.