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[Gandalf]

Oh... I also once had an account that had a Halloween mask. I was hacked somehow

 

[Magwik]

I remember when I was creating my RuneScape account I was trying to use the word "Assassin" but since I was young I ended up with an incorrect spelling and to this day my name is still "Asasian"

 

[Darryl]

This game was fantastic because it took place in the pre-Wiki era. It was tons of adventure because everything was so unknown. There were entrepreneurial opportunities around every turn. MPKing, hunting rare monsters, rare materials. No one in the game was ever fully informed. You could start a successful business in the game. Of course, that was all ruined when they blocked trading between players. Then by the time they fixed it, the Grand Exchange and rampant bots ruined it yet again.

 

[cyborg009]

Yep I have to agree the game had amazing quests when you compare it to other mmos.


I'll never forget this sound effect especially in the wilderness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dyP4LDMLG4

This game was fantastic because it took place in the pre-Wiki era. It was tons of adventure because everything was so unknown. There were entrepreneurial opportunities around every turn. MPKing, hunting rare monsters, rare materials. No one in the game was ever fully informed. You could start a successful business in the game. Of course, that was all ruined when they blocked trading between players. Then by the time they fixed it, the Grand Exchange and rampant bots ruined it yet again.

Ya when Bots came around it was awful for us in F2p because no one could do any woodcutting.

 

[Illucio]

Dagannoth Kings, fuck yeah!
Andrew made me put in a lame "THIS AREA IS REALLY DANGEROUS!" confirmation at the start of their dungeon because he was worried folks would just wander in to check it out and get ripped a new one hahaha



Hah... okay, so, for starters nobody internally had noticed we were getting close to 100th quest release, and the Legends quest wasn't specifically designed as a 50th quest, it was more just the way things worked out, so obviously various forums started talking up how the 100th was going to be some crazy epic long thing, which was honestly not going to happen (and amusingly the 100th quest almost wasn't the hundredth quest because one of the developers who generally ran late on his projects was in fact running late on one of his projects and we needed to shuffle the releases around a bit).

So I noticed folks talking about the 100th quest and went to Mark and said we should do something for it, and he agreed but basically dropped it in my lap to figure out. We back and forthed a few ideas, and I basically pitched that instead of going "super high level" like most big releases did, we should make it super inclusive so that every player could take part, and he agreed but said it should also be a sequel to the first quest (which was Cooks Assistant, which is not only a super lame quest, but also the only actual content Andrew made) so I was like, yeah okay, I can work with that.

So basically, I did a quick plot outline (100 years celebration, RS illuminati, time travel, sealed evil in a can, multiple mini-quests that can all be done independently, but not locking any content away for anyone because chances were people would pick this up on a new account and there was no way of dropping quests when begun, so I didn't want to interfere with anyones regular gameplay) and sent it round the team asking if anyone was interested in working on it, and they could get devtime allocated to do it outside of their normal projects because we were on a clock.

So pretty much everyone was up for it, we had a quick brainstorming to flesh things out and I encouraged everyone to go back and reuse any NPCs or areas they'd previously worked with that they'd like to do something more with, because the whole thing was supposed to be a celebration of quests, and basically everyone was free to come up with any ideas they wanted, and we would split the work up so there was something for every combat level to have a go at, and I'd do the quest framework stuff (the setup, the individual progress checking, the sub-quest rewards and the big boss gauntlet at the end).

Some devs missed their deadlines (Osmans Garden minigame was supposed to be part of RFD, which is why he gets anti-macro evented out in the opening cutscene - does that even make sense anymore?) but all in all worked out really well and everyone had a lot of fun doing something off the usual beaten path. I had a few disagreements with the guy in charge of combat because I wanted the joke kitchen weapons to have the same stats as 'real' weapons and he didn't think joke weapons should ever be usable as real weapons and I stand by that, but we compromised by letting stuff up to Rune level, and I got gauntlets in that matched existing weapon sets, so the progressive tiered reward wasn't entirely pointless.

As we were low on time I wanted a boss gauntlet as the big finale, but it turns out not many devs had actually made traditional boss enemies so an embarrassingly high number of them were my own. and I made them all food themed because I thought that was funny.
My biggest regret is I called the big bad the Culinaromancer, when Gastromancer is so much better as a name.

About a day before release, we released that the - fairly new to us as a team - instancing technology we used for the opening cutscene was actually pretty heavy in terms of server cost, and the likelihood that every single RS player was going to rush straight to Lumbridge Castle and start the quest (which opened with that cutscene...) meant there was a real risk we were going to crash servers on release. Mark wanted to up the skill requirements to prevent that, but that really went against my idea of it being a quest that literally everyone could begin and at least partially complete, so I talked him into letting me use some random obscure item as a check instead, so we could trickle the population a little (and RS has A LOT of random obscure items). I picked Gnome Cocktails because its an entirely optional activity that a lot of people have never even bothered doing, plus it had the benefit of being literally on the other side of the planet, so it would direct a few folks into checking out an area they had maybe never bothered with outside of quest requirements.

All in all, it went pretty well and I like to think embodies everything about RS quests!

One of my favorite quests simply because it was one big quest split up into multiple smaller ones. And it was a huge joke but still a funny one. The Barrow Gloves was an amazing award, and the bank chest downstairs as well. (Even though I believe there was a bank added to Lumbridge upstairs later on.)

I still wish the Blue Party Hat man had a better quest when we finally got the quest about him. Had nothing to do with the bank break in, and we still have a man with a very expensive paper blue hat on the loose who is still living across the street from where he had his heist....

Ape Atoll was a blast, especially with the monkey changing magic.

Going through the Underground pass to an agility ridden paradise, all the way to a Vampire's Castle on the other side of Runescape disguised as a poor peasant.

The game still has a special place in my heart. But then a chicken comes out of nowhere, one thing lead to another, and I'm haunted each night by it's evil. At those rare events, Runescape is dead to me. All within good reason though!

 

[Sciz]

I worked really closely with Paul on a lot of lore stuff, and did a lot of fleshing out of backstory elements, so I'm not surprised its still in the bible.
My last "real" content before moving to "mechscape" was the 100th quest, but I was half way through Lunar Diplomacy when I moved so a lot of the lunar spellbook, the overall quest design and the opening dialogue heavy section where you're trying to not get your boat to sail in circles was all mine as I was trying to tie up some loose ends narratively (specifically seeding some answers about rune essence and begin introducing the stone of jas concept).

Oh man. The stone of jas and god backstories and all that isn't just in the bible, it's literally the lynchpin of the game's plot these days.

Should've guessed lunar spells were your work too, those did hit pretty soon after the ancient set. Kinda niche, but neat all the same. I've always liked depictions of magic that break away from fireball and magic missile and get into weirder applications like that.

*RFD stuff*

Again, super cool. Really impressed by how well it turned out, given the constraints and timeline you guys had to work with.

The 200th quest only came out earlier this year, but it's actually kind of a spiritual sequel named Dimension of Disaster. Keeps up with the core conceit of revisiting old quests as subquests, and the gypsy kicks it off.

(Osmans Garden minigame was supposed to be part of RFD, which is why he gets anti-macro evented out in the opening cutscene - does that even make sense anymore?)

That's a relic, yeah. All the random events got axed a while back when they rolled out better anti-bot tech, and now the associated NPCs are dotted around the world for flavor.

Spoiler

The drunken dwarf turned out to be the rightful king of the dwarves and now reigns as King Drunken Dwarf III.

Probably a long shot, but I'd also love to hear anything you can say about Mechscape. I don't think they've officially canned the project that turned into, but it's vaporware at best these days.

 

[EroticSushi]

I remember all the scams people tried pulling off on others. Give me your weapons and gold and I'll forge it into the best one in the game! Just wait here and I'll be back.

 

[WildEagle18]

I remember all the scams people tried pulling off on others. Give me your weapons and gold and I'll forge it into the best one in the game! Just wait here and I'll be back.

The best one was probably a scammer wearing a Trim armour and getting telling players they'll trim their armour for free lol.

 

[t-ramp]

I remember all the scams people tried pulling off on others. Give me your weapons and gold and I'll forge it into the best one in the game! Just wait here and I'll be back.

I fell for the "Jagex will censor your password if you try saying it" scam, because I was apparently that stupid.

In any case, some guy had control of my account for quite a while, as I continued to play on it. I think he set the recovery questions as well, so I was pretty screwed. At one point, I'd spent hours mining coal, got about 500 in my bank, and then it was gone. Eventually he changed the password, and then subsequently got the account banned somehow. I did get it back by submitting an appeal, but forgot the new password I set.

Also, an interesting thing I just noticed:

90% of players online right now are members!

Which probably means the free game is just really damn boring, and maybe not a good sign for the future of RuneScape. I mean, how many new players are really willing to pay $10 a month on this game?

Although, the total amount of users online is up significantly from where it was a year ago, largely due to the introduction of free OSRS, it appears.

http://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/?display=avg&interval=week&total=1

 

[Noirulus]

Dagannoth Kings, fuck yeah!
Andrew made me put in a lame "THIS AREA IS REALLY DANGEROUS!" confirmation at the start of their dungeon because he was worried folks would just wander in to check it out and get ripped a new one hahaha



Hah... okay, so, for starters nobody internally had noticed we were getting close to 100th quest release, and the Legends quest wasn't specifically designed as a 50th quest, it was more just the way things worked out, so obviously various forums started talking up how the 100th was going to be some crazy epic long thing, which was honestly not going to happen (and amusingly the 100th quest almost wasn't the hundredth quest because one of the developers who generally ran late on his projects was in fact running late on one of his projects and we needed to shuffle the releases around a bit).

So I noticed folks talking about the 100th quest and went to Mark and said we should do something for it, and he agreed but basically dropped it in my lap to figure out. We back and forthed a few ideas, and I basically pitched that instead of going "super high level" like most big releases did, we should make it super inclusive so that every player could take part, and he agreed but said it should also be a sequel to the first quest (which was Cooks Assistant, which is not only a super lame quest, but also the only actual content Andrew made) so I was like, yeah okay, I can work with that.

So basically, I did a quick plot outline (100 years celebration, RS illuminati, time travel, sealed evil in a can, multiple mini-quests that can all be done independently, but not locking any content away for anyone because chances were people would pick this up on a new account and there was no way of dropping quests when begun, so I didn't want to interfere with anyones regular gameplay) and sent it round the team asking if anyone was interested in working on it, and they could get devtime allocated to do it outside of their normal projects because we were on a clock.

So pretty much everyone was up for it, we had a quick brainstorming to flesh things out and I encouraged everyone to go back and reuse any NPCs or areas they'd previously worked with that they'd like to do something more with, because the whole thing was supposed to be a celebration of quests, and basically everyone was free to come up with any ideas they wanted, and we would split the work up so there was something for every combat level to have a go at, and I'd do the quest framework stuff (the setup, the individual progress checking, the sub-quest rewards and the big boss gauntlet at the end).

Some devs missed their deadlines (Osmans Garden minigame was supposed to be part of RFD, which is why he gets anti-macro evented out in the opening cutscene - does that even make sense anymore?) but all in all worked out really well and everyone had a lot of fun doing something off the usual beaten path. I had a few disagreements with the guy in charge of combat because I wanted the joke kitchen weapons to have the same stats as 'real' weapons and he didn't think joke weapons should ever be usable as real weapons and I stand by that, but we compromised by letting stuff up to Rune level, and I got gauntlets in that matched existing weapon sets, so the progressive tiered reward wasn't entirely pointless.

As we were low on time I wanted a boss gauntlet as the big finale, but it turns out not many devs had actually made traditional boss enemies so an embarrassingly high number of them were my own. and I made them all food themed because I thought that was funny.
My biggest regret is I called the big bad the Culinaromancer, when Gastromancer is so much better as a name.

About a day before release, we released that the - fairly new to us as a team - instancing technology we used for the opening cutscene was actually pretty heavy in terms of server cost, and the likelihood that every single RS player was going to rush straight to Lumbridge Castle and start the quest (which opened with that cutscene...) meant there was a real risk we were going to crash servers on release. Mark wanted to up the skill requirements to prevent that, but that really went against my idea of it being a quest that literally everyone could begin and at least partially complete, so I talked him into letting me use some random obscure item as a check instead, so we could trickle the population a little (and RS has A LOT of random obscure items). I picked Gnome Cocktails because its an entirely optional activity that a lot of people have never even bothered doing, plus it had the benefit of being literally on the other side of the planet, so it would direct a few folks into checking out an area they had maybe never bothered with outside of quest requirements.

All in all, it went pretty well and I like to think embodies everything about RS quests!

Why do you think it is that Runescape still has the best storylines and quests between all the MMOs released in the past 20 years? Was it the collaborative/interactive work environment that allowed that to happen?

 

[WildEagle18]

Zezima actually got his account hacked last week by lizardsquad lol, who would have thought that'd ever happen?

From what I read Lizardsquad couldn't even access RS3 which was what Zezima plays. The vid of them showing Zezima's account was OSRS, which Zezima already said he wasn't going to play lol. So basically Zezima's 'main' where all of his stuff was weren't really touched.

 

[Princess Viola]

I remember all the scams people tried pulling off on others. Give me your weapons and gold and I'll forge it into the best one in the game! Just wait here and I'll be back.

I fell for a scam and lost my first 10k after playing for like two weeks or so.

Yeah that's not a lot but it felt bad.

 

[JJDinomite]

Dagannoth Kings, fuck yeah!
Andrew made me put in a lame "THIS AREA IS REALLY DANGEROUS!" confirmation at the start of their dungeon because he was worried folks would just wander in to check it out and get ripped a new one hahaha



Hah... okay, so, for starters nobody internally had noticed we were getting close to 100th quest release, and the Legends quest wasn't specifically designed as a 50th quest, it was more just the way things worked out, so obviously various forums started talking up how the 100th was going to be some crazy epic long thing, which was honestly not going to happen (and amusingly the 100th quest almost wasn't the hundredth quest because one of the developers who generally ran late on his projects was in fact running late on one of his projects and we needed to shuffle the releases around a bit).

So I noticed folks talking about the 100th quest and went to Mark and said we should do something for it, and he agreed but basically dropped it in my lap to figure out. We back and forthed a few ideas, and I basically pitched that instead of going "super high level" like most big releases did, we should make it super inclusive so that every player could take part, and he agreed but said it should also be a sequel to the first quest (which was Cooks Assistant, which is not only a super lame quest, but also the only actual content Andrew made) so I was like, yeah okay, I can work with that.

So basically, I did a quick plot outline (100 years celebration, RS illuminati, time travel, sealed evil in a can, multiple mini-quests that can all be done independently, but not locking any content away for anyone because chances were people would pick this up on a new account and there was no way of dropping quests when begun, so I didn't want to interfere with anyones regular gameplay) and sent it round the team asking if anyone was interested in working on it, and they could get devtime allocated to do it outside of their normal projects because we were on a clock.

So pretty much everyone was up for it, we had a quick brainstorming to flesh things out and I encouraged everyone to go back and reuse any NPCs or areas they'd previously worked with that they'd like to do something more with, because the whole thing was supposed to be a celebration of quests, and basically everyone was free to come up with any ideas they wanted, and we would split the work up so there was something for every combat level to have a go at, and I'd do the quest framework stuff (the setup, the individual progress checking, the sub-quest rewards and the big boss gauntlet at the end).

Some devs missed their deadlines (Osmans Garden minigame was supposed to be part of RFD, which is why he gets anti-macro evented out in the opening cutscene - does that even make sense anymore?) but all in all worked out really well and everyone had a lot of fun doing something off the usual beaten path. I had a few disagreements with the guy in charge of combat because I wanted the joke kitchen weapons to have the same stats as 'real' weapons and he didn't think joke weapons should ever be usable as real weapons and I stand by that, but we compromised by letting stuff up to Rune level, and I got gauntlets in that matched existing weapon sets, so the progressive tiered reward wasn't entirely pointless.

As we were low on time I wanted a boss gauntlet as the big finale, but it turns out not many devs had actually made traditional boss enemies so an embarrassingly high number of them were my own. and I made them all food themed because I thought that was funny.
My biggest regret is I called the big bad the Culinaromancer, when Gastromancer is so much better as a name.

About a day before release, we released that the - fairly new to us as a team - instancing technology we used for the opening cutscene was actually pretty heavy in terms of server cost, and the likelihood that every single RS player was going to rush straight to Lumbridge Castle and start the quest (which opened with that cutscene...) meant there was a real risk we were going to crash servers on release. Mark wanted to up the skill requirements to prevent that, but that really went against my idea of it being a quest that literally everyone could begin and at least partially complete, so I talked him into letting me use some random obscure item as a check instead, so we could trickle the population a little (and RS has A LOT of random obscure items). I picked Gnome Cocktails because its an entirely optional activity that a lot of people have never even bothered doing, plus it had the benefit of being literally on the other side of the planet, so it would direct a few folks into checking out an area they had maybe never bothered with outside of quest requirements.

All in all, it went pretty well and I like to think embodies everything about RS quests!

Oh my god I remember the gnome cocktail being annoying, but I literally had never been to the gnome village before. Seriously, you did some amazing work and truly impacted my early teenage years.

 

[t-ramp]

Oh, hey, I guess I recently unlocked the 10-year cape on this account.

I should pick up my fishing where I left off... level 81 currently.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

RFD

Wow, thanks for sharing. It's really cool.

 

[ZeezbruhTV]

Anyone remember the massacre of Fally? when someone reached level 99 in house building and threw such a huge party it broke the game and then they went around killing people, I remember the video that was captured of it with Nightwish Planet Hell playing, SUCH GOOD TIMES. Could never go back to runescape to play it, too much nostalgia and playing it wouldn't do it justice anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0y2huQoOnw

Peak Runescape era.

Haha im in the vid at 2:10, great memories!

 

[Cilla]

I still play as it's my favourite mmo

 

[Rest]

I had a friend in junior high that played RuneScape, so I started playing too. I probably played for about a year before I ran out of stuff to do in the free areas. It was a pretty fun time, but I always hated it freezing when I tried to play music on my computer instead of listening to its own sound track.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Probably a long shot, but I'd also love to hear anything you can say about Mechscape. I don't think they've officially canned the project that turned into, but it's vaporware at best these days.

This is probably much more seriously skirting NDAs, but;
- The game I spent three years on doing world building, quest design and lore along with 2 other primary 'game architects' that was cancelled by the executives the week before it was due to launch is never coming back, because one of the other primaries left to found Bossa.
- The game I spent 18 months on building raids and boss fights is never coming back, as the other primary left to join Mythic.
- The game I bailed out on that was internally 'rebooted' 3 different times before laying the entire team off I don't think will ever come back but some of the team who were shuffled onto RuneScape think will someday.
- The game that was there chatter about the company publishing under the Stellar Dawn name has already been released to pretty mixed reception from players.

I could probably give loose answers about the first version of the game because that is definitely never coming back, and I know which parts of the lore were burned with fire by my replacements when I left. The leaked video of it that was floating around showed parts from some of the prologue / tutorial content for some of the playable species I was responsible for.

I fell for the "Jagex will censor your password if you try saying it" scam, because I was apparently that stupid.

At some point that was actually implemented as a real thing

Why do you think it is that Runescape still has the best storylines and quests between all the MMOs released in the past 20 years? Was it the collaborative/interactive work environment that allowed that to happen?

RS style quests are incredibly poor in terms of the development time to player appreciation ratio. It's something well upwards of 1000 to 1 when you include devtime, art time, audio time and QA time (being 1000 man hours to produce something that takes 1 hour to experience). And it's not like you can play it again without rerolling an alt or something.
RS gets away with it because RS has always done it and because RS has always done it, anyone else who wants to enter that space (MMO with a bunch of point and click adventure style singleplayer content) has more than 10 years worth of that content to compete with on a feature level.

 

[Drinkel]

Played a lot of this game just wandering around exploring. Barely understanding english and poking stuff. It felt so huge at the time. Wilderness was super exciting, just hoping someone would die and you might end up stealing their rune sword. Quit playing when they released 3D characters and music, didn't feel right lol.

 

[Sciz]

This is probably much more seriously skirting NDAs, but;
- The game I spent three years on doing world building, quest design and lore along with 2 other primary 'game architects' that was cancelled by the executives the week before it was due to launch is never coming back, because one of the other primaries left to found Bossa.

what

Of all the dumb reasons why video games have been cancelled at the eleventh hour, that is up there.

Didn't realize any footage had ever leaked, I'll satisfy myself with that.

- The game I bailed out on that was internally 'rebooted' 3 different times before laying the entire team off I don't think will ever come back but some of the team who were shuffled onto RuneScape think will someday.
- The game that was there chatter about the company publishing under the Stellar Dawn name has already been released to pretty mixed reception from players.

Jesus. That's even more complicated than they'd let on. I'm gonna say that the dreams of the Jagex sci-fi MMO are dead, especially since they've moved on to Minecraft knockoffs.

Thanks again. It's good to have at least a little closure about all that, after hearing about it for so long.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Didn't realize any footage had ever leaked, I'll satisfy myself with that.

Quickly looking on youtube, this is a legit internal video of the first games build.
I guess they used to be more vigilant about deleting them from youtube than they are nowadays.

EDIT: Not the music though. lol. turn sound off.

 

[Unbounded]

Reminds me of long ago when I chopped down 20,000 (yes, that's not a mistake) Yew Logs in order to purchase an Abyssal Whip because they were so expensive. Wound up getting into the mid-80s with my Woodcutting and got the whip and some leftover money.

Now, you can get them for like 100k AND there's an improved version of it.

Reminds me of when I spent a week or two crafting 20000 nature runes after that pure essence update just so I could make enough money to play castle wars with ancient magic and barrows gear for a week.

 

[Magwik]

Quickly looking on youtube, this is a legit internal video of the first games build.
I guess they used to be more vigilant about deleting them from youtube than they are nowadays.

EDIT: Not the music though. lol. turn sound off.

Oh god I remember actually finding the video on YouTube and posting about it on a forum and re-upped the video after it was taken down. Jagex then attempted to Subpoena me for the video because they thought I was the one who stole it. I was 13 and had a Subpoena email from Jagex.
Found a picture similar to the email I had

 

[Linkark07]

I remember all the scams people tried pulling off on others. Give me your weapons and gold and I'll forge it into the best one in the game! Just wait here and I'll be back.

And there were also people who told you: give me your password and I will make you a member. I was one of them who fell on that scam.

Luckily, managed to recover my account the next day. And then put that person on my blacklist.

 

[CloudWolf]

I remember all the crazy stories surrounding RuneScape, teenagers killing themselves because their in-game stuff was stolen, kids being murdered because of their in-game exploits, etc.

Yet everyone in high school was playing it. That and Americas Army were like crack to me and every other boy in my class.

 

[Dec]

Quickly looking on youtube, this is a legit internal video of the first games build.
I guess they used to be more vigilant about deleting them from youtube than they are nowadays.

EDIT: Not the music though. lol. turn sound off.

When you were there was there any concern of the future of Java? I feel like it is a surprise to no one that the game is bashing into the ceiling of what is possible in Java and they are extremely late to finding an alternative.

 

[Noirulus]

This is probably much more seriously skirting NDAs, but;
- The game I spent three years on doing world building, quest design and lore along with 2 other primary 'game architects' that was cancelled by the executives the week before it was due to launch is never coming back, because one of the other primaries left to found Bossa.
- The game I spent 18 months on building raids and boss fights is never coming back, as the other primary left to join Mythic.
- The game I bailed out on that was internally 'rebooted' 3 different times before laying the entire team off I don't think will ever come back but some of the team who were shuffled onto RuneScape think will someday.
- The game that was there chatter about the company publishing under the Stellar Dawn name has already been released to pretty mixed reception from players.

I could probably give loose answers about the first version of the game because that is definitely never coming back, and I know which parts of the lore were burned with fire by my replacements when I left. The leaked video of it that was floating around showed parts from some of the prologue / tutorial content for some of the playable species I was responsible for.



At some point that was actually implemented as a real thing



RS style quests are incredibly poor in terms of the development time to player appreciation ratio. It's something well upwards of 1000 to 1 when you include devtime, art time, audio time and QA time (being 1000 man hours to produce something that takes 1 hour to experience). And it's not like you can play it again without rerolling an alt or something.
RS gets away with it because RS has always done it and because RS has always done it, anyone else who wants to enter that space (MMO with a bunch of point and click adventure style singleplayer content) has more than 10 years worth of that content to compete with on a feature level.

I really think Jagex should consider releasing a singleplayer version of Runescape. It would literally be the ultimate RPG. So many awesome storylines and things to do. Of course it would require a lot of tweaking (Such as Shield of Arrav, as a minor example) and making existing content a bit more difficult as well as introducing new content, but it'd be so worth it.

 

[kai3345]

I remember playing this game back in the 2D sprite days, and then having my mind blown when the game jumped to 3D

 

[t-ramp]

I really think Jagex should consider releasing a singleplayer version of Runescape. It would literally be the ultimate RPG. So many awesome storylines and things to do. Of course it would require a lot of tweaking (Such as Shield of Arrav, as a minor example) and making existing content a bit more difficult as well as introducing new content, but it'd be so worth it.

Have you heard about the Ironman modes? You can make a character that must be almost entirely self-sufficient. Dunno if that's quite what you were thinking, but it's kind of a cool challenge either way.

http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Ironman_Mode

 

[Tagyhag]

Have you heard about the Ironman modes? You can make a character that must be almost entirely self-sufficient. Dunno if that's quite what you were thinking, but it's kind of a cool challenge either way.

http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Ironman_Mode

Yeah that mode is pretty cool.

I assume he wants an offline experience though, which would be cool as a one time purchase.

 

[Woorloog]

I cannot quite recall when i played Runescape. It was so long ago...
I recall my very first times where with a modem... 56kbit one probably as they were standard then. I think?

It was back when the game had sprite-based characters and items.
I liked it. I like the atmosphere the game had, i liked the idea of a MMO, i liked the world, i liked the fun quests, i liked the sense of accomplishment when making stuff for my character. I liked painting my cloak... there were these goblins that people killed for dyes, i think?

I remember when were daring with my friend and stored our important stuff and went wandering to the Wilderness. There was a place where pizza ingredients spawned constantly. We would cook pizzas there and train our cooking skills. Then we'd explore around, and get chased by a high level player killer.
Ah, it was so fun adventure. Never have experienced anything quite like that again in any other game.

I did keep playing even after the first 3d graphics though i think i didn't really like them... Maybe. It is possible i actually did like the first 3d graphics. As i said, it was so long ago, it is hard to recall.
Eventually i moved on to other games as we got new computer and other games.


I think i tried to get back to it at some point but i just couldn't stand the graphical changes to the game. Think there were UI changes as well, essentially i would have had to re-learn the game so i gave up.


I recall i named my character after the emperor in Dune, Shaddam IV. Recall people asking why my character was Saddam Hussein or something like that...
(I read Dune as relatively young and it has ever since been my favorite book.)

---

I do think Runescape gave me my love of MMOs.
Not sure i really like playing them though... There doesn't seem to be another one like Runescape.
As much as i love EVE Online, it takes too much time and requires specialization...
WoW limited my actions too much with class and profession systems, and its dungeon and raid focus weren't my thing (i effectively quit WoW when i hit level 80, because i hated Battleground PVP and i couldn't stand the idea of doing dungeons again and again, and the game offered me nothing else).

In Runescape, i especially liked the fact i didn't have to rely on money really. I would mine my own ores, i would chop my own wood, gather ingredients and bake bread and pizza, gather materials, etc. I would craft everything by myself, with occasional trading. I was kind of a generalist, i could do just about anything, though not very well. But that was all right, it wasn't an issue in Runescape as i played it.
Sure, it was slow but it was fun, especially with a friend doing the same stuff.

It was a fun game despite being so... crude in so many ways.

EDIT LOL, didn't realize i had so much to say about the game. Have to note i was a free player, there was no chance in hell i'd pay for the game, or more specifically, get my parents to pay for it.

 

[Noirulus]

I do think Runescape gave me my love of MMOs.
Not sure i really like playing them though... There doesn't seem to be another one like Runescape.

This is what's sad to me. Runescape revolutionized MMORPGs in terms of content, self-sufficiency, story, etc. The only negative were the abysmal graphics, but I eventually got used to that.

It's sad that there's still no MMO/game like it. It did so many things incredibly well.

 

[Tenebrous]

This is what's sad to me. Runescape revolutionized MMORPGs in terms of content, self-sufficiency, story, etc. The only negative were the abysmal graphics, but I eventually got used to that.

It's sad that there's still no MMO/game like it. It did so many things incredibly well.

Yup. I'd pay through the nose for RuneScape type skill systems with a WoW level of polish.

 

[WolfForager]

Damn, reading this thread really is bringing all the memories back.

I used to be an admin for a site called Heart Unit that specialized in providing fast paced Pest Control games. That community was like a family to me for years, made my time playing Runescape that bit more special for me. My interest in RS faded soon after they downgraded the rewards from Pest Control as it led to the ultimate demise of Heart Unit.

Came back on and off for a year or two after to train my Slayer skill, lost interest completely after a while. Tried going back a couple of years ago, the game had evolved so much however that I had no idea where to pick up, so that didn't last long!

Also yea, the quests in RS were amazing, I remember playing Monkey Madness with my heart in my throat thinking I was gonna die nearly every time I entered a new area.

Spent so much time at the Barrows as well, that shit was addictive as hell.

 

[GifGafIsTheBestGaf]

Anyone here used to fish at Karamja all the time? I would fish at least 2-3hrs a day before at Karamja. Got to make those gold off Lobbies lmfao.

Al Kharid
One of my favorite tracks in RS.

ha! that place was the goat. i think i leveled up fishing and cooking up 60 something till i got a sub.

200 coins
harpoon/lobster cage

that was all you needed.

then i went to world 1 or 2? to sell it raw

selling 5K raw lobs!!! (add color to text cant remember the comand)

selling 5K raw lobs!!!

[cyan]selling 5K raw lobs!!![/cyan]


edit: easiest 1million, sometimes even more. higher level dudes training cooking would buy it for higher prices specially when you were selling a lot

 

[Kas]

I played the game religiously from 04-08. I was a member for half of it, but all I ever did was roam around the country and see what was around.

I didnt get too high of a level by the time I left, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

 

[Jintor]

it's strange, I have the sensation of playing a shitload of runescape but I have almost no distinct memories of it whatsoever apart from lots and lots of campfires, that weird prison tutorial island, and also for some reason falling down a well endlessly (I think this was a related flash game on Jagex's website... maybe)

 

[daTRUballin]

I remember all the crazy stories surrounding RuneScape, teenagers killing themselves because their in-game stuff was stolen, kids being murdered because of their in-game exploits, etc.

Yet everyone in high school was playing it. That and Americas Army were like crack to me and every other boy in my class.

Were these stories actually true? If yes, then that is insane :/

 

[Sciz]

Also yea, the quests in RS were amazing, I remember playing Monkey Madness with my heart in my throat thinking I was gonna die nearly every time I entered a new area.

You probably were. Monkey Madness was hell, especially if you did it near launch with the sort of combat level most people had back then.

 

[Circinus]

Played this game way, way too much during middle school/high school, haha. Lots of great memories from this game. Some bad memories as well, but mostly good mories.

I was still playing it not that long ago as well by the way, I was still playing it in 2012 and early 2013 if I'm correct. I liked all the new content and the 'Evolution of Combat'.

But yeah, I just lost interest in the game, not due to the changes they made to the combat or something (like I said, I actually liked most of the changes and new content), just lost interest in playing the game as a whole. They probably made a lot of new changes by now as well.

I still have the urge to go back playing it sometimes. I have 2 major accounts, and I really liked playing with my pure with the EoC. Managed to get the Fight Kiln cape with my pure at level 85 combat. (those who played in 2012, post-EoC will know what this is)


And yeah, the quests are really great in RS, really liked doing those.

 

[Meaty]

Came back to the game after a looooong time last week. The changes are so weird at first, but they are understandable after a while.


The worldbuilding ,quests and dialogue are top of the line. Im glad I came back and im experiencing being a member now after all those years.

 

[nrvalleytime]

So I randomly decided to re-up my account - any one around here still playing? Would love to spend time playing with other GAF members.

 

[Benzychenz]

Just saw a Runescape meme on facebook and got all nostalgic.

Went to play some classic but don't remember my password. Put an appeal in but don't remember shit about old passwords, payment details etc from a decade ago so hopefully my recovery questions are enough.

Kind of tempted to make a new character haha, I remember the quests being incredible, and no MMO has ever recreated them.

 

[M52B28]

My friends and I still play this game to this day since 2003+

Everytime we hang out, someone mentions it and we just reminisce on the times we have had.

 

[jfkgoblue]

Starting tomorrow is a free weekend for all ftp accounts to try out new expansion.