Jump to content

Runescape Classic Pking and Why It Was So Good


meili

Recommended Posts

OK, now that RS Classic has been revived, let's get this party started!

 

Runescape Classic Pking and Why It Was So Good (part 1: The Basics)

 

Runescape Classic Pking

 

With the recent revival of RS Classic, I thought I would look back and identify what we love about Runescape pking.

 

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.

 

new2g.png

 

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 Tip It forum post about the war. See what Tip It looked like way back then. :)

 

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 31 prayer (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.

 

bosedn.jpg

 

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 the sticky on this subforum about 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.

 

datru9.jpg

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. :)

 

Those who have their blog or websites, please do visit my blog:

 

http://stripeybank.blogspot.com/

 

The link on my sig will also take you to my Runescape Classic website. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

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.

 

bosedn.jpg

 

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.

 

 

I didn't take the pic Meili. But I kept it for obvious sentimental reasons :) hehe..

I can't remember the picture takers name, but I found the pic on the old clan B.o.S website a long time ago.

Also I was very elusive while training in bk maze, so if you killed me there you had my respect hehe.. It kind of bothers me now that I can't remember who got the final blow tho.. :(

But yeah I kept the pic to have some fun and claim that this was how many people it took to kill me lol..

Awesome guide you've made by the way =)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had just read through this earlier and loved it. I did have one question though about the Prayer Beast section.

 

"This is a pure pker type with 1 defense and 13 magic (so that he could protect item)."

 

Is this a typo or did protect item really only need 13 magic at one point?

Monkeyman_Pk.png
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice topic.

 

Logging/Server hopping: I remember when this happened you would continue going south roughly heading towards edge (e.g hugging the fence south of rune rocks near the lesser cage), add them to your friends list (helps if they said something in the chat, or didn't have a Xx_Pker_xX90909 type name) and just pray they have privacy off. Every now and then someone will come up green in the friends list and you'd quickly hop to their server and hope to end up close enough to them to attack

 

Pures: Slowly got more extreme and more extreme. 40 attack, 40 def, and as high as strength as possible was sort of the standard, then addy pures with 40, 30, x down to the prayer beasts with 1 def. I found that no matter how hard you tried your PB would always end up getting some defense xp (dealing damage as 'controlled' then all of sudden getting the defense level message later on when the thing dies)

 

 

There was no attk/def/str in the highscores, only hp, so there was always a bit of mystery regarding other people's stats. Outside of the wildy you couldn't see each other's levels (until I think when duelling came out on p2p). So if you were hitting any sort of big numbers people would always accuse you of being a 'potter' (whilst training outside of the wildy)

 

There were two different types of training: 'afk' training and 'click' training. Afk not neccesarily being away from the keyboard, just a spot where you're character could stay planted without moving and still get exp due to monster auto-attacking you.

I think the best training in the game was click training on the 4 guards at the black knight's fortress going up the stairs, killing the 2 guards there, then down the stairs, killing those 2 guards (knowing exactly where they spawn, etc.)

 

'Afk' training spots were generally at the grave in lvl ~19 wildy and at hobs at lvl ~34. On top of the iron med spawn at the grave, and at hobs there was a certain spot where you'd fight the most hobs per hour (this was down to a science back then). And if there were two people training at hobs you'd move down 2 spaces or so, and the other person was north-west a little bit, to optimise your exp/hour.

 

World 1 was 'the' place to train, because monster spawn rates were proportional to the people on the server. So you'd usually find the high level people at world 1 hobs having a little conference. It was very rare to find a free grave or hobs server.

 

R2h's and rune longs had the same graphic so if someone saw you 1-hit a guard (I think health in the low 20's) they would say 'r2h????' - after you show them in the trade window they'd always press accept hoping that for some reason you would accept too

 

I remember it was a legitimate business running up to the nature rune island with a handful of law runes to telegrab the natures

 

We had 'death matches' where players would fight to the death in the little altars in the wildy (bottom right ~lvl 13 and top left ~38 or so). Of course the forums were always full of complaints from someone getting 'jumped' after the deathmatch by a clan or buddies of one of the fighters

 

Weakens - as I'm sure many can attest to, this was one of the most annoying things to experience in the wildy (dropped str by 5%, I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure it must have killed any bonus from the str pot before dropping by 5%, otherwise we wouldn't have complained about it so much).

To be found using weakens in the wildy was always 'unhonorable' and every time you found weaken runes in a pile it was that much sweeter

 

You couldn't really have a massive team of rangers/mages, as you needed to stop in your tracks to shoot which made it very easy to get away. Range wasn't very popular but there was always a few poachers around the castle thing ( a tad north east of the skeleton coal mine)

 

A typical high-ish lvl pk trip would involve checking out hobs, up to rune rocks then to 'gds' (greaters) and back to the rune rocks, server hoping next to the rocks trying to surprise a poor miner or finding another pker(s) doing the same thing

 

I read the 'catching guide' here and it's pretty much spot on. The hard part was really 'following' 1 space behind, and you just had to hope you had catch. One thing is that the game (mine at least) would always stall a little bit when the dreaded banner ad at the top of the window changed-over, in which case you'd generally lose them, especially if they are running away diagonally. Pretty sure the banners had their fair share of abuse back then.

 

Can't remember anything else at the moment but interested in hearing other people's memories

lvl 58 crafting

lvl 50 firemaking

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i suppose this is the best place to put this, i just saw someone who i assumed was an old player, they were named "clasic stake" and they were fighting the bandits or whatever they are at the entrance to the wildy part of the edgeville dungeon. they were level 37 with rune full helm, rune long, rune chain, some gloves, and rune legs. didn't notice what ammy. i'm only level 36, so i logged out fearing for my rsc character's life, although thinking ahead i brought my sword platebody and platelegs as my only equipment, besides sleepingbag and food of course. so i wouldn't have really lost anything.

[hide=WOO TEXT! updated Jan 19, 2009 (last quote)]

And Evil you mad bastard. You are definately bringing TET back up to it's glory. No doubt about it. Keep it going champ.

24,485th to 99 defence on 7-23-08

I always forget you're 20 too. I always think you're 25 or something. o.o

Ya think that I'm insane, Its not sane... its not sane

obligitory devart link: http://evil-mumm-ra.deviantart.com/

Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.

She isn't naked so it's legal.
I'm a porn star.
[/hide]
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice topic Meili, was hoping to hear from you again now that RSC is back =). Are you still playing? Ionly got on the first few days it was open, are there people pking now or what? I don't know what to do with myself there.

Great post though. You could add a section about low level pking, like Level 8 mages, the huge battles of level 13s, and the addy/mith 2h pkers in the 20s, then the r2h pures in the 30s, arguably the most profitable pking levels.

 

Also you should post this in general chat, while it's nice and nostalgic for us, a lot of the RS2 players might be able to get an understanding for why we love it so much. Also mayb eyou could post a few videos at the end with a brief description that were popular back in the day and represent what it was to have fun back in the day. Some videos that come back to mind are the Nemesis KKC video, Santa Thugz' low level mage video, and U P K M E's high level pking videos.

Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/Aaronm14/

MY FAVORITE BAND:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... d=64310717

And the bible is the big book of lies, call me a racist if you must.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice recap Meili :). Wish it was back to pre-p2p pking.....that use to be real fun. Ice wariors with WDB Meili? :P

lol ya she will always be wdb's girlfriend :thumbsup:

 

j/k meili hehe. btw i just remembered who killed me in that pic, the guy who got the last blow was M_Rkzzz.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't believe how much time I wasted playing RSC. But, it was fun leveling up, and going PKing, and having all the rivalries in the end was worth it.

 

It just pisses me off they switch to RS2 cuz it's garbage. RSC was the [cabbage].

 

Amer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very nice guide Meili! Was a great read and brought back a lot of memories.

 

It reminds me of a guide Kryptix made ages ago, about how to PK in RS-Classic, it would be nice if somebody had that too!

signature4s.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

God I loved reading this!!! I miss the old rs1 days. It was the real RS to me. Back when being a miner and a smither actually added up to something and mattered, now it seems to be nothing more than bragging rights. I started in 2000, played off and on for 9 years, and have recently gotten back into it. My favorite part of rs1 was by far, the sleeping bag!!! it might have been a pain in the [wagon] at times, but now that i think about it, it's the most missed part of runescape for me. I also enjoyed making pures and giving the wildy a chance. 3 rounds 2 lumb :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently the strategy for classic pking now, is getting a large team, maybe 8-10 people (and mostly autoed accounts), with several staffers, then sit and team up on Swifty, dsm and Kdog all day.

 

 

No one wants to 1 on 1 anymore. Then they team you, wall, log and bank, come back and talk about how they OWNED you.

 

 

 

 

Nothing will ever replace all the f2p clan pking wars and events.

arcy777-2.jpg
arcsig.jpg
2001-2006 the fourth and last legit 123 on classic
123 classic/137 rs2 Native American Pride

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently the strategy for classic pking now, is getting a large team, maybe 8-10 people (and mostly autoed accounts), with several staffers, then sit and team up on Swifty, dsm and Kdog all day.

 

 

No one wants to 1 on 1 anymore. Then they team you, wall, log and bank, come back and talk about how they OWNED you.

 

 

 

 

Nothing will ever replace all the f2p clan pking wars and events.

 

You forgot about the level 60-80's who just go PK in Ammy and Dragon Long then talk about how much they own even though they are built to three hit, and can't. Oh yea, they never travel deeper than level 10. It's sooo much fun Pk'ing now a days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently the strategy for classic pking now, is getting a large team, maybe 8-10 people (and mostly autoed accounts), with several staffers, then sit and team up on Swifty, dsm and Kdog all day.

 

 

No one wants to 1 on 1 anymore. Then they team you, wall, log and bank, come back and talk about how they OWNED you.

 

 

 

 

Nothing will ever replace all the f2p clan pking wars and events.

 

You forgot about the level 60-80's who just go PK in Ammy and Dragon Long then talk about how much they own even though they are built to three hit, and can't. Oh yea, they never travel deeper than level 10. It's sooo much fun Pk'ing now a days.

 

ya it is, cuz seeing as they dont go above level 20 you just bring tele runes to piss them off and get the last laugh, har harhar. and weakens so they can waste pots

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.