Jagex and the Runescape Community

You know, back in the day, Jagex used to get involved in the community more. I already posted the link to M Oldfield's wedding which had Paul Gower making it official and even making a system message for everyone to see. They also used to post updates about players.

Here is an official Jagex announcement that was published on their news page.

29th January 2003 - Runescape romance turns real

Yet more wedding bells! So Runescape rings DO have special properties.

"I started playing 8 months ago...The last thing I was looking for was another relationship, especially via an internet game. But find one I did, or it found me..."

Lady Pooh met Topcat0711 whilst playing Runescape, and being more charming than the seven hundred odd Topcats that had preceeded him, they soon became trading partners. An act of chivalry took the relationship to a whole new level.

"One day he'd won a stake duel... because of the winnings I teasingly said 'hey wanna be my rs bf?' not meaning it... But after that we joked about it and kept talking, until we fell in love through Runescape and got to know each other better."

Lady Pooh, who hails from Ohio in the USA, is now set to become Mrs.Topcat0711. She even flew over to his native Australia, swapping server-lag for jet-lag to be with her new love.

"I've been here in Australia for 6 weeks now and we get along great! We are making long term plans and its all thanks to you! We just wanted you to know that you created more than just a game...it's a connection to life and happiness." So it's official then: Cupid does exist. As an NPC in Runescape.

Here is another announcement about a Runescape wedding. It's super cute and I know both of the people involved from the Runescape forums.

29th January 2003 - In low HP,and in health

It had to happen eventually. When 200,000 people interact online, it can only be a matter of time before someone pops the question...

We heard from PugXSi, a veteran of Runescape who is currently 4th overall with 1473 total stats. At 99 in magic and 96 in firemaking, there was still one stat that seemed to be eluding him: romance. Then Runescape "gave me something I didn't think possible- eternal happiness with a fantastic woman."

The woman in question was Jenstarr, a regular of the Dwarven mines. PugXSi soon noticed that she was a bit handy with a pick. "She worked extremely hard to become a rune miner...I hadn't seen such devotion to a skill before."

Sensing that they had struck gold, the two miners would chat online for hours. "It didn't take me long to develop real feelings for her", and an in-game marriage duly followed. Some time later, PugXSi flew from England to the U.S. to meet Jenstarr in person.

A second trip took place at Christmas, but it was more than just santa hats that were up for grabs. On January 3rd PugXSi and Jenstarr got married at a local courthouse. "Runescape is the sole factor in bringing Jen and I together, and for that, Jagex will always have our gratitude." Don't thank us, PugXSi, thank the magic of the runes.

You won't see these news in the Jagex news archive because for some unknown reason they removed them. Maybe so that people wouldn't contrast the old, friendly game staff with the new corporate one?

All quotes are from http://oocities.com/mowbuss/.

More old Runescape Classic Websites

Wow it seems like there are more old Runescape Classic websites out there.

http://oocities.com/mowbuss/

It is a mirror of an old Geocities website. Perhaps the player's name was mowbuss? In any case it has loads of stuff like the names of Jagex stuff, pictures of famous players, skill guides, news updates, etc.

I particularly like the caption of one of his pictures:

"This one is of Waylan, taken from the church in Ardougne, just after I was pking with toolman (notice I don't have a skull, because people attack me then toolman kills them)."

Hahahaha! He and his friend Waylan were pking together and using a common strategy - the noob bait. That is when a higher level pker brings along a lower level guy that people will tend to attack. Then the higher level pker kills them once they have a skull. Great stuff, it brought back memories.

Old Runescape System Message

Incredible! I just found M Olfield's Runescape Classic website. Just look at this picture of the system message that Jagex made for his wedding with Ladymedusa.

Runescape System Message

That was back February 14, 2002 when Paul Gower used to get involved in community events. Runescape weddings were very popular in-game and people would attend to meet everyone else who was there and to support the couple. Sometimes there would be a drop party afterward. There's tons of other pictures so visit the site now.

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.