Character customization revolves around choosing a
predetermined set of hair, faces, bodies, and clothes; very similar to
the sort of customization options you get in World of Warcraft or Lord
of the Rings Online, albeit with the detail. However, character
customization, at least in this point of the game, is not a huge
concern in the entire scheme of things, as your view of your character
will not be “close up” like other mass market
MMOGs. When you gain levels and acquire more gear, the general scheme
of your outfit will be visible, but small details will not be present.
You will know, however, the difference between wearing a set of plate
armor or a simple robe.
Simple as an Easy-Bake Oven
Despite the sub-heading for this section, RuneScape
isn’t an incredibly easy game. Like many MMOGs,
there’s an element of the game that is rather difficult, and
the team member at Jagex have created a very thorough and well-thought
out tutorial. Instead of just unleashing the players in an unforgiving
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The tutorial is very thorough and gives you a very
reasonable grasp of the game.
world of PKings (yes, you can kill other players in RuneScape), the
developers have the player start their adventuring in a small
“newbie” area, where the gamers will play through
various tutorials, learning the basics of the game.
The tutorial itself has an advancement bar, showing you how
much longer before you’re released into the actual world.
Controlling your character in RuneScape is a combination of
left-clicking and right-clicking, with no hot keys being present for
gamers to have to worry about. Most of the objects in the game can be
accessed in a similar fashion, although in crowded areas it becomes a
pixel hunt to find a spot where you can actually interact with an
object. You’ll spend a lot of time mousing over items, trying
to determine whether they’re a viable object to interact with
or not.
Even from this point in the game, the world of RuneScape is
incredibly easy to fall into. In the tutorials, you learn that you can
chop down trees, light fires, catch fish, cook fish, make dough, bake
bread, and kill monsters. Really, the options available to you in the
game are rather enormous. You can choose to back bread all day long or
- as a friend’s son does - chop down trees till the end of
the world. Nearly all of the objects in the world can be interacted
with in some way, whether that’s destroying them, picking
them up, or using them. In the game it’s sometimes fun just
to see what you can do with the environment.
By interacting with the environment you also gain experience
in the particular action that you’re taking. As a skill based
game with “levels”, RuneScape offers players the
constant thrill of leveling various skills as they complete a variety
of activities. With twenty-three different skills –
everything from hit points to slaying - that you can level up, players
will constantly be vying to achieve that next level in their skill set,
hoping for an increase in their characters overall power.
Run-Escape?
As I said earlier in the article, player killers are a
prominent part of RuneScape. With the number of players on each server,
you’ll see your first player killer very early on in the
game. However, RuneScape has integrated a certain number of safety
measures to keep new players safe from wandering PKers. For example,
when entering particular zones, players won’t be able to kill
other players unless they are a single level away from their own,
giving the player being PKed a fighting chance.
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Adventuring in the wilderness could lead to an
encounter with a Player Killer.
Other measures include branding players that attack other
players without provocation. Players with skulls over their heads
represent player killers that have ambushed another player, setting
them apart from the regular crowd. These are the player killers
you’ll see in towns, as most other PKers won’t be
set apart in such a drastic fashion.
That said, player killing is a fairly large part of RuneScape,
those making some players dub the game, Run-Escape instead of
RuneScape. However, in my early play sessions I didn’t
encounter any PKing, and the only thing that I found at all annoying
was the general chatter that would go on around me when my chat filter
wasn’t set on “Private”. Luckily, the
developers of the game create the chat filter with the Private mode
already enabled, keeping players from being driven to insanity by the
hundreds of players talking around them.
