Tip.It Times Presents: The True Meaning of RuneScape

[Kiara_Kat]

This week's Tip.It Times has been released. Feel free to discuss the article or post any comments. If you have any criticism, please make sure it's constructive! And remember - this is a guest article, so please be considerate of the author's feelings when you post. :D

 

 

 

The True Meaning of RuneScape

 

by 04arch3r

 

 

 

We all know RuneScape isnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t the best game around. This java-based game is not quite up to par with other online games such as WoW or GW, which take pc gaming to a whole new level. And ever since the release of new and improved console games by the three most widely marketed platforms on the planet, the world ...

 

 

 

Click here to read the rest of this article.

[Bloodredsword]

Very interesting article

 

 

 

I agree with the editor on all counts

 

 

 

It weird how it still grows

 

 

 

first post

[Kiara_Kat]

Very interesting article

 

 

 

I agree with the editor on all counts

 

 

 

It weird how it still grows

 

 

 

first post

 

 

 

This article is not by the Editor, it's a guest article by Tip.It Community member 04arch3r.

[hellbellz]

Totally agree with him/her. I liked the read.

 

 

 

I'm dazzled how it's a chatroom with interactions. That's what makes the game interesting, chat. :mrgreen:

[curly55555]

I agree with quite a lot of what 04arch3r wrote there, but do we really want Jagex to advertise? All that would happen really would be that a lot more noobs would enter the games, and a few real players would end up leaving because of it. But money talks, so they probably will advertise. They don't care about players as much nowadays.....

[peterdeath]

do we really want Jagex to advertise?

 

 

 

Jagex is a business, there's a threshold to how much it cares about it's players. Put it this way, Jagex wouldn't be a business without it's players, but it wouldn't have players unless they kepts the game up-to-date with content, and they need to be making money to do that.

 

 

 

With all businesses, the aim of the game is to make money. If Jagex didn't make money, there wouldn't be any RuneScape, or it would at least be of a much lower standard.

 

 

 

To put it simply: Jagex will care about it's players enough to have them keep giving them their money, but no more.

[mememe513]

6th post!

 

Good read, I must agree, RS is a multiplayer game and part of the reason it's so successful is because of the price. It sickens me to see people who take advantage of this and macro/scam innocent players.

[Randox]

For all the complaning most of us do, it truly is the community that makes this game. Without it runescape is nothing.

[jockthebrave]

I personally agree, but I find Runescape to have far better gameplay than WoW or Guild Wars and yes, I have played both.

[bloody_scife]

One of the only reasons I play is because I can talk to a lot of people all over the world. It's a great cultural experience I guess.

[baalboy5]

you speak the truth! love the artical!

[lemontail]

I play because I love to constantly improve my character, and for a few really close online only friends \

[pigfarmer0]

I agree the only thing i do on runescape now is read the forums and talk to people but i have to admit i do play Adventure Quest (battleon) there is no way to interact with other people and you can do the same quests over and over again, the only reason i play it is because you can cheat :oops: and they dont care! FYI i dont cheat on Runescape as proof i've been playing for 4 years and look at my stats :D

[jacob2002373]

i love this article! thats what iv been trying to tell people at skewl who play wow, etc and dont like runescape! runescape rules, well said. :D

[quitthegame]

This week's times has got to be the most off the mark in many months.

 

 

 

"This java-based game is not quite up to par with other online games such as WoW or GW, which take pc gaming to a whole new level."

 

 

 

These two games are widely considered to be not revolutionary at all, and this sentence is presented without any evidence whatsoever.

 

 

 

"RuneScape is simply an expanded version of a chat room. ItÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s human nature to want to communicate ideas with one another."

 

 

 

RuneScape is a HORRIBLE chatroom. Every other word is censored. You can't type anything lengthy or it gets cut off. There are very few of the handy features that chat programs can offer, even WoW has much, much better chat functionality than RS. This claim is so ridiculous, it makes me wonder if the guest editor has even played these other games. If RS owed its popularity solely to its chatroom functions, it would have two players, the Gower brothers.

 

 

 

"I donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t think I would play RS if it were not a multiplayer game. I mean, what would you do? Let's take a look at some other online RPGÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s. Games such as Gaia, Battleon, and Bots. You probably havenÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t heard of any of these."

 

 

 

I have heard of those, and they seem to be much more about the multiplayer aspect than RS is. I spend the vast majority of my RS time just working on my skills, solo. From what I've seen, that is true also for most of the famous high level skillers. For me, the best part of RS being a multiplayer game is the complicated economy that has arisen in it. While I do enjoy talking to my RS friends while I play, I know for sure that if RS gameplay was not enjoyable, we would use a more polished chat interface in a second-- e.g. , WoW. I played wow hardcore for nearly 2 years, I made WAY more friends in WoW than I have in RS, and its chat interface is about 25 times as good as RS's chat interface. Why did I come back to RS? RS's gameplay is much more engaging. WoW just comes down to combat against against enemies with poor AI, using only 1 or 2 skills, over and over forever. Or, if you choose to do the large raids scheme, then to that repetitive gameplay you can add in a decided similarity to teaching kindergarten without pay, 6 days a week. Wow's noncombat skills are a total joke. If a game with polished graphics, 23 skills like RS has, and a nice chat interface, came out tomorrow I would probably play it even if it cost 10x as much as RS. But it simply doesn't exist. RS3 anyone?

[monkeyboo2]

I agree that games without a community or competition is ponitless. I don't play offline games ever because i can't show off my SK1Lz :P at shooting or my latest high lvl. There really is no point.

 

I'll occassionally play co-op or versus with a friend in RL.

 

 

 

Online gets you into cash prize tournaments and communities which you can benefit from as they influence how the game is updated with suggestions or the discovery of new overpowered uses/cheat/glitches for a weapon.

 

 

 

If i didn't nhave onlie, i'd be finding a differentn way to win like cricket (exercise :ohnoes: LOL, only messing)

[lotdt2]

was a good read, yh runescape has real charactor to it, now jagex just needs to start catering for clans as they are the thing that keeps a lot of higher leveled players in the game

[jimjimson]

Well, it was an ok article. I disagree on a few of the points. Saying the community is great is a lie. Just go to f2p for 5 seconds and you'll find out why. (rhyme, lol) The community might be better in a clan or high level area because they are more mature though. Other than that, it was ok. I'm still waiting for an actual article about the game btw.

 

 

 

Maybe it's just cause I'm bitter because I don't have any friends that play.

[littlejohnnyboy]

I'm coming back to the game soon cause in my free time (which i have little of anyways...) I get really bored lol.

 

I've already talked to alot of friends that used to play before so they will come back with me cause playing with no friends who play would be no fun at all. I've seen WOW's chat and GWs... i found that they both are pretty terrible.. especially GWs. bleck.

 

RS is the best in that respect we just need some more clan support!

[jokerdude50]

I agree with just about all the writer said. I was at a point where I was stuck on about 10 different f2p quests, was bored most of the time and really tired of always being broke. I showed the game to 1 fellow EMT here at work. He joined. Our boss kept hearing us discussing what we were doing in the game and he joined. He found tip.it and showed that to us. Then it really snowballed. Last count, there were 9 or so of us out of about 30 here at work playing. Then I found a skilling clan, The Demonic Elite, and now play on an average of 50+ hours a week. I talk and interact regularly with the other players around whatever I am doing. If you're not chatting and having interplay with others, you might as well be playing Zelda on your Super Nitendo.

[estarayella]

i disagree with this article simply because for me its the rs community that pulls it down.

 

 

 

im not saying that every player on runescape is rude or a scammer, but the minority give the others a bad name as it were. you cant trade any where without seeing a scammer or a beggar or someone who will call you a noob because you didnt accept their ridiculously underpriced offer for your black cav.

 

 

 

or fishing at catherby, where every other word is a profanity misspelt to get round the filters...again not always true but its happenning more and more.

 

 

 

this is the community that makes runescape keep growing? i think not.

 

 

 

i love rs. i think the game is very dynamic, and its always changing and i cant see me leaving in the near future. but advertizing it will just bring in more people who dont care about the game... or the other players, and in my opinion there are too many of those people already

[Nero]

Jagex advertises on Miniclip I believe.

[skeroh]

a very good article written by someone besides our beloved editor nonetheless, i still liked the last tip.it times, rather than this one

[Nabbagad]

An interesting read, but they do advertise a little, on miniclip and i think somewhere else.

[Ginger_Warrior]

Um... this was one of the most inaccurate Tip.It Times I've seen in a while. I'm not saying I could do much better, and I know this wasn't written by the Editor, but I'll give as much criticism to you as I would do to him. I'm sorry, that's just the way I am.

 

 

 

Firstly, I don't feel that RuneScape's success lies in the fact it's a chatroom. Chatrooms are designed for the sole purpose of friends talking to each other in a natural environment - but quintessentially, an envirnoment that they can take outside of the chatroom if the participants so desire. RS is the polar opposite of this. You're not allowed to swear, yet 95% of RS players would swear naturally with their mates in a casual, friendly way, myself included. Neither are you allowed to take a friendship in RS outside of the online world. I know there's bloody good reasons for this, but most of the time it's perfectly safe for two online mates to communicate on something like MSN - in some cases even real life. Yet Jagex censor email addresses, and words like "phone" and "MSN". This taken into consideration, RS is anything but an expanded chatroom.

 

 

 

Secondly, the community isn't RS's main factor for success. That lies in the concept of the game. It's a medieval RPG game - the fact is this type of game has always been one of the most popular types of game around. When you think of the Legend of Zelda series, one of the key reasons in explaining its success is it mystical medieval background, which has always appealed to teens in particular. The same goes for RS. When I first joined on this game, the first thing I thought was "Wow, how cool is this game?! I can chop wood and fight monsters!", as opposed to "Oh, this community looks nice - I'll go pay for membership because they're nice people here". In fact, if anything, when see the amount of macroers, lurers, scammers, obnoxious, immature people etc. you can quickly come to the conclusion that the community is actually very negative, not positive, and thus actually turns away much more people than it does attract into P2P.

 

 

 

On an additional note about the three consoles (I presume you mean the Wii, 360 and PS3), as my sig says, I came from a Nintendo community, and we watched the NDS and the Wii from the drawing board, to the shop shelves. I believe that far from smashing online play, we actually helped cultivate it. We gave players something that they would never have thought possible - the ability to play with people hundreds, even thousands, of miles away! This opened the floodgate well-and-truly for online gameplay, which has flourished since the release of XBox Live and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. RS, nor any MMORPG, certainly didn't create online gameplay into the success story it is today. They merely pionered it - it needed the far bigger home console community to truly lift it up from the ground. In that sense, the three big console companies didn't "smash" PC gaming - it actually made it work!

 

 

 

All that said and done - a pretty poor article I have to say, but as I say, not that I could have done much better :(

 

 

 

Also, I don't believe advertising RS further would do RS any good. In fact, I'd say it would hit RS hard. We see the problems with CS, appeals, reports, the official forums etc.. The fact is, those problemes are there because RS spiraled out of control in terms of popularity, and Jagex have been blown away by the sheer scale fo players on here now compared to one or two years ago. Increasing RS's population further wouldn't only worsen the problem - it might very well even devestate Jagex! So do we really want advertising? I'm afraid my answer is No...

 

 

 

BTW, you're also wrong on that point - they do advertise.