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.