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.