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.

WoW returns items for hacked accounts, why can't Runescape?

As a matter of policy, Jagex will not return your items if you should be unlucky enough to be "hacked." If some jerk is able to log into your char by various means, either keylogging, scamming, guessing your password, etc., then that's tough for you. Jagex customer service will help you get your account access back but they will not return your items.

"Our policy is to never return lost items to players that have been scammed." [Source: http://www.runescape.com/kbase/guid/scamming_prevention_guide]

Well, that is just so sweet of you, Jagex. Nice to know that you treat your customers like crap and do not offer any real support for your game. Although the previous link mentions only scamming, they also have the same policy for players who lost items due to someone gaining unauthorized access to their account.

You know, like years ago when Jagex was just a small struggling company, such things were quite forgiveable. But it has been nine years! In all this time, they never even made an effort to improve their customer service.

Meanwhile, in other games they actually have good customer service and mechanisms in place for returning items. World of Warcraft, in particuler, has huge subscriber numbers yet they still investigate every account if it is hacked and restore lost items.


"Luke: Blizzard were great with the issue. I went through both the in-game ticketing system and their online support site to get my items and account back under my control, and they responded quickly and professionally." [Source: http://www.techdigest.tv/2009/04/lost_and_naked.html]

*Note: I have never been "hacked." Nonetheless, I believe our players deserve better customer service than what we are getting.

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.