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Monday, July 21, 2008

Runescape: History and Development of the Game

Runescape is an extremely popular Multi Massive Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), that was created by Andrew Gower, and is currently owned and operated by Jagex, Ltd. The game offers to methods of play: free and paid. Runescape currently has over 9 millions active Free players, and more then 800,000 subscribed paying members. The game is written in JavaScript and can be played through an ordinary web browser such as Internet Explorer, or Firefox.

Runescape takes players to the medieval fantasy realm of Gielinor. This world is further split into several kingdoms: Misthalin, Asgarnia, Kandarin, the volcanic tropics of Karamja, dry desert of Kharidian Desert, and of course the Wilderness. The wilderness is the only area of the world that players may currently battle or “player-kill” each other. Currently the only mode of transportation is to walk or run. Users at higher levels can make us of Magic Teleportation to a few select towns or realms. All of the above mentioned regions each offer different enemies and monsters for the players to battle.

During a players adventures in Runescape they will encounter many quests, and are able to set their own goals and achievements. There is no “one” right way to play the game. Players are also encouraged to communicate with other players by means, of chatting, trading with each other, or simply cooperating with each other to help finish the quests.

As a Cambridge University undergraduate, Andrew Gower worked on writing the game with the help of his brother, Paul Gower. Through several trials and tribulations, Runescape was eventually released to the public in a beta version, on Jan. 4, 2001. The game was originally operated from there house in Nottingham. Eventually the brother duo tagged the company name Jagex.

About a year after the beta was released the brothers decided to open up the membership services for Runescape. This would allow players to pay a small monthly fee to access new in game skills, items, and a variety of other features not available to free members.

With the continued growth of Runescape game the challenges to also update the game's technological aspects as well. Being written in JavaScript the game was easily suspectable to “hacks.” This forced Jagex developers to completely rewrite the gaming engine. This rewrite also added a more three dimensional look and feel to the game as well. This version of the game became known as Runescape 2, but has since then completely taken over the original Runescape Classic version. Runescape 2 was initially released to all paying members around earlier December of 2003, and was release to free members on March 29, 2004. As of Jan. 12, 2006 Runescape Classic is only available for play if you are a subscribed member.

There are currently Runescape servers located in 7 different countries! With over 130 servers total, and new servers are constantly being added due the overwhelming popularity of the game. Currently each Runescape server can hold 2,000 players, this enables the servers to hold around 260,000 simultaneous players at any given time. The servers are split into Free worlds and Member worlds.

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