(38 votes, average: 3.37 out of 5)
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RuneScape is a massive 3d multiplayer adventure, with monsters to kill, quests to complete, and treasure to win. You control your own character who will improve and become more powerful the more you play.

Company: Jagex
Year Launched: 2001
Premium Account, Advertising, or Item Mall: Premium Account and Advertising
Free Account Restrictions: Limited Areas and more
High End or Low End Computer Needed: Low End
Official Site: Runescape
Game Forum: Runescape Forum

Pros:
1. Largest Free MMORPG.
2. Recent Graphics Update.
3. Recent Improvements to PVP.
4. Can be played in a browser.
5. Hugely popular.

Cons:
1. Graphics are still behind other free MMOs.
2. Advertising and Premium Accounts.
3. Huge PvP changes have not been greatly accepted by players.

Review by EyEs

Runescape is the most talked about free browser-based MMORPG on the internet for many different reasons. Some of the reasons stem from the fact that it is a browser-based game, and some stem from many other reasons, of which I will talk about later. All in all, RuneScape is a game that is sweeping the MMORPG community by storm at a rapid rate because of their great idea’s and ease of the game.

To start this review, I’ll give the RuneScape community a 3/5. The community is a very mixed community, in terms of who you will meet. Seeing as this game is browser-based, and also featured on MiniClip, many young children, teenagers and even adults play this game because of it’s accessibility. This creates a diverse community within the game, but can also create major problems. From experience, I have found that not many people in RuneScape are mature, and if you find someone that is mature, put them on your friends list immediately. Now stepping back to the community, you will receive many insults such as noob, omg you are bad, and grow up noob. The community of any game is probably the second most important part of a game because it keeps people playing. If a game has great gameplay but a poor community, many people will leave because of the lack of support from the players and because of the insults flying at them every 2 minutes. This happens often in RuneScape, and is a main reason why RuneScape is under-fire a lot for it’s age group. The community, although made up of all ages, portrays itself as all young kids because of the insults flying around all the time. It’s possible to find helpful people, which is the reason I rated the community a 3/5, but for the most part, you meet people who will at no cost stop to insult you. The community is what is causing most of the feedback problems for the games, and Jagex isn’t taking any action but instead placing Player Moderators and chat filters into the game. Every player works around the chat filter, and there isn’t enough moderators to cover everywhere. Jagex either needs more Moderators, or needs to get their community to understand what they are doing.

Gameplay is a vital part to every MMORPG, and I think RuneScape deserves a perfect 5/5 for all the possibilities it gives you. RuneScape gives you a vast array of 20+ skills to work with, keeping you working for endless amounts of hours. Also, the skills always take time, meaning only the patient can achieve the prestigious title of having a level 99 skill. To go along with skills, there are over 100+ places to train skills varying from combat to woodcutting to mining to fishing. The possibilities of where to train are endless, allowing you to not stay in the same place 24/7, and also allowing you to meet new people. RuneScape also offers Mini-Games, such as forming a team of 25 players to ward off attacks from enemy monsters(Pest Control) and having an all out war against another faction of players(Castle Wars). Mini-games are very popular in RuneScape as they give a fun way to train skills and also get cool prizes, such as Void Knight Armour and Castle Wars Armour. RuneScape is always coming out with new ways to train skills through locations and mini-games, which is always a pleasing fact to the community. PvP also plays a huge role in the game. PvP was once removed from the game, and thus implementing a free for all war area a year to two years ago. After hearing the dislike from many members, so much dislike that they had to shut down Query Support, RuneScape created a way to bring PvP back into the game. Unlike many games, in RuneScape PvP you lose items when you die. You lose whatever you have in your inventory, and whatever your wearing. This subject is something that ignites some feudal sparks between reviewers because of why people PvP. Most people in RuneScape PvP to make cash, and players in other games think that it’s not a valid reason to PK, because the game they play doesn’t drop cash. Because of this, people always debate about whether or not the PvPing community PK’s for fun or for drops. The RuneScape fighting system isn’t one for the ages, but it’s pleasing over 5 million people(The last known mark of RuneScape players). RuneScape uses the same fighting system they’ve used since RuneScape Classic, Turn-Based. In RuneScape, the only way to attack faster is based on your weapon. Big weapons attack slower, whilst small and agile weapons like Scimitars and Whips attack much faster. It’s not the most attractive weapon system, and it is also lacking Combat Skills and Moves, but as I said earlier, RuneScape makes it work for them.

Graphics is another one of the most debated features in this game, and I choose to give it a 3/5. Graphics always seem to make the game what it is, no matter what the gameplay is like. Take 2Moons for example. Great graphics, free MMORPG, many people see that as the pathway to heaven for free MMO’s. The main problem with 2Moons is that it’s all quests and grinding, there’s no filling to it. RuneScape on the other hand does not have this problem. RuneScape has undergone two major graphic changes. The first graphic change was in 2003 when they updated RuneScape Classic to RuneScape 2(Currently what it is now). The graphics VASTLY improved and many players were left in awe on what the developers did with a Java-based game. The second update, the more current one, was done a year to a year and a half ago, updating RuneScape 2’s graphics greatly. RuneScape now doesn’t look like it was created in two minutes, there are now shadows and other such improvements. Compared to other MMORPG’s though, RuneScapes graphics only hang midway, and that’s because of other Browser-Based MMORPG’s with Graphics. Although RuneScapes graphics are not up to par with 2Moons and Guild Wars, they still are mind blowing for a browser-based game, and the developer’s did a fabulous job making the graphics the best they can be.

Quests are the most commonly done thing in RuneScape next to skills, and deserve an 4/5 for the creativity, difficulty and amount that Jagex created for RuneScape. In most MMO’s, quests are thrown aside because other than quick exp, cash or semi-useful items, they are irrelevant to gameplay. RuneScape on the other hand did a great job correlating quests with gameplay. Such features they used as rewards for quests are the ability to wear certain items, the ability to go to certain areas, and get a certain title. RuneScape features over 100+ quests that range from Easy to very Challenging. One quest once took me 5 hours straight of playing time, just for the ability to wear one item. RuneScape definitely does a great job making it so quests aren’t just thrown aside, and they also do a great job making them interesting. RuneScape quests aren’t just, “Go here, pick this up, return here, kill that, go there.” No, quests in this game require logic, usually a certain level in many different skills and the completion of other quests. Quests in this game will never disappoint you, and new quests are always coming. Quests definitely help this game out.

Overall, RuneScape is a great game and certainly shows it’s greatness by having more than 50K+ people playing at once almost all the time. Overall, I’d have to rate RuneScape a 3.5/5, disregarding my other scores, based on the difficulty of the game, community, PvP, Gameplay and quest system. RuneScape isn’t the best game, but it certainly does stick true to their gameplan of ‘Catering to low-ended computer gamers’ by giving a lot of content in a truely amazing browser-based game. There will probably never be another browser-based game that get’s this much popularity from gamers all around the world. It’s definitely a game to try out if you haven’t done so. You will find yourself playing for hours at a time, even if you only wanted to go on for 30 minutes. RuneScape has endless possibilities of what to do in-game, ranging from quests to skilling to PvP to talking and chatting with friends and foes. RuneScape is a rare browser-based game that will definitely leave a huge impact in the MMO community for years to come. It brings in a vast variety of players, from experienced MMORPG’ers to new-comers. RuneScape is a game that should be played at least once by every MMO players in the world.