RuneScape

"It's fun for a while, but it gets old pretty quickly"

I heard about Runescape from a friend, so I decided to give it a try. At first I was amazed, there were many different skills to level up, many monsters to kill, and there were even quests I could do. Though with the limited amount of quests, and places to go I got bored. So I decided to get members. With tons of new areas to visit and dozens of quests, I thought I would never get bored with the game. Boy was I wrong...

Gameplay

Like I said, there are many different skills to level up in the game. Sounds great doesn't it, but leveling them up on the other hand, is a chore. Basically, to level a skill up you have to do an action. Now repeat that action 100,000 times, and it gets worst. Basically to do an action you click something. For example...How do you level up fishing? Click on a fishing spot and go do something else for a while until your inventory fills up, or the fishing spot changes. Bank your fish and repeat. How about mining? Click on an ore, click on another ore, repeat until inventory is full. Then you go to the bank, deposit it and repeat. So in reality, there's absolutely no skill in leveling up your skills. A six year old could probably get up to level 99 in every skill if he was bored enough and had the time.

How about raising combat levels? Same thing pretty much. Click on a monster, wait for it to die, click on another monster...well you get the point. Though the good thing about combat is that it lets you customize your character. You can be a strength pure, a prayer beast, a mage, or even an archer. Warriors and archers don't have much variety, but mages do. You can teleport, teleblock, entangle, or attack them with different spells.

PKing (also knowing as "Player Killing") is probably one of the most exciting things you can do on a free server. Though that's not saying much. If you're a lone warrior or archer, then basically all you do is attack (click on another player) and wait. Prayer does add some strategy into the game though. If you're a mage however, you really have to be quick with spells to be really effective. You also do need some strategy if you're going to PK with a clan. Such as players A and B entangle the opponents, while player C poisons them, and players D and F attack them. Though as you can see, even clan pking doesn't need much strategy in order to be effective.

Anyways, let's get on to quests. They can actually be pretty fun. Well free servers don't have many quests, but there are tons on members. They do have quite a bit of variety, though there's still a downside to it. A lot of quests will require you to obtain certain items. Which is especially a pain if you can't teleport. Even then it's annoying. In some quests you'll have to go back and forth 3 or 4 times until you can finally move on. That's why it will probably be better if you just use a guide to find out what items you need beforehand. It does ruin quest experience a bit, but it will save you a lot of time.

Now, if you are serious about playing the game, I highly suggest you get members. It may not be much, but it's still a big improvement from free to play worlds. In members there's much more skills to choose from, more quests, and more monsters. There's pretty much more of everything. There's even mini-games that are actually pretty fun, such as Castle Wars. There's a small 5 dollar fee, but that's not much for all the new features you will be getting.

Community

Well the Runescape community is absolutely horrible. It does get better on member servers, but it's still really bad. For one thing, there are tons of scammers on Runescape. There are people saying they'll "trim" your armour (it is not possible to trim armour), people saying they are from Jagex, and people will even say they'll report you if you don't give them your stuff. The list just goes on and on. There's also plenty of beggars to go around. Some times they'll just bother you by asking you free stuff several times, but other times they'll actually follow you where ever you go asking you for free stuff. Though you can just change worlds to solve that problem.

The average person on Runescape also isn't very nice. You'll often see people calling lower levels "noobs". Heck, you have people calling other people noobs for absolutely no reason. Though, don't get me wrong, there are actually some really helpful people on Runescape. If you're lucky you'll find someone that'll lead you to a new town and maybe even give you some equipment to start off. Though these guys are much more rare then beggars or scammers.

Graphics

The current graphics are pretty simple and bland, but they are still pretty good for a java game. The graphics are have greatly improved from the Classic version of Runescape. The backrounds are well done, and some areas that have recently been updated graphics-wise look pretty good. These are pretty good graphics for a web game.

Sound/Music

The music is nothing special. Just a simple tune really. The tune changes when you go to a new area. Or you can simply change it yourself to your liking. You hear certain sound effects when you're smithing or crafting and such. Most sounds are fairly annoying after a while, so I generally play with the my speakers off.

Overall

I conclusion, Runescape is a pretty good free game, although, even on members, it just doesn't measure up to most games. It is a good game though, it's gameplay is addictive for a while, it had okay music and graphics, but it's repetitiveness and community pulls it down.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/06