RuneScape
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Person fighting highwayman in Runescape |
Runescape (or RuneScape) is a 3d Java based online multiplayer fantasy game, launched by Jagex in January 2001. It is free-to-use for certain areas of the game. The paying members area contains many more features. The game is not quest driven and players have the option of not completing any of the in-game quests if they so desire. There are often over twenty thousand players online at once, spread across its 20 free members' and 8 paid members' worlds (servers are located at Philadelphia, London, Toronto, San Francisco and San Jose). There is a wide range of players in the game. They are most commonly in their early teens however there are many cases of adults over the age of forty.
The game is set in a fantasy world, in which you control a character representing you. There is no particular goal or objective to the game, and no way to finish it. However, a lot of things that can be done within the game, for instance you can interact with other players, by talking with them, trading with them, and even killing them. There are several instances in which a one found his/her soulmate in the game. Quests can also be undertaken, for instance a Dragon slaying quest, and many activities such as fishing, crafting, mining and smithing can be performed. As these activities are performed your character will become more skilled at the activity. It is not uncommon for a dedicated player to spend in excess of four hours a day training his character; there are even a few rare cases of players regularly spending over 10 hours a day, playing RuneScape.
Runescape begins on a tutorial island. Although this may seem boring, it is imperative to understanding future gameplay. For those stuck, moving around is executed by left-clicking on a piece of land. While on tutorial island, fighting, communication, cooking, banking, doing quests, and other skills are learned. The player goes to the beginning city, Lumbridge, once they have completed the tutorial. From then on, where they upgrade their character is up to them. They could travel around the "real-life" player's world between cities such as Varrock, Falador, Barbarian Village, Draynors Village, Port Sarim, Port Khazzard, East and West Ardougne, Camelot Castle, Edgeville, Al Kharid, Dwarven Mine, Brimhaven etc., or even islands such as Karamja, Entrana, Crandor etc.. Players could also travel around by training their magic level high enough to perform a teleport to some of these major cities. It is recommended to at least get your combat level up reasonably high, so that you are not constantly killed by NPCs (computer characters).
RuneScape has many communities within it. Many players have grouped together to form groups known as 'clans'. These clans often have alliances, and occasionally go to war with each other; meeting in bloody clashes often exceeding a hundred participants. Sometimes players enter the war zone to pick up leftover items, such as enchanted ammulets and armor. It is not only fun to evade higher levels, but profiting as well.
There is also the Wilderness area, in the northern RuneScape land, in which player characters can fight one another. This is known throughout the game as PKing(Player Killing). When one gets deeper into the Wilderness, they can combat with players farther and farther from their combat level. Close combat can only be performed in groups of two, however it is possible for people to join in using archery and magic. There are many available weapons, spells, and potions available to assist fighting in the wilderness.
Over the past three years, RuneScape has been hampered by cheaters. These people create programs to gain an unfair advantage over other players in the game. An example of a RuneScape cheat is AutoMiner, which one executes to constantly mine various ores. One can start it, go to sleep, and wake up with a bank full of steel bars. When Runescape first opened, cheating was at all-time high, and rarely was dented until Runescape introduced the member service. With additional cash revenue, Jagex Ltd. has been stricter than ever about security and has implemented many macro detection routines and protections to ensure that an actual human is playing. It is also nearly impossible to hack it by any method.
Since the game wasn't really possible to hack, cheats instead focussed creating programs to automatically play the game for them, and gain levels on their character whilst they slept. An earlier popular program of this type was a 'clicker macro' which looked at colours/text on the screen and worked out where to click. Notably the "AutoMiner" (by Nicholas Sherlock), which allowed users to automatically sleep in an early implementation of fatigue, automatically bank items by navigating to the bank and talking to the banker, then returning to the spot that it game from (A feat of navigation when you consider that this cheat is based purely on RuneScape's interface. Jagex eventually responded with some workarounds such as shifting the screen by a few pixels in a random direction every ten seconds or so to make cheats that always click on the same spot on the screen to miss the target, automatically logging the user off after 3 or 4 minutes of standing in the same spot, making the minimap's compass display have only a loose relation to the angle of the map being displayed and making the minimap rotate a little bit every time you move from it and move back on to discourage cheats that can examine the minimap for specific details for navigation, making users get "Fatigued" while doing any task that may be automated with a cheat, then requiring the user to type in a mangled word to recover from their fatigue. Although some clicker programs were even able to operate despite these measures. However the "AutoMiner" is no longer being maintained, and so with further measures from Jagex is no longer effective.
Another attempted cheat was to manipulate the communications protocol directly and try to create a program which sent gameplay instructions directly to the server. Jagex fought back by periodicly changing the communications protocol to make it harder for communications-based hacks to operate. Whilst writing such programs a number of flaws in RuneScapes server code were discovered. Whilst the server code attempted to validate all external input, a few severe mistakes in the server code allowed some users to trick the server into giving them items, duplicating items, and killing npcs which were supposed to be non fightable. All of these attacks were a result of simply mistakes in Jagex's server code, which were at least fixed within a few hours of the problems coming to light.
In December 1st of 2003, Jagex released a beta version of an improved version of the game, which had been rewitten from the scratch. (temporarily called "Runescape 2"). Featuring a new 3d-engine and revisions to gameplay. This beta was intially only available to paid members. Jagex have claimed that this will make RuneScape the most advanced Java based game in the world.
Just in time to keep their Q1 promise, Jagex took the new game out of beta, and finally released it to everyone on 17th of March 2004. Which gave everyone playing Runescape paid or not the to opportunity to test and try out the new gaming system.
Runescape 2 included a whole new player interface, which separated the chat logs, minimap, options and the real-life map into three different zones, making these tasks to be performed more efficiently and conveniently. The main map area now enables players zoom up and down in order to see the world more clearly. Much improved graphic has been updated that it could really compare with the world-famous fantasy games such as Diablo II. All the gaming fuctions (Level Status, Attack Style, Prayer, Magic, Quests, Armour page, Inventory page, Friends list, Ignored list, tunes player, playing control, and log out function)had been combined into a new window for more space. Shopkeepers and Bankers are no longer jameed because another player was dealing with them. Instaed, players could even trade with them straight away without any conversation at all. The minimap has now all the icons indicating which building stands for what kind of shop, quest starting point, whether there's a range or furnace, dungeon entrance etc., and when you click on a location on it, a tiny red flag appears on the place-to-be until the player have reached the place or changed location. Magic, prayer and ranging now all include much improved animations alongside with different kind or animations for each kind of actions too. Weapon attack now have different kind of styles each, though under the new system, still represents the three combat styles: Accurate (+Attack lvl), Aggressive (+Strength lvl) and Defensive (+Defense lvl).
Although magic require certain amount of Runes (Air, Mind, Water, Fire, Earth, Body, Chaos, Cosmic, Nature, Death, Blood and Soul; some even requires optional staffs such the three different staffs of the three Runescape Gods: Saradomin, Guthix and Zamorak, or "Iban Staff" for "Iban Blast"), now in RS2, both F2Ps and P2Ps have the newly added ability of "Runecrafting", which allows players to craft their own Runes. But players could still choose to buy their own runes from the witch Betty or the Aubury in Varrock, or, the most fastest way, to buy from players containing over a thousand runes.
For armour, the 9 standards of weapons and armours are still kept (Leather, Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamantite, Rune and Dragon), but the rare Black and Rune items were no longer extremely rare as before as new items were added especially to the Dragon family (there are daggers, short swords, scimitars, long swords, two-handed swords, hachets, battle axes, maces, chain-mail body, plate-mail body, skirt armours, medium-helmets, large helmets, throwing knives, arrow-heads, wires etc. in each kind of items).