http://www.runescape.com
One of the biggest strengths RuneScape (RS) has is that basically anyone can play it. You just need the latest version of Java and a decent internet connection and you’re good to go. On top of that a part of the game is free-to-play (F2P) so you can just try it out without having to pay money.
Of course Jagex has to get their money somewhere so there’s a pay-to-play (P2P) version of the game as well; this offers more items, more skills, more quests, more of everything actually.
Another strong point is that there’s plenty to do. Doing quests, training skills, playing mini-games, killing monsters (or eachother), earning gold or just hanging out; you’ll always find something to do.
Skills
A large
part of the game will be training the various skills (24 in total). These can roughly be divided in a few categories: gathering resources, processing them and combat (of course there are some exceptions). At first you’ll be gaining levels every few minutes but after a while this becomes hours or, at the higher levels, even days. This makes training rather repetitive, but while talking to other people it’s not too bad.
Most skills don’t have any new things you can do past around level 80 (of 99), however, Jagex has been releasing more high-level content lately.
There will probably be a new skill later this year (Jagex tries to release them on a yearly basis), but there hasn’t been an official announcement regarding to which skill this will become.
Combat
RuneScape doesn’t have any classes, meaning you can use a single character t
o use all combat styles (melee, ranged and magic) . All you need to do is get the right equipment for a style and train the skills you’ll need for it. You also have more supportive skills that can be used regardless of your combat style; these skills are prayer (to boost your damage and/or defense for a limited time) and summoning (to create a familiar who aids in combat or carries extra food for you).
You’ll most likely be training on fairly weak monsters or using the slayer skill, but there are bigger things out there as well in the form of bosses. There are some bosses that have been around for years, such as the Kalphite Queen, but the most popular (and profitable) farming area in the game as it is today, would be the God Wars Dungeon. In this dungeon there are 4 bosses that drop some of the strongest weapons (Godswords: the name says it all I guess) and armor (Bandos for melee, Armadyl for ranged) in the game. Obviously, I won’t have to tell you that these items are worth quite some gold. There is a new dungeon in development, but again there hasn’t been an official announcement or any hints about new high-level items.
PvP
Personally I’ve never went pking (playerkilling, mostly done in an area called “The Wilderness”) in P2P so I’ll just say that it’s unbalanced (due to overpowered weapons that can kill players in a few hits without them being able to do anything about it) and move on to the F2P aspect.
In F2P you can’t use the higher-level gear P2P has, so you’ll never have to run away or maybe even die only because the other guy can afford better gear. Most of the RS pking is done in clans and over the years a solid clan community was created. As a result of having no classes, most clans will request that you bring more than one combat style (generally melee-ranged for damage or melee-magic to immobilize your target using the bind spell).
Pking isn’t the only PvP in the game, there also are competitive mini-games. My all-time favourite here is Castle-Wars, which offers team-based capture the flag action.
To view some pk videos please visit the (recently created) YouTube channel of The RuneScape Warhunger Federation (TRWF):
http://www.youtube.com/user/TRWFWarhungers
Trading
Trading has
gone a long way in RS; from flooding the chat (with all sorts of text colors and effects) on the nearly-always-full servers 1 and 2 to the smooth system there is today with the Grand Exchange (GE). The GE is located in the capital of the F2P-area, so everyone can use it. It pretty much works like an auction house in any other game; you place your offers and continue doing whatever you were doing or log off. The GE also introduced an item database which gives you all the prices of any item you search on it, and in addition you also get a graph showing the price evolution of the last 6 months. This became a valuable tool for merchants, who buy and sell items at the right time to make profit.
Watch the official RuneScape trailer here:
Have you played RS as well or have any comments? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us!
One of the biggest strengths RuneScape (RS) has is that basically anyone can play it. You just need the latest version of Java and a decent internet connection and you’re good to go. On top of that a part of the game is free-to-play (F2P) so you can just try it out without having to pay money.
Of course Jagex has to get their money somewhere so there’s a pay-to-play (P2P) version of the game as well; this offers more items, more skills, more quests, more of everything actually.
Another strong point is that there’s plenty to do. Doing quests, training skills, playing mini-games, killing monsters (or eachother), earning gold or just hanging out; you’ll always find something to do.
Skills
A large
part of the game will be training the various skills (24 in total). These can roughly be divided in a few categories: gathering resources, processing them and combat (of course there are some exceptions). At first you’ll be gaining levels every few minutes but after a while this becomes hours or, at the higher levels, even days. This makes training rather repetitive, but while talking to other people it’s not too bad.Most skills don’t have any new things you can do past around level 80 (of 99), however, Jagex has been releasing more high-level content lately.
There will probably be a new skill later this year (Jagex tries to release them on a yearly basis), but there hasn’t been an official announcement regarding to which skill this will become.
Combat
RuneScape doesn’t have any classes, meaning you can use a single character t
o use all combat styles (melee, ranged and magic) . All you need to do is get the right equipment for a style and train the skills you’ll need for it. You also have more supportive skills that can be used regardless of your combat style; these skills are prayer (to boost your damage and/or defense for a limited time) and summoning (to create a familiar who aids in combat or carries extra food for you).You’ll most likely be training on fairly weak monsters or using the slayer skill, but there are bigger things out there as well in the form of bosses. There are some bosses that have been around for years, such as the Kalphite Queen, but the most popular (and profitable) farming area in the game as it is today, would be the God Wars Dungeon. In this dungeon there are 4 bosses that drop some of the strongest weapons (Godswords: the name says it all I guess) and armor (Bandos for melee, Armadyl for ranged) in the game. Obviously, I won’t have to tell you that these items are worth quite some gold. There is a new dungeon in development, but again there hasn’t been an official announcement or any hints about new high-level items.
PvP
Personally I’ve never went pking (playerkilling, mostly done in an area called “The Wilderness”) in P2P so I’ll just say that it’s unbalanced (due to overpowered weapons that can kill players in a few hits without them being able to do anything about it) and move on to the F2P aspect.
In F2P you can’t use the higher-level gear P2P has, so you’ll never have to run away or maybe even die only because the other guy can afford better gear. Most of the RS pking is done in clans and over the years a solid clan community was created. As a result of having no classes, most clans will request that you bring more than one combat style (generally melee-ranged for damage or melee-magic to immobilize your target using the bind spell).
Pking isn’t the only PvP in the game, there also are competitive mini-games. My all-time favourite here is Castle-Wars, which offers team-based capture the flag action.
To view some pk videos please visit the (recently created) YouTube channel of The RuneScape Warhunger Federation (TRWF):
http://www.youtube.com/user/TRWFWarhungers
Trading
Trading has
gone a long way in RS; from flooding the chat (with all sorts of text colors and effects) on the nearly-always-full servers 1 and 2 to the smooth system there is today with the Grand Exchange (GE). The GE is located in the capital of the F2P-area, so everyone can use it. It pretty much works like an auction house in any other game; you place your offers and continue doing whatever you were doing or log off. The GE also introduced an item database which gives you all the prices of any item you search on it, and in addition you also get a graph showing the price evolution of the last 6 months. This became a valuable tool for merchants, who buy and sell items at the right time to make profit.Watch the official RuneScape trailer here:
Have you played RS as well or have any comments? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us!
