Veteran Players of Runescape Classic

If you don't know yet, Runescape Classic is currently being developed by Jagex and has a new lease on life online. This November 2009, Jagex finally opened RS Classic to all members.

What is Runescape Classic?

This is the old version of Runescape. The current version of Runescape is sometimes called Runescape 2 (RS2) because it is the second version of Runescape. It is very old and neglected, with virtually no updates since RS2 was launched in 2003.

Previously, only veteran players who have been active in RSC have been able to play. RSC and RS2 were split off and are two entirely different games. So those players who had veteran status had two accounts - their regular RS2 account that everyone has and their RSC account. Experience and items are not shared between the two games. For example,if you level attack in RS2, you do not get the corresponding level in RSC.You would have to train attack in RSC to level it on your RSC account.

What about items?

When RS2 was launched, Jagex decided not to force people to start over from level 3. All their stats were copied and players retained all their stats from RSC when they started playing RS2. RSC accounts were not stat wiped either.

Players' banks were also copied but Jagex decided not to "duplicate" items. This is a somewhat irrational choice, IMHO, because the two games are entirely separate and cannot trade between each other. Many at the time of the launch speculated that this was Jagex's underhanded way of forcing people to play RS2 since they had nothing in their RSC banks.

After a while, due to public outcry, Jagex released a website feature which allowed people to transfer their items back to RSC. Note that this feature was available for a limited time only.

Veterans and Non-veterans

Back in 12-Jan-2006, Jagex announced that "only accounts which have played RS-classic at least once in the last 6 months (since it went members only on August 3rd 2005) will be able to do so from now on."

So if you didn't log in during that time, you couldn't log into the RSC servers. The players who did play during that time period are considered veteran RSC players.

This November 2009, RSC was opened to all members (for a period of two weeks), even non-veterans. Those who are interested in RS history can now take a look at what RS was like before 3D.

Runescape Classic is now open to all members

It's a rebirth of Runescape Classic!

http://services.runescape.com/m=news/newsitem.ws?id=2376

11-Nov-2009 - RuneScape Classic Temporarily Re-opened
...For two weeks starting from today, Classic is open for new sign-ups from RuneScape members only...

Yes! Now any member can play Runescape Classic. :) I also got members. There are now thousands of people playing RSC.

Retro Revival - Runescape Classic player- owned servers

The new Jagex dev blog is up and it's about Runescape Classic!

Retro Revival

How exciting! No details yet but apparently Jagex is developing a way for players to rent a server and host the Runescape Clasic game. Players can then chose whether they allow cheats. They can also give powers (moderator, I assume) to other players.

Will you be playing this? Comments, please and see you there when it launches.

Runescape Classic Pking and Why It Was So Good (part 3: Unique and Fun)

Ok, now we can go straight to the good parts! RSC pking, why do we both love and hate you? Let me count the ways:

1.) 3 Hitting = <3>

This is the best! Pure ownage and the one true evidence of a pker's strength.

Nothing can equal the thrill of 3 hitting your opponent. Even to this day, ask any RSC pker and he is sure to recall his best 3 hit kill. Not just 3 hitting, there are also 1 hit and two hit kills though these are mostly for lower level kills.

Unlike today's RS combat system, in Runescape Classic you could not eat for 3 rounds of fighting. 3 hitting is when you are able to kill your opponent in exactly 3 rounds of fighting while he is still unable to eat.

3 hitting is very simple and looks effortless yet it is so rare. To those who have been 3 hit, this is the ultimate in humiliation and weakness as they are completely defenseless against it.

You can run... except when you get 3 hit.

2.) Catching = 1337 skillz!

What is catching? This is the pker's secret of how to catch a player who runs from a fight. With fast reflexes and timing, a player could stop the opponent from running away. See this guide to catching for more details.

Only the very best and most skilled of pkers mastered catching.

Any noob who trained their str high enough can 3 hit but it wasn't just anybody who could catch players to death. Those who could catch well were the most feared pkers in the wilderness because there would be no getting away from them.

Catching someone to death was the supreme proof of the pker's skill. These pkers were in their own class and were idolized by the other pkers.

3.) Luck = !!!???%$@#!#@!*^!

Some might be surprised but actually I would say luck played a very big and important factor in pking which added a fun factor to the game. You just never knew what would happen!

Two characters with the same stats can hit very differently from each other even if they used the same equipment, prayers, style and magic/range.

It wasn't cut and dried that the higher level always defeated the lower level. Possibly, a player could to totally dominate someone higher level or same level. Alternatively, a player could get completely owned by a lower leveled character.

With 99 str, you could hit 1s. Or you could hit 30s+. This all depended on luck.

Someone asked me once how to 3 hit more and I told him:

ruby ammy+gaunts (highest str bonus at that time), str mode, ultimate str prayer + pray irl to the god of pking that you hit!

You just couldn't really control whether you would really hit 30 29 dead or 1 0 0 on your opponent.

A player has not experienced true e-rage until he has hit a large number of 0s on a player who is full red barred! A char with 2 hps left could even kill you, even if you had 70 hps remaining.

Wacky, yes, but this is the thing that enabled players to pk more. If it had been certain that a level 50 would always die to a level 70, then the level 50 would just run away and log at once. The luck factor meant that the level 50 could stay and try his luck, if he wanted to.

I've escaped countless times from higher level groups, purely on luck and many have also escaped from me the same way. Players need to know that they aren't necessarily dead at once in one hit if they go up against a group or a higher level person. Isn't it very satisfying to kill a member of a huge group that was trying to kill you and then escape with the loot? Luck made this possible.

A nice picture showing how the luck factor can mess with you.

Conclusion

These three things, in my humble opinion, were the most fun things about RSC pking. For me, it wasn't getting a 1 million gp worth of stuff in a neat pile under my feet but what about you?

Please post your opinions and comments. Thanks. :)

Runescape Classic Pking and Why It Was So Good (part 2: Additional Notes)

Apart from the basics of the old RSC pk system, there are also some other things that are of note.

Server Hopping

At first Rs only had one server so even if a character logged out to avoid combat, they would eventually have to log back in at the exact same spot. This led to some pkers just waiting at that spot for the character to log back in.

When RS had more servers, players could now avoid combat simply by running away,logging out of that server and then logging onto another server.

Magic and Pures

It's hard to believe now, but back then magic was considered weak by many, especially in f2p. Players would therefore make "pure" characters. These were characters that had high strength, attack and hp for their combat level but low magic. Sometimes the pure chars would also have low defense for their combat level.

This also led to the creation of what are called "mains" and "pures" since people like to have magic (it's always been good for doing skills) on their main character, typically a high level char. Then they would make a pure which no magic but high melee stats and a lower combat level.

1-iteming and Prayer Beasts

Yes, 1-iteming was also a problem in RSC. There was even a special kind of character, called a Prayer Beast (PB). This is a pure pker type with 1 defense and 13 magic (so that he could protect item). With these stats, the PB could pk cheaply, without risking losing any valuable items and yet get a lot of kills.

Of course, with their 1 def, they would be hit a lot but since they had higher hp than other types of pkers, they had much higher str and att. This meant they could hit higher and more often than other pkers their own combat level. They could also survive being hit a lot since they had more hp than other chars.

Rune Player Smithed Items

During RSC, the armor was rune (and dragon in p2p). While dragon was a rare drop or a quest item, rune items had to be player smithed. Since they were not sold in shops, rune was very valuable.

Kills were very exciting then because of the value of the items players dropped when they died. It was very possible to get a kill worth 1m or more. If you died with very valuable stuff... well just imagine what it would be like to die with armor worth as much as everything in your bank.

Group Pking or Teams

The entire wilderness was multicombat for range and magic. Only one person at a time could attack with melee but if you had a group, all of you could attack the same player with range and magic at the same time, provided the wilderness level allowed it.

You might wonder if people would just pk with huge groups 24/7 then but this is actually not the case. The pk community valued soloing or solo kills rather than group kills. The most common would be solo pkers while there were many pairs and groups of 3. Groups of 4 or more were very rare.

Very large groups like 20+ almost never pked, they would only be found during clan wars. Clans were also fairly small, a 30-member clan would already be considered large.

Here you have a picture of a clan pk, specifically Brotherhood of Steel, an old Russian clan from Runescape Classic. The green capes were for identification. This was a rare event back then which is why the picture taker, Fook a Ji, kept this pic and showed it off. 

Cheating, Bots, Autoers, etc.

Cheaters have always been around. No, it is not true that 90% of RSC players botted, this is absolutely false. It was only after Jagex stopped updating and moderating RSC that it was taken over by botters. When RSC was the main game, there were only a few botters and mostly lower leveled ones.

When RSC was the only version of Rs around, we never had 50+ botters woodcutting, this is a purely RS2 phenomenon. RSC definitely had cheaters but only in much smaller scale. 

However, when RSC was the main game, Jagex would regularly update with anti-cheat detection systems. Jagex mods also did manual detection and investigations of botters.

Analysis

As you can no doubt see from the points listed above, actually the system was not perfect and there were ways to outsmart the system to your advantage. Prayer beasts, pures, teams, etc. were all specific styles of player killing made to improve the pker's chances of getting a kill.

Jagex did not change the pk system to get rid of 1-itemers, pures, teams, lurers and other such strategies at that time. Players simply had to deal with whatever happened without Jagex's intervention. In other words, if pkers were 1-iteming, the other pkers just had to be stronger, smarter and more skilled than them.

In my opinion, there will never be a perfect pk system that is fair to all. Somehow, someone will always find a way to make a better/faster/cheaper/stronger/etc. type of pker so it is useless to keep on changing the system to eliminate styles of pking. It's enough to make it fun!

What is fun? Read on to the third part. 

Do post your comments and opinions about these issues.

Runescape Classic Pking and Why It Was So Good (part 1: The Basics)

Runescape Classic Pking

With the recents problems that Runescape has had over Player vs Player (PvP) content or what we used to call Player Killing (Pking), I thought I would look back and identify what we used to love about Runescape pking. Who knows, this might help players think of better pvp ideas.

Parts 1 and 2 deal with basic things for those who have never experienced Runescape Classic pking so those who already know about it can skip that and go straight to part 3 for my analysis and commentary.

In Rsc there were two eras of pking : Pk Everywhere and Wilderness Pking

PK Everywhere!

At first there were two types of players Player Killers (Pkers) and non-Player Killers. Pkers are those who can be attacked by other pkers who are within three (was it four? lol) levels of their own, except in certain safe areas such as inside towns.

In the picture (click on it to see a bigger picture), you can see a big war in the Barbarian Village with pkers and non-pk spectators. In the background is a forum post about the war.

If a player did not want to be attacked by others, he simply toggled off his pk option and no one would be able to attack him. However, you could only toggle this twice. So if you switched to pk then panicked and switched back to non-pk (normally while being attacked and dying to a pker), you would be stuck in non-pk forever.

This is probably the original reason why people made separate skiller and pker characters in Rs. Obviously, if you were doing skills like mining or crafting, you wouldn't like to be pked so it would be good to skill on a non-pk char while making another char that was a pker so as to enjoy competing with other players.

Since there were also level requirements regarding who you were able to attack, players made not just one pker but several of different levels.

Note that when players died in RSC, they drop their items and these are looted by the pkers.

Wilderness Pking

Not everyone was really happy with the Pk system so Jagex proposed a new and improved PK experience: the Wilderness. A player poll was made and the RS players voted to remove the old system and make the wilderness.

Simply put, now pking was limited to an area, not a type of character. Any player now could bring their character to the new place, called the wilderness and pk there. All non-wilderness areas were now impossible to pk in.

Level requirements were still in place but in a new way. The southernmost part of the wilderness was level 1 and you could only attack players who were within 1 combat level of your character. The farther north you went, the higher the wilderness level. Therefore in this system the player was less limited and could attack people plus or minus 1 to 45-50+ (depending on whether you were in f2p or p2p) combat levels of their own character.

This removed the need for the pk and non-pk character types.

Essentials of Runescape Classic Pking

Kill and loot. The system is very basic and easy to understand. You pk and if you are lucky enough to get a kill, you get whatever your kill drops. Those who do not have a skull will lose all but their 3 best items while those who are skulled lose everything. Protect items prayer allows the player to keep 1 additional item when he dies.

Girls Don't Exist on Runescape

I am a girl on the internet. There really are quite a few of us.

Women have had a long history in Runescape. Many of the first players and famous people were women in real life. The first smither who got 99 smithing was Bluerose13x. She was extremely powerful and rich during her time since she was literally the only source of player-smithed items.

The first person to get 99 fishing was Tks and all the top crafters were also women. Women in Runescape are everywhere, as old school players, clan leaders, skillers, pkers and player moderators.

Yet in spite of all this, the female RS players must contend daily with the opinion that she does not exist.

"There are no girls on the intarwebs!"
"You aren't a real girl."
"I don't believe you are really a woman."

Why this persistent belief that nobody female would ever play RS? Do we need the XY genes to click a mouse? Obviously not, yet I have met many, many players who are genuinely convinced that female RS players cannot possibly exist.

The reasons are many, varied and also rather pathetic.

"All the girls I know irl don't play games, they just go out for meals."

This is an absolutely genuine reply I have gotten from a (presumably male) RS player. Yes, he really thinks women do nothing but go out for meals.

When the RS player insists that, yes, she really is a girl, the replies are entirely predicatable.

"No pic no proof."
"You're not a girl if u don't show us pics."
"Get on ventrilo."
"Webcam."

Men do not need to go on ventrilo/webcam or show their pics to everyone who asks just to prove that they exist. Why do women have to bother?

One time I joined an IRC channel for a Runescape-related community. Right away, I got kicked. Then again and again until I gave up on reading the final message (and the reason for the kicks) "fuck off, there are no girls on the internet." Another reason I have been kicked from IRC -"tits or gtfo."

Comment please, I would really like to know what RS players think about all this.

Runescape thinks its players are fat!

Runescape thinks its players are fat! Picture proof provided!

Runescape stats signatures

Well I was looking for some RS sigs and found some cool sigs that will automatically update your stats.

RS Humor



Tip It

Runescape Bits and Bytes

RsSig.eu -Dynamic Forum Signatures For Runescape

MI vs RSD

The blog looks boring with all the text and no pictures so here is an interesting old Runescape Classic Video of the Malicious Intent clan war versus Runescape Dinasty.

New state of RS after Dec 2007

On December 2007 Jagex announced their anti-RWT (Real World trading) updates which have drastically changed the way RS is now played. Trade restrictions and the Grand Exchange have limited the exchange of items between players. The Wilderness as a player killing area was also removed. Stake duels are still possible but very limited.

Of course, like many other Runescapers, I was not happy about these updates. I will be leaving members for a while because of my dissatisfaction with recent changes.

During the time when the changes were announced, there was mass hysteria in the various fan forums and, predictably, the RS official forums. At the time I noticed various trends of the replies of players who supported the updates. Here are my observations of the various RSOF poster types:

We have all read the rants about people who complain excessively each time there is an update. What about other types of posters though? Let's categorize them.

Daddy Knows Best

He is firmly on the side of game developers and views them as the ultimate god-like authority on everything whose will must never be questioned. He feels emotionally attached to dev team and often comments on their "hard work" and how sorry he is that people flame devs. To him all players who complain are just crybabies or ungrateful kids who don't appreciate the effort being made for them by the game companies. He regards the game as the sole property of devs and players should be grateful that game makers allow them to play their game.

Give It Time

No matter what the complaint is, he always responds with "give it time." Even if people are dying in droves to unfair players, according to this poster all players have to do is to give it time and everything will be hunky-dorky. Due to the nature of MMORPGs, over the long run this poster is often proven right as most players will likely prove to be sufficiently addicted to the game to continue playing so eventually even the worst controversies will blow over in time.

"A Kenyan man once said to me, 'You can get used to anything.' He used to stick mice up his ass for twenty bucks a time."

Wannabe Mods

These posters may be similar to the Daddy Knows Best variety but their motives are much less pure. Whether it is the official forums or a fan forum, they stick up for authority figures and are always anxious that all the rules are always followed to the letter. A common refrain of theirs is "mods should," for example "mods should lock this" or "mods should move this to rants." Another hallmark of the Wannabe Mods is their constant quoting and reminders to others of the rules.

Ranters Who Rant About Ranting

A special breed of poster who posts only because he wants people to shut up. He hates rants yet he reads them a lot and can't stay away from them so his constant pet peeve is "people who rant" even though his own posts are are as incoherent as the rants he professes to hate. Whether they realize it or not, these posters start an endless cycle of ranting. First there are ranters, then ranters who rant about ranters, then ranters who rant about those who rant about ranters, then ranters ranting about ranters who rant about those who rant about ranters, and so on. The cycle is endless and ridiculous in the extreme. They often have no sense of humor and answer seriously even the most ridiculous posts about rants because their posting time is completely taken up with ranters.

Best Update Ever

Much like stores in real life that seem to have the "best sale" or "lowest prices" every time they have a sale, for every update there are posters who love it so much they declare it the "best update ever." Whether they have been playing the game for 1 week, 1 month or 1 year, they confidently proclaim the update to be the "best ever" and thank the game developers for their genius update. Sometimes they painstakingly list each and every positive point of an update, no matter how small it is, just to emphasize why this one is the "best update ever."

The Perennial Kisser of Behinds/Bootlicker

One of the most common of posters, this one just wants to suck up to mods and game developers so he can score brownie points. Privately he may have his doubts but publicly he always makes it a point to stand up and be counted as a supporter of each update and, by extension, game developers. He likes to refer to people by their first names or nicknames even if these people have never spoken to him personally. In his mind, he views complainers as fools because complainers never get anything. He regards himself as smart because he knows game developers have the only real power in the MMORPG so he is always on the winning side.

Bow Down to Him, for He is the Great One

If a pmod, mod or game developer should post, this poster goes into raptures over him. Ecstatically going along with whatever mods or devs say, this poster's goal is to make friends or have a connection with his idols. Squeeling "omg you posted, you posted, I love you so much and this game, thank you!" like a star-struck fan, this poster only wants to love and be loved in return.

Me, Myself and I

This poster feels it is important to post that since the update or controversy doesn't involve him, he doesn't care about it. 99% of players might be affected but he wants people to know that he isn't directly troubled by it therefore it's great to be him. He admits that it might suck for other players but as long as his own playing style is untouched he is happy.

Substitute Posters

Has your training area been completely ruined by an update? There are other places. Is your character now obsolete? There are other types of characters. Are your skills now unprofitable? There are other skills. This poster has the answer to everything because to him each aspect of the game can be easily replaced by another aspect. He is the type of player who enjoys doing everything so he simply cannot understand why people whine when their favorite things are taken away. After all, there is always something else to do.

Let's See YOU Make One

This poster thinks every complaint is invalid because they were not made by a game developer. His motto is "if you can't make a better game then shut up." He likes to ask other posters if they think they can do better than challenges them to develop their own game. He doesn't even care about what the other poster's complaint is, he just thinks all complaints by non-game devs are inherently invalid.

Marquis de Sade's Brother

To the sadistic poster, human suffering is sweeter than mother's milk. The more people complain and whine, the better he likes it. Common examples of posts are titled "LMFAO, Pkers owned by update" or "Don't you just love it when nerds cry?" These posters thrive on pain and chaos. He loved riots and posts on quitting posts by saying "goodbye and good riddance." Sarcasm is his favored tool and harsh posts by other people delight him. He is the the player hater of MMORPGs. He may hate merchants, skillers, duellers, pkers, boss teams, veterans, wealthy or any other type of player, but one thing is for sure, he hates them with a vitriolic vigor. Frequently he hates them because he has had bad experiences with these types of player before or perhaps he just envies them.

Runescape rare items (partyhats, santas, masks, easter eggs and pumpkins)

To a new player, bewildered by the astronomical prices of holiday items from Runescape Classic (also known as Rs1, or the first version of Rs), rares can be a mind-boggling phenomenon. Why is a colored party hat with no equipment stats or any actualk benefits cost hundreds of millions of gold pieces? One word: rarity. Such items, though useless, are the rarest items in Rs so they are worth that much to players.

Allow me then, an older player who was actually there when these rares were dropped explain a bit on how we used to look at these items.

In 2001, two holiday items were introduced, pumpkins during Halloween and crackers at Christmas. Pumpkins can be eaten and traded. At that time, very few got pumpkins as it was thr first holiday item. During Christmas however, people were already somewhat expecting a Christmas item and many were dropped throughout the day.

A rainbow system message would flash on the screen saying "Merry Christmas" and then crackers would appear on the ground. Players would then race each other to get the items. This was just a funny game and no one got upset. Those who got none could easily buy or ask friends for the crackers as no one put much importance on them. They were just a fun item. Crackers are meant to be used on another person and the two people recieve random prizes which always includes one party hat of a random color. For example, I pulled a cracker on Who Da Best. He got 10 iron ore certificates and I got a white party hat.

Some people did not bother to get any party hats or crackers. Some bought theirs. Some sold them. Some dropped their items on the ground. Some sold theirs to the general store. Many ate the edible items (easter eggs and pumpkins). A few kept the items.

In my pics website, a top player wearing a white party hat while pking in the wilderness. At the time this was considered cheap as party hats were worthless. One of my friends used to pk wearing a party hat then drop it for space whenever he got a kill. Another friend was scammed for 500k gp because he didn't know what a pumpkin was, he thought it was rare. Ironically, it has become rare now and it is worth more than 1 mil.

Now as to myself personally, I kept some of the rares, especially the wearable ones like party hats, santa hats and masks. Many people dropped their holiday items because of the very limited bank space but I had an advantage as a pure since I did not need bank space for skills. I just liked the look of party hats so I used them for events such as weddings and level up parties.

Basically, what I am saying is that the early holiday items were fun. We liked them a lot. However, they were hardly important or rare at that time.

All about Andrew Gower

I was talking on AIM with an old player, Gregechidna6 (3rd to 99 hp if I recal correctly), who mentioned that he still had pictures of Andrew Gower. When I failed to see what was unusual about that, he commented that most players nowadays have no idea what he looks like. Well, if anyone still has Skittles's old "ballerina pic" I would really like a copy. :)

Until then, we will just have to content ourselves with the excellent "Unofficial Andrew Gower Archive" at http://gowerarchive.googlepages.com/ which includes pictures and personal information about Andrew Gower.

I also have stored in my computer some old posts in newgroups such as comp.graphics.animation. Here are two posts, one even has the adress and telephone numbers of Jagex (old).

Hi all!
I'm currently halfway through writing my own mud :-) In a desperate attempt
to make it stand out from the crowd, I've opted to make it a real-time mud
complete with graphics, and a point and click interface.

I've never written anything quite like this before, so I'm not sure what
problems I might face. I know its not exactly the same as running a text
based mud, but presumably some of the problems I might face will be the
same. Any advice, ideas or general feedback would be very much appreciated!

I've already spent a *lot* of time on this project! I've had to write my own
engine entirely from scratch. When it goes online all you'll have to do to
play is go to my webpage, the java program which handles all the graphics
will load, and automatically connect to the server. I'm amazed how well
things are going, because to start with I never thought this idea would
work, but its now working very well. The network code is very optimised and
only requires a bandwidth of about 0.3k /sec to play smoothly!

It should go online in about a month (hopefully!), and I might start taking
on beta testers slightly before that. For more details and screenshots visit
this webpage: http://sleepy.fitz.cam.ac.uk/mud/

Thanks
Andrew Gower

This was taken from googlegroups.com which has an archive.

Hi,
We are interesting in purchasing some 2d sprites for our new runescape RPG
game. (see http://www.jagex.com/runescape.html)

The sort of thing we need is animations of various monsters to use in our
game. For instance a dragon, a giant-rat, a giant-spider, a skeleton, a
ghost, etc... To give you a sense of scale we imagine the skeleton would be
aprox 48x88 pixels (doesn't have to be exactly that size). The rat perhaps
97x53 pixels (side view size). The dragon would perhaps 140x100 (side view
size).

Each monster needs to be drawn facing 5 different directions with 3 frames
of walking animation per direction (we are actually using 8 directions, but
for 3 of them we are just flipping other views to save memory, the monsters
need to be designed so they flip without any obvious innacuracies, (e.g
objects switching hand) but we're not worrying about the shading being the
wrong way around on a few frames as this really doesn't show up).

We also require a 3 frame combat animation per monster, this only needs to
be drawn from one viewing angle (sideways on - facing right).

If anyone thinks they can supply these graphics or knows a good place where
I can look please contact me via email. We would need to own any graphics we
commission, such that they are exclusive to our game. We are also interested
in top-quality graphics only, as we aiming for a professional quality game.

Graphics should be supplied in 256 colour gif format. No jpegs please, and
no anti-aliasing or dithering! (It takes too much memory, this is going to
be an online game so has to download quickly). We do of course still want
them to look good, so good shading and fine detail is important.

If you can supply these graphics please tell me:
a) how much will it cost per monster (Each monster requires a total of 18
frames of animation)
b) do you have any relevant samples of work I can see? For example any
animating sprite of a monster or person. The more examples the better, as we
have no shortage of internet bandwidth here. We won't use any samples you
send us in our game without paying you.
c) Any other relevant information you can give me

Thanks

Andrew Gower
Jagex Software (http://www.jagex.com)
Unit 213, 48 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1FD, England
Tel: +44 (0)870 3215241

Disclaimer: This blog is not in any way connected to Jagex, Andrew Gower or Runescape. The information here was taken from usenet archives and are freely available online for anyone who wishes to search for it.

The Runescape Wilderness: Black hole fun in Runescape - an early punishment for cheats

The Runescape Wilderness: Black hole fun in Runescape - an early punishment for cheats

Black hole fun in Runescape - an early punishment for cheats

Alas Fisher Mark, I knew him not at all.

http://www.geocities.com/runescapegrudge/ Is titled "Grudges of Runescape" and apparently created as an online petition of sorts for Fisher Mark, a Runescape player who was banished to the black hole by Moderator.

Notice the age of the screenshots where the fps (frames per second) can be clearly seen on the bottom right hand corner of the picture. Unlike the majority of stories by those who have been banned, this is very humorous.

This site is temporarily dedicated to the loss of Fisher Mark and his long time apprentice Rs Helper. Fisher Mark is furiously trying to dig his way out of the black hole after moderator pushed him in when he was fishing, and come to justice with the asswipe that ratted him out as a macro user, Big10fan.

It finishes with a plaintive request for other players to buy a spade and dig into the black hole for Fisher Mark.

Not that I am endorsing macroing or Runescape cheats but the web site is just hilarious and the pictures are very old and funny.

Old Runescape newsletter from 2001

Wow! While browsing through the Tip It forums I found M Oldfield's text of the old Runescape newsletter. Jagex no longer sends this newsletter (or any other email) so don't be fooled by imitations, but anyway look at the old news. Probably the most interesting parts are the hiscore lists.

Jan 21, 2001
RuneScape Newsletter - Issue #1
Welcome to the first
ever RuneScape newsletter.
Firsly a big thank-you to everyone who's been
playing, and has helped makeRuneScape a great success. We only launched just
over 2 weeks ago, and wealready have over 28000 signed up players, and the game
has been played for atotal time of over 4.5 years!

Help keep RuneScape free------------------------Renting a server to run
RuneScape is expensive! I really want to avoid chargingpeople to play, so please
please help me keep it free by visiting the websitebelow and signing up for a
few *free* offers. Thanks!
Want to win Free Cash every day? Try the
newest Freebie site on the Internettoday, FreebieClub.com. Of course it's loaded
with free loot: great vacations,magazines and samples galore!http://www.freebieclub.com/

What's new in Runescape-----------------------The RuneScape team has been
working very hard over the past 2 weeks to improvethe game and bring you new
features. Major new features are:

New desert city Al-kharid with:
-Scimitar shop: Buy and sell curvy
swords-Furnace: Conveniant for smelting ore from the desert-Silk trader: Buy
silk here and sell it in varrock for a profit. The amount youmake depends on how
many other people are silk trading.-General store: Another place to buy and sell
your items-Platemail Legs shop: A full range of leg armour to spend your money
on-Kebab shop: Eating kebabs has a random effect. They're normally good,
butrumour has it that a few of them are a bit dodgy. They'll never kill you
though
New Quest in Draynor Manor
Draynor Manor has been opened and
there's spooky things inside! There's avampire asleep in the cellar, and
Professor Oddenstein who lives in the attichas accidently turned someone into a
chicken! To make things worse gremlins havehidden the parts of his machine, so
he can't turn the chicken back. Can you findthe missing pieces to complete this
quest?
Plus over the past 2 weeks we've also
-Improved the map page to
show the locations of useful shops-Added a 'who's playing' page so you can see
if your friends are on-Made Lumbridge safe to give a place to hide from player
killers-Improved the shops to reduce queueing-Reduced the network requirements
so the game works over more connections-Fixed lots of little problems/bugs with
the game to make it more reliable

What's planned--------------We are of course working on many more
improvements to add to the game to make iteven better. We have nearly finished
work on the bank which will hopefully beadded to Varrock city tommorow. The bank
is a safe place to store your money,such that even if you die it can't be lost.
After that the magic system is duefor a big overhaul with lots of new spells
being added, plus we'll be addingsome entirely new professions such as crafting
and fishing to add even morevariety to the game. The next planned quest is 'The
vampire slayer quest' inwhich you must work out how to slay the evil vampire
currently sleeping inDraynor Manor.

Runescape hiscores------------------Below are the top scores as they
were at 3pm GMT on Sunday-21st. Only the top 25players are shown, but I'm
planning on adding a new page to the website soonwhich will allow you to search
for the ranking of any player and see how youcompare with everyone else.
The
hiscores are currently in 4 categories. If there are more categories whichyou
think should be included let me know and I'll consider putting them in thenext
newsletter.

Top 25 players - score is total of all skills
1: lightning - 506
2: Gugge - 436
3: Rab - 428
4: Sir - 415
5: ZAPTONE_Z - 352
5: hurkules - 352
7: Devil_Hunter - 329
8: merlin - 324
9: Rodrigo - 321
9: Hellbringer - 321
11: RattSabre - 320
12: The_Unknown - 319
13: stud690 - 317
14: Flex_10 - 312
15: Morfnak - 311
16: Day_Dream - 306
17: Lord_Soth - 305
18: TheReturnOfX - 302
19: Ashley - 301
20: Auxilus - 300
21: Sunjon - 288
22: terminator - 287
23: kancer - 283
23: Axebane_Hawk - 283
25: KingKong - 280

Top 25 fighters - score is total combat skill
1: lightning - 200
2: Gugge - 182
3: Rab - 178
4: Robin_Hood2 - 172
5: stud690 - 164
6: Sir - 163
7: Day_Dream - 160
8: terminator - 159
9: Ashley - 155
10: Morfnak - 149
11: merlin - 148
12: The_Unknown - 146
13: Flex_10 - 141
14: Lord_Soth - 138
15: hurkules - 136
16: ZAPTONE_Z - 134
17: LoneWolf_LD - 133
18: RattSabre - 131
18: TheReturnOfX - 131
18: constant - 131
21: SilencerLD - 130
22: Auxilus - 129
22: caramon - 129
24: Sir_Beachy - 128
24: Axebane_Hawk - 128

Top 25 player killers - score is number of kills
1: DaRk_RoCk - 100
2: SilencerLD - 953
: Robin_Hood2 - 83
3: Mortis - 83
5: EndBringer - 80
6: Phadera - 69
7: bomboy2328 - 68
8: donk - 67
9: Windstick - 65
10: Yemen - 64
11: Yokomon - 61
11: RCCBrasil - 61
13: lancelot24 - 60
14: Samhill - 58
14: Samikaze - 58
14: DecIll - 58
17: koma - 55
18: robsimons - 53
18: Rankka - 53
20: ace2you - 52
20: adam2000 - 52
22: plumaglob - 51
22: Wolf - 51
24: God - 50
24: crazy_joe75 - 50

Top 25 smiths - score is mining + smithing
1: lightning - 88
2: dmonik - 87
3: The_Unknown - 84
4: KPOBb - 81
5: Lord_Soth - 80
6: Rodrigo - 74
6: TheReturnOfX - 74
6: Silverion - 74
9: hurkules - 73
9: Garbages - 73
9: Deckchair - 73
12: Sir - 70
12: Auxilus - 70
14: Bubba_bobba - 68
14: Lordrlz - 68
16: Flurble - 67
16: Flex_10 - 67
16: stud690 - 67
16: Tiney - 67
20: Gugge - 66
20: natslayer - 66
20: Vit - 66
20: Sgt_Savage - 66
20: STarlude - 66
25: Arcon - 65

Thanks for reading this newsletter, have fun playing the game!Andrew Gower
(RuneScape
creator)
-----------------------------------------------------------------You
are receiving this newsletter because you asked to receive it whenyou created
your RuneScape character. We do not send unsolicited email.

RS2: Blaming Miniclip for all the evils of Runescape

The golden age of Runescape

Long ago and far away in a land that time has forgotten there was a game called Runescape, which people eventually realized was NOT Run-escape but Rune-scape. In this fair land all were good, true, loyal, brave and polite.

Miniclip ends the age of innocence

Then came the evil known as Miniclip. Runescape was listed as the best free online world on this site. And lo! Evil newbies poured forth in uncountable numbers from tutorial island. The once fair land of Runescape was covered in darkness. Thenceforth good was vanquished forevermore. Scammers, beggars, trash talkers and the liked now ruled the once fair Lumbridge.

What is Meili babbling about this time??

Well, in plainer talk, there is currently a feeling or popular idea that the old Runescape used to be good until it was advertised in Miniclip, which caused it to be flooded with annoying 12 year olds. An example of this is this quote from Tip It:

I have been playin runescape for about a year now when i first started playing everyone was really kind and nice and the word noob was rarely used. varrock sq used to be full of people all lvls helping each other out it wasnt rare for a high lvl player to help out a lvl 3 the game wasnt about who had done the most quests or who had the highest lvls it was bout helpin ppl makin friends nd just avin a nice time on the computer. But now a year later that has all but vanished. There is no peace anymore Noob is the most common word in the Runescape dictionary people ask for help and they get called a noob there are no more helping other ppl u cnt even trust ur own friend ne more as you think theyll scam u. WHY HAS THE PEOPLE OF RUNESCAPE CHANGED?

I, for one, do not recall Runescape ever being noob-or-child-free. Never has everyone been always friendly and nice to me. Am I actually playing a different game from the person I quoted above? There have *always* been beggars, scammers, noobs, etc. for as long as I have been playing. Sorry, I don't removing Runescape from Miniclip would make the game nicer.

Evil pk clans are fun!

My first clan

I kinda miss being in an evil pk clan. My first clan was a skill clan, Runescape Dinasty (RSD) which I joined way back in RS1 (or Runescape Classic if you wanna call it that) without even thinking much about it after its leader Livinlarge21 asked me to. I was so clueless about it I just said "yes" despite the fact that I later had to ask my friends what clans actually do! IIRC there was as yet no website - Livin was still in the planning stage. :)

Anyway, RSD was pretty small then and just full of friendly, nice people. I really enjoyed my time there. We had our own private forums and we had fun with RS events and generally just hanging out at the forums. However, with more and more people joining the clan became bigger and the inevitable happened, people wanted to pk.

Prior to this, I had never pked with anyone but a few close friends and at the most we would have 4 people. That was already considered a big pk group as if you split a set between 4 people it isn't really worth it. Mostly I was alone or it was just me and one friend.

Why I left it

The pk trips with RSD were my first time to pk in a much larger group and I didn't like it. I finally quit after several times when RSD members would attack the person I was with. Since we had a rule that a member could not attack another member, I was forced to just watch as they would attack my friends.

That, and Sue Me told me to quit lol. Shortly after this he said he was quitting RS, which pissed me off. I complained that if he was going to quit, he shouldn't have made me quit a clan that I loved just because he didn't like them since he wouldn't even be around anymore.

Oh noes not not an evil clan!

Around this time, Sue Me and Adx1 hit upon the plan of forming a pk clan. They asked me to join and I accepted. In the beginning we had a private hidden forum in New Era, an old fan forum, now defunct. For quite some time we had no name. :) We had a thread going asking for name ideas and finally settled on "Malicious Intent" as an appropriately scary-scounding name. Now that we had a name, it was time to let everyone know that we existed and were recruiting. The leaders were Sue Me, Adx1 and Zorro Toy. The sole requirement for membership was simply "to be one of the best pkers" and there was no level requirement.

I'm not evil, just misunderstood!

This really amused me personally as although I pk, I have never been a "hardcore pker." I've always been a nice, friendly type of girl, why even when I pked noobs I would say "hi" to them first! There were only a few girls in MI, these were myself, Pepsi, Flower (I'm not sure but I think she was a member for a few days) and Marryn. Pepsi and Flower eventually quit the clan after a few days so it was just Marryn and myself then. The lowest level member was, I think, Da Killmasta (70s) and the hightest was Fist of God (121).

Yes, but the Iron Chef ownz you more

As the clan was made up of pkers, it had a lot of enemies, chiefly those who had been pked by members. Somebody made a sig which had "Malicious Intent - Death is a gift you give to your enemies" and some forum wag made this one as a joke:


What is this "peekay" you speak of???

In contrast to RSD, MI were allowed to pk each other. I recall some members even threatened to quit after Sue Me pked them.

Anyway, MI had some really cool pks, the pics are on my website:

http://www.anzwers.org/free/jagex/malicious.html

Ironically, although when I first added these to my website I considered them "new," now that it is 2006, these are considered old. How time flies!

The pks were really fun although, as I stated previously, it sucks when you have to share the kills with a lot of people. We also had a problem with stealing kills. Whenever a victim was close to dying, MI members would all start maging him so that they would get the kill. This was considered a somewhat cheap tactic and annnoyed the pker/s who had done all the work catching and also taking damage while the kill stealers just maged once or twice and got the kill. Still, unlike today, all kills were always shared.

Pepsi, the owner of the New Era forums, or one of her group (it might have been her real life daughter Flower or her online bf) quarreled with one of the MI members and demanded that he be kicked. The leaders refused and Pepsi's group left MI. The clan forums were moved.

Good vs Evil

The best time for me in MI was the war with RSD, my old clan. Before this I spoke to Livin and my other friends in RSD as this would be a war where I might have to attack my friends. We agreed that it was just for fun and no one should be hurt if they get killed. :)

The MI tactic for the war was basically "return until we win!" This was a crucial part of our plan as we knew RSD would outnumber us four to one. Members pledged to use up their whole bank if they had to, no mean feat as many had over 100 sets.

Due to this tactic, the war was the longest lasting one I have ever seen, lasting for several hours. RSD claimed they won the war due to controlling the altar while MI claimed to have won it because they got more kills.

Oergg has some pics of the MI vs RSD war:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v499/banditelli/mivsrsd/

RSD are in purple capes, MI are the ones in blue and black capes. Many of the people in the pics were actually random pkers though. All of the events I mentioned happened in RS1.

Player mods

Today I gained some insight on RS's player mod system.

Ok this probably won't be interesting to many so feel free not to read the rest below as this is NOT an anti-pmod rant.Apparently, ages ago Ultima Online (UO) had a "volunteer program" where players signed up to provide online help. These people were counselors and provided all sorts of human-type help in the game, especially to newbies. :) So far, so good. However it seems that the program was totally corrupt.

Volunteers - mostly females
Game Masters (actual staff irl) -mostly young males

The predictable happened with some sexual hijinks, ingame favours and such like in this "Lum the Mad" link.

I must say that UO seems to have taken advantage of the volunteers and at one time even fired thier entire (paid) support staff. Were they relying almost entirely on unpaid volunteers as their customer support staff? Tsk tsk.

Anyway, UO scrapped the volunteer program and the volunteers sued them! And the volunteers won the case.

"The lead complainant, Catherine "Terendil" Reab, had worked her way up in the volunteer program to the position of regional lead counselor, managing a rather large team of volunteers under her. For this, she was given $500 per month as a thank you, in addition to various goodies (including sundries), both real and virtual (in-game), from OSI, including a free monthly account."

from Gamespy.

I guess the volunteers argued in court that they were exploited as they were unpaid workers who took the place for tech support which the company would otherwise have had to hire.

I am guessing this legal precedent is the reason behind many weird (to me) Jagex rules for pmods, for example the "no going out of your way to mod, just play the game as usual" rule. If the pmods actually went out of their way to help as the UO volunteers did, then Jagex would be vulnerable to a lawsuit as the pmods are acting as cs staff would! Plus other policies also make more sense to me now...

Salon also has an article on it.

Back to the first link, these is one of the juicy parts:

"The GM’s formed a PK group during this time, and they were sworn to secrecy about it. They made characters and super charged them, gave them goofy names and they went on regular rampages and killed players on purpose. For fun. To release stress."

Eh at least Jagex is nice enough not to make level 126 chars and pk newbs!

...Wait a minute, Jagex mods used to one hit kill players, too! Anyone remember that? IIRC Wickedwayz once had a thread in tip.it about how he wanted his stuff back after a mod killed him. He wasn't the only one either but that was in beta.

In RS we have had some minor incidents as well with Jagex staff and female players but I think maybe I shouldn't go into that.

"Many GM’s were on duty drunk or stoned. They would convey that to us in IRC."

Huh and we joke about customer support staff in Jagex...maybe it's actually true and they really are drunk when they answer cs queries.

"SRC Zaronia made a trip in about this time period (thanksgiving I think) to go see GM JA, she and he were on line lovers I guess. Well I am not sure if he chickened out or what, but one look at her — and I think he freaked, and he ditched her. Treefrog came to her rescue and he rescued her all right, for an entire week — in bed — she says they didn’t get out much, except to drink. She also bailed his ass out of jail for a DUI — she had to call OSI — and Treefrogs mother to get the money back she paid to bail him out."

*giggles* Apparently the girls got all sorts of stuff from all this like in game money, houses, special illegal one-hit weapons, as well as getting their character's stats edited.

First post!

Welcome to my new Runescape blog!

I am the webmaster of Meili's Runescape Pics. This blog will be for my writings, the site will continue to have the pictures.

The name of this blog is from one of my favorite places to hang out in RS1 (the old version of Runescape, now known as Runescape Classic), the stripey bank in Ardougne. Since this was the bank closest to the lever for p2p wilderness, this is the bank most pkers and high levels used.