All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise – without prior written permission of the copyright owner. www.rshistory.com [email protected] Copyright © Gunter De Groodt, 2015 You write history each time you play RuneScape. Keep playing. Contents Acknowledgements Preface 7 1 RuneScape 1 13 2 The Community 35 3 The World of Gielinor 57 4 Player versus Monster 78 5 Player versus Player 122 6 Skilling 163 7 Quests 223 8 Influential People 249 9 Miscellania Etceteria 275 Appendix I: Revival of the Wilderness 297 Image Library 311 Sources 312 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The final version of The History of RuneScape is the result of a process that took multiple years to complete. Many people have contributed to this final version, for which I owe them eternal gratitude. I would like to dedicate some space to former RuneScape player The Pain105 for inspiring me to start this project. It is because of his stories about the early days of the game that I had initially set out on the mission of learning as much as possible about the history of RuneScape. I would also like to explicitly express my gratitude towards Andrew Gower, co-creator of RuneScape and co-founder of Jagex Limited, for responding in great detail to the many e-mails and even more questions that I have been able to ask him. Furthermore, I would like to thank Jagex employee Mod Balance, head of the community management team, for voluntarily assuming the role of communicator between Jagex and myself. Many players have been a source of major help in the form of information gained through either interviewing them, asking multiple questions regarding any chapter in this book or any other way that stood out. In alphabetical order, these players are Castle Wars, King Sabre, Leta, LovveL, Metalmaniac9, November, Rab, Suomi, Thehate, Whitemagem and Zparanoid. The High-Level Forum has also been a place where I looked for help during the creation of this book. I would like to thank all members of that community who have contributed and whose information I used in this book. These players are Carosali, Dardan, Gwynrwyn, Jaro, Nat, Poultrychamp, Rsvapd, Spoon, Uwfootball1 and Zparanoid. In 2011 I posted a first version of this project on the RuneScape forums. The players who provided information for the 2011 version are, in alphabetical order and not already mentioned above: 1st, 3 Hit U, Acknowledged, Andrewthestly, Angel2002, Annia, Arcane Rift, Big Hotsauce, Caj, Council Tax, Deeri, DemClawSpecs, Diabolize, Diyer, Drew, Epic Celt, Fade to Blaq, Fonzi, Furious Fox4, Gugge, Hehasnoidea, InsaneDemNS, Ixiolirion, Lilyuffie88, Love Addict, LtAngel, Mexk, Microfy, Mrschrystler, Prue, Reaping, Shadow Fox99, Tameelf, The Rock 31, w77 and Water. For minor contributions in the form of one-time or limited help, I would also like to express my gratitude towards Agent833, Allar, Dusty 125, His Lordship, Jebrim, Mattfoxyy, Mukade, Ore Sabre, Quest Luke, the MaSoRS clan, Vonte and Zarfot. Furthermore, I owe a lot of gratitude to RuneScape players mSL, for setting up the official website www.rshistory.com for me; and Nat, for drawing the cover illustrations and taking care of the final cover design. Several members of the RuneScape community have also submitted their authentic screenshots to me and have allowed me to incorporate those pictures in my book. The players whose screenshots I have used are Agent833, Castle Wars, Gwynrwyn and Leta. Last but not least, thank you to anyone else who has offered their help Or supported this project in any other way. Preface Let me ask you a question. If you could go back in time to any era or period when you enjoyed playing RuneScape the most, in what year would you end up? Perhaps you have been having a great year and there is no need for a time machine, or maybe you are a veteran player who misses the joys of training Agility with energy potions, of identifying herbs, makings lines of fires and running through the Abyss to craft nature runes. – Or maybe you loved the fatigue system, being stuck in three rounds of combat, or the times when wearing a rune platebody was the preferred option for magic combat. The game has changed. What we see in RuneScape today is the result of one a half decade of evolution. We all have our preferences. We like some things, dislike other things. That balance or imbalance is what, for a part, determined your answer to my question. However, if you want to compare different years or different periods, you need the big picture. You need to know every important detail about each year before you can make an accurate judgment. Which do you prefer: the first or the final installment of the Harry Potter series? That is not a fair question if you can remember only a few chapters of each book. Similarly, I could not possibly let you choose a favourite year if you do not know everything about those years. So let’s make a deal here. I will do my best to teach you as much as possible about the history of the game, but afterwards you will re-evaluate your answer. Do we have a deal? You might be hesitant, because why should you trust that I will give you the right information? What makes me qualified to share all of that information with you? – If you are anything like me, whenever I start reading a book that is supposed to teach me something, the first question that I ask myself is always: Will this be worth my time? – If you plan to read this entire book, you will be stuck with me for quite a few hours, so that is a fair question to ask. I know how precious time is and I do not want to steal any of yours, so to help you decide whether or not you should read this book, consider the following information: If seeing the title of this book gave you any prospect of reading about the lore of the game, about the different gods and other quest-related characters, then… well… tough luck. There will be none of that in this book, so I apologize if I accidentally gave you the wrong expectations. Please stay, though. This book is about the development of the game, and that viewed from different perspectives in a chronological manner. For example, one chapter describes the geographical - 7 - transformation of the game, whereas another chapter reveals more information about quests and how they have influenced the gameplay experience. This book is for you if any or more of the following apply to you: You like reading anything about RuneScape. You are a new player who wants to find out more about the game’s past. You hope to experience some serious RuneScape nostalgia. You are curious about the evolution of the game. You are a veteran player who misses the good old days. You are Jagex and you want to find out if there is anything for which I could be sued. ;) If one or more of these potential reasons to read this book applies to you, then you should be able to enjoy the majority of the next 300 pages. Before we get to chapter one, however, I would like to share with you why I wrote this book and why this has been very important to me, but I first need to tell you a little bit about myself for that. So let’s dive straight into it. If we define a veteran player as someone who played the game before the release of RuneScape 2 in 2004, then I have to admit that I am not a veteran player. Now it is possible that that is a major red flag for you and that you feel like aborting your plans to read this book. However, I can assure you that what you will be reading is of decent quality, for reasons that I will explain over the course of the next pages. As a bonus of reading the preface, you will also get to know me better. I am not going tell you in what year my personal RuneScape journey began because of account security reasons, but I did not really take RuneScape seriously before 2008. At that time I was in high school and I was going through a rough phase in real life. RuneScape had been a place where I had met great friends and indulging myself in the fantasy world that RuneScape had to offer seemed like a much better alternative than having to deal with the actual world. My first RuneScape addiction was the consequence of that. By the summer of 2008 I was playing more than hundred hours per week. My life revolved around RuneScape at that time, so it has played an important role in my life. I took this game more seriously than I was supposed to and that has definitely been a major factor in why ended up knowing a lot about the game of that time. 2008 is also when a regularly visited the friends chat of Gertjaars. I am from Belgium and so is he, which is why I chose his friends chat. Gertjaars is an interesting player from a historical point of view because he is one of the very few people who have managed to hold total rank one for more than twelve consecutive months. In 2008, however, he was not at the top yet.