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This article was originally published in eZine issue 8.
...is it really that bad?
RuneScape. Arguably the most hated game on the Internet since the dawn of Neopets. But every year a million people subscribe to the premium content version, and 11 million people sign in to 130 million accounts. What keeps them playing if the game is so shite?
I personally play RuneScape, it's no secret. It has recently had a huge graphics update, making it the most powerful and most aesthetically pleasing browser game out there, but even so still has the cute and "old-skool" graphics that I love. If it had the super-powerful but resource-consuming graphics of say, World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs then it wouldn't be able to be played on a 700x500 or so resolution in the background while doing other things, and just wouldn't have the character, the atmosphere, the charm and uniqueness.
The RuneScape everyone thinks they know
The free version of RuneScape is undeniably shit. You go around and do 20 quests, which involve finding eye of newt, tail of rat, and cheese, most likely, and adding them to a pot to get... a reward. But the members edition is so much more than that. Over 150 quests, each one with unique and challenging tasks and puzzles, with a musical score that is as memerable as it is enormous, it is the game that I love and one that I will never stop playing (five years so far!)
Grinding is horrible, and therefore so is skilling. But in RuneScape, the only people who will grind are the gloryseekers. You don't have to burn 7,500 maple logs to get from 70 to 80 Firemaking. You could do so many other things - play Moreton Shade Burning, for example; do some quests for exp; play Penguin Hide & Seek every once in a while; Tears of Guthix is a nice little minigame once per week for exp; there are so many so called "distractions and diversions" that if you really stop paying attention to skill levels and goals you will raise them all without even trying, and having fun at the same time.
What RuneScape actually looks like
In the past we've always had a lot of RuneScape haters here - coupled with a lot of RuneScapers themselves. I'm not sure what the situation's like at the moment, but if you are there, and go to IRC, perhaps we could set up a #runescape on irc.slacked.org ~. You don't need to hide :box: it's not like you play WoW!
Anyway. RuneTek 5 has just been released; this is the fifth build of the RuneTek game engine (as the name suggests) and has vastly improved gameplay by combining the low detail and high detail modes in one. It's also made things such as world selection a lot simpler. HP bars have also been updated (finally) but this is much to the dismay of the players on the forums, who seemed to like the two-colour red-green display! (And when I say two colour, I mean... two colours. FF0000 and 00FF00. Wooh!
JaGeX just won Game Developers of the Year at the Golden Joysticks,
and have been voted best student employer by various newspapers.
Tags:
Posted under: Game Reviews
Read this blog post »
This article was originally published in eZine issue 8.
...is it really that bad?
RuneScape. Arguably the most hated game on the Internet since the dawn of Neopets. But every year a million people subscribe to the premium content version, and 11 million people sign in to 130 million accounts. What keeps them playing if the game is so shite?
I personally play RuneScape, it's no secret. It has recently had a huge graphics update, making it the most powerful and most aesthetically pleasing browser game out there, but even so still has the cute and "old-skool" graphics that I love. If it had the super-powerful but resource-consuming graphics of say, World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs then it wouldn't be able to be played on a 700x500 or so resolution in the background while doing other things, and just wouldn't have the character, the atmosphere, the charm and uniqueness.
The RuneScape everyone thinks they know
The free version of RuneScape is undeniably shit. You go around and do 20 quests, which involve finding eye of newt, tail of rat, and cheese, most likely, and adding them to a pot to get... a reward. But the members edition is so much more than that. Over 150 quests, each one with unique and challenging tasks and puzzles, with a musical score that is as memerable as it is enormous, it is the game that I love and one that I will never stop playing (five years so far!)
Grinding is horrible, and therefore so is skilling. But in RuneScape, the only people who will grind are the gloryseekers. You don't have to burn 7,500 maple logs to get from 70 to 80 Firemaking. You could do so many other things - play Moreton Shade Burning, for example; do some quests for exp; play Penguin Hide & Seek every once in a while; Tears of Guthix is a nice little minigame once per week for exp; there are so many so called "distractions and diversions" that if you really stop paying attention to skill levels and goals you will raise them all without even trying, and having fun at the same time.
What RuneScape actually looks like
In the past we've always had a lot of RuneScape haters here - coupled with a lot of RuneScapers themselves. I'm not sure what the situation's like at the moment, but if you are there, and go to IRC, perhaps we could set up a #runescape on irc.slacked.org ~. You don't need to hide :box: it's not like you play WoW!
Anyway. RuneTek 5 has just been released; this is the fifth build of the RuneTek game engine (as the name suggests) and has vastly improved gameplay by combining the low detail and high detail modes in one. It's also made things such as world selection a lot simpler. HP bars have also been updated (finally) but this is much to the dismay of the players on the forums, who seemed to like the two-colour red-green display! (And when I say two colour, I mean... two colours. FF0000 and 00FF00. Wooh!
JaGeX just won Game Developers of the Year at the Golden Joysticks,
and have been voted best student employer by various newspapers.
Tags:
Posted under: Game Reviews
Read this blog post »
