Yeah, actually, I don't play RS that much anymore, but it's pretty cool. Since I last updated this site a year ago (summer of 2k3) they went fully 3D and the game looks great and runs beautifully. I recommend playing, if not now, in the near future. You'll be addicted if you're anything like me. RS is a MMORPG, or for those of you who lost me after the first M, a [b]M[/m]assively [b]M[/b]ultiplayer [b]O[/b]nline [b]R[/b]oll[b]P[/b]laying [b]G[/b]ame. This means that it is your standard experience based RPG except you will interact with people quite literally from around the world, talking, trading, and killing. You may advance your many skills to become a master fighter, mage, ranger, miner, smither, crafter, priest (pray-er), runecrafter, or if your pay for membership you may master the skills of thievery, fletching (making arrows/bows), herblaw (potion making), and agility. You build your skills so that you may complete quests, earning prizes, experience (XP) and quest points. Enough quest points and you will unlock stores with better items that will enable you to become even more powerful. Abilities like smithing, mining, fletching, runecrafting, and crafting allow you to create most of the items you use, and in many cases sell them to earn money. I personally have earned a large percentage of my cash through the joys of mining and smithing. Mine ore, smelt ore into bars, hammer bars into armor, sell for insane prices. Works quite well. I highly suggest it if you have patience enough to sit clicking on rocks for hours on end to reach higher levels. But there are other small perks to a game that would otherwise be just cliking. Now, I use Netscape, but most of you out there probably use Explorer (return from the dark side my friends! At least switch to Mozilla or SOMETHING) Those of you using explorer are in luck. Jagex, makers of RS, must have realized that the majority of their gamers would use Explorer while playing and therefor only explorer seems to support another new feature of RS: music. Now, while nothing amazing, the music does ad a certain flair to an otherwise monotonous game of *click* .... *click* ..... *clickclickclick* I assure you that the sound will get old fast. When entering certain areas or situations, new music will become available. I have recently started playing RS on Explorer just so I might liven up the gameplay experience with a bit of music. It certain helped out a ton, but I'm afraid that it also lags the game. I can't be 100% sure, but whenever I've played with the music, the game has been slower. I fixed this somewhat by playing the low resolution game, but eventually gave up and just dealt with the lag. A minor irritation, but well worth it for the music. (for the records, I have a cable modem) Finally, the people. As with any city, you will meet many oddballs and jerks as well as honorable, nice people, and RS is certainly like a city with a population exceeding 10000 PLAYING at all times (Usually. Some hours of the day slow down to 7000. Haven't seen that happen in over half a year) Hundreds of thousands of accounts exist, and for those of you who like multiple accounts and want to pursue different player types, go for it. Jagex offers as many accounts as you want SO LONG AS THEY DON'T INTERACT. They are very strict about this and will not tolerate cheating. Scamming is also considered a horrible crime, so don't gip people or sell them short. They'll turn you in and even the best lawyers will fail to save your character. Jagex does an exellent job keeping the game clean (however they're a bit overzealous...their built in censoring system will often censor random words. For example, assessment would be censored for having the letters a-s-s in the beginning. Crud is censored for being related to "crap." It's a bit overboard, but it makes the gaming experience better in the long run. At least people trying to curse you off will have to be creative in doing so.) The look of the game was recently overhauled for a full 3D environtment. New options and camera angles were enabled, and they work nearly flawlessly. The only difficulty I have had is having the camera spazz out at inopportune times, spinning in circles around my character. This can make playing the game annoying, but much experience has allowed me to figure out how to stop this. It doesn't happen often, so I'm not particularly worried about it. The game looks amazing for something free and I'd play it even if the camera's spazzed out every 5 minutes. So, in short, let's give this game some ratings: Sound: 6/10 The sound only works on Explorer and can lag up the game. However, it does make up for this by being well arranged and having a good variety. Graphics: 8/10 They're great considering what they used to be and the type of game this is. It runs better with the new 3D engine that with the old 2D junk graphics, which is somewhat surprising. Still, not superb yet. Gameplay: 8/10 Repetative, but constantly being added to (moreso for paying members than us freebies) After a few months you may be bored, but hey, the months were fun, eh? Overall: 8/10 Since sound isn't overwhelmingly important to RS, it's low score doesn't hurt the game that much, and the new graphics and large variety of options include with the repetative gameplay, this earns a solid 8/10 in my book.
Runescape
