RuneScape

The Good
- Very interesting quests and mini-quests.

• Combat and controls are easy to understand

• Lots to discover in the big world

• Lots of skills
  
  The Bad
  - Constant disconnections and long loading screens

• Lacking graphics

• No more PvP the way I loved it

• Slow leveling

• Membership is forced on you
  
  The Bottom Line
  I remember playing this game when I was eleven years old, it was pretty sweet at the time, but I was even more surprised when I heard some kids in town talk about this game. After a very enjoyable year with this game I thanked it for its hospitality and continued further into the video game industry, so I wondered how much had changed in five years time. When I went to www.runescape.com I was treated on a very nice trailer that showed me amazing graphics (for a browser game that is), epic cinematic action and adventurers working side by side in order to survive an onslaught of enemies.

Hyped as hell I instantly logged in using Facebook (sweet!) and I encountered my first foe in this game: a loading screen. I sat there for a few minutes staring at the screen like it would hurry stuff up before going down to make a cup of coffee, when I got back the loading screen was just getting finished. After that delightful bit of torture the very next thing the game threw at me was a disconnection which send me straight back to the homepage. This is not what you'd call a good start.

After several minutes of disconnections and loading screens I finally got to a character creation tool which allowed me to pick between roughly two dozen classes. I went with the thief because that sounded like an interesting gameplay experience (plus it's the only thing I ever do in Elder Scrolls games) and after another freaking disconnection (this was not my internet by the way, it was working just fine and I was listening to music on youtube while "playing") I also got to pick between some clothes and hair styles.

The first thing I had to do when the game started working was starting out on a list with mini-quests that had me do little tasks that were not really worth basing a whole quest around. They started out pretty mandatory, but they became much more interesting as I got further into the game and nicely stimulated me to try a few things I normally wouldn't have done. What I also noticed the instance the game started working was that it took my preference for setting games on low graphics a little too serious and made it look like I was playing World of Warcraft on an Atari 2600. However after changing the graphics to their highest setting it still looked like ass and I gave up on trying to improve it somehow.

At this point it's also important to mention that you could control the entire game by just clicking on the screen, clicking did everything from moving to attacking. The only time you ever need to touch the keyboard is when typing in your password and moving the camera which I liked a lot. I also really enjoyed the huge amount of skills that were at my disposal, but what made me lose my temper was the fact that most of them (MOST!!!) were only available to members (the people who pay to play) including pick-pocketing which was the class I assigned to my character. What the hell is that about, I can pick a class, but not use it's skill? Why was this not mentioned on the character creation?! Becoming a "member" is pretty much required in this game; 70% of the quests are exclusive to them, half the world is also theirs and a lot of items can only be used by them as well as the skills mentioned before.

The world is still pretty big though and there are lots of interesting quests to do, which for some reason are much better then any quests in World of Warcraft because they all involve plot twists, cinematic moments and a certain amount of brain-power from the player. That does not mean the game is entirely grind free, in fact it's even more grind-happy then World of Warcraft because you need to level up your combat skills to level up your own level and once you get to around level fifty one combat level can take up to eight hours of constant grinding. Also don't forget that you'd need better food in order to help you while fighting, which means a higher cooking and fishing skill, but you also need armor, so be sure to keep training your forging and mining skills and I am sure there is some other stuff you'd like to grind yourself silly for because at the age of eleven you ain't got nothing better to do anyways.

Something I missed a lot was the wilderness which was a zone a long time ago where players could fight each other. It worked like this: The deeper you go, the higher your wilderness level gets, which meant could attack higher and lower level players (if you were level 30 and you were in level 5 wilderness you could attack level 25 players for example). This made for some very sensational adventures in the wilderness where you and some friends went inside the wilderness looking for lower level people to slaughter while simultaneously hoping nobody with a higher level would show up or optionally a dragon. This was awesome, but now you got arenas and special PvP games that cut out all the adventure because you always know when and when not you can be attacked by someone else.

At the end of the day, I do have to admit that I have grown too old for this game which probably means I am not longer its target audience, the people who this is intended for are little kids aged somewhere between eight and eleven and unless your some kind of Lucas (obscure movie reference), you are probably not going to know much about flawed game design and you probably never played a real big MMO to use as comparison when playing this game at that age. Runescape is a pretty sweet ladder that allows one to ease himself into the big world of video games with something simple that still offers a lot of depth for those who care to discover the story and secrets of the world (or pay ten euros a month).

The Good
I didn't get into this game that long ago, but as soon as I started I knew I had found something that would keep me hooked for months! I am a fan of fantasy stuff, sword wielding to magic to life in the dark ages. Naturally, when I heard a free game was out where you can create your own character, do almost everything you can think of, from simple things like baking cakes and making fires to fighting demons and dragons! What makes this game so brilliant is that everything is entirely up to you. It's not a game where you have set tasks to do and once you've completed them it's over. On runescape you can do what you want, when you want. It's completely up to you from the moment you finish the training of what you want to do. You might want to put up your cooking levels and as they grow, the number of meals you can cook grows also. You might be an all out warrior, but what good are you when you cant cook anything to heal yourself? That's what makes runescape challenging. You must balance your skills. It's not much use if you can destroy a dragon but are unable to heal the damage the dragon does to you? The last thing that makes runescape so good is the amount of abilities on the game that you can level up. From cooking to woodcutting and magic to mining. Runescape has it all. And depending on which ability you enjoy doing the most, you can get up your levels and sell whatever you produce to other players, or sell them to shops, scattered around the massive runescape world.

The Bad
The only thing I didn't like about runescape is, although there is a huge amount of stuff to do and places to go, the fact that to get more places to go and be able to cook, craft, smelt and mine many more things you have to pay. You have to pay to become a member, and when your a member a lot more things are then open to you. Myself, I can live with the free to play game but for others they might get tired of what they can do, and want more.

The Bottom Line
This is a very large game, where what you do is up to you. You can trade with people in other countries (only game items, remember) or you can keep to yourself and upgrade the skills that you wish to get good at. I myself love this game, it has a lot to offer and I wont be getting tired of it anytime soon!

The Good
So if you're into browser games of any sort, you'll probably have heard of Runescape the MMO java game. We all know that it is HUGE, if you have no idea how big the game map is, just go search for Runescape world map in Google now, you'll be amazed. This massive landscape is probably the selling point of Runescape, (note the words selling point) it pretty much guarantees that you will never explore it all.

But of course a big map can't be the focal point of a game, there are the generic skills all fantasy RPG games tote, skills such as: Attack, Defence, Strength, Ranged ability, and Hitpoints. Attack determines what weapon you can wield, so you may see someone with a lower than usual level, carrying round a pretty devastating weapon. Defence is self-explanatory, the higher your level the more sophisticated armour you can wear.

Strength is probably the main factor in melee warfare, basically the higher your strength the more likely you are to do more damage. Most people will grind this skill, for hours upon hours just so they can trawl through NPC enemies more efficiently.

In addition to the usual RPG formula skills, there are a healthy amount of interesting skills that you won't see in many other RPGs. If you decide to walk the criminal path you can have a bash at pickpocketing, where after many hours of pilfering menial amounts of gold you can rank up to steal cakes, precious stones and other things of higher value.

Another rather, different but definitely welcome skill is farming. Now when people think of farming as a main part of an RPG they lose all hope for it, but don't be put off just yet, its entirely optional, you're not going to be forced to do it, (unless there's a certain quest which asks for it, which we'll discuss later) and it can prove to hold quite a bounty. Again, if you grind through levels and levels you'll eventually get better rewards, like being able to plant and harvest useful plants which can be parts of medicine, which in turn can sell for a fair bit of cash, if you don't mind playing the waiting game.

We can't go much further without mentioning the quests, which is another big good point on the board for Runescape. There are loads, probably at least hundreds, enough to keep you occupied for a long while, until another one appears, which usually happens very often and is appreciated and gracefully taken. Most of the time it may be, go to point A, kill person B, go back. But they like to mix it up a little, you may have to hide into a crate, be transported to a far away island and kill all who dwell there. Either way the quests can be rewarding and easy, depending on the needed skills for it.

Merchanting is largely a player made idea, not really approved by the developers of Runescape. Nonetheless it is still a big part of Runescape if you want to make serious cash. It works as a marketplace really, you go to the nearest bank, where there is always lots of people spewing, "NEED RUNE SKIMMY, 70K PLZ, >>>>AZNMAN120!<<<" you will come to this bloke's rescue, by buying the item he wishes, at a low price, and selling it to him to make a profit. The saying buy low, sell high really comes into play here, and you often see big numbers thrown about like spare change.

The final good point I'd like to make is that the NPCs and even your character seem to be aware, he/she knows people are controlling them, and that they're in an online RPG, and often say things unnatural to their setting, it can seem out of place but humourous all the same, and is a welcome change to the ever serious characters of World of Warcraft.

The Bad
You know most of the good points I listed up there? You won't be getting them for free. Of course no one would be gullible enough to think they get a mass landscape to explore, a dose of unique skills and a neverending amount of quests, but you would have thought you'd get some of it for free. Well you do, but you really won't be playing the game unless you're willing to part with some money.

The free members map, is a mere fraction of the size of the members map, its still fairly large, but you will run into gates alot of the time informing you that you are not a member, and therefore have no right to go any further.

The amount of skills are cut down, you still have your basics that I mentioned earlier, but you won't have many of the interesting ones, ala Farming, pickpocketing and hunting. And the amount of quests you get for free, is measly, you will easily complete them within a few weeks of playing, and with nothing else to do except occupy yourself with some player made past time.

Which brings me onto another point, if you're drooling at the thought of Merchanting and have six figure numbers in your bank account, you better be a member. Yes you can't even merchant if you're not paying because the members, only want rare MEMBERS things. You will have nothing to offer to them because they will have it already, twice over.

Another thing not mentioned about the quests is that the prequisites for starting the quest can just be there, to waste your time, yes you will need that skill at that level for that quest, but sometimes its such an unreasonable level, that you will just forget what you were doing in the first place.

Finally, you better be willing to put up with pretty shoddy graphics.

Yes I know there's recently been an update, (which has only updated it to look like really bad PS1 games) and that its a java, browser based game, but really, when water just looks like a blue carpet with some holes in it, you know there's something up.

The Bottom Line
There's no doubt that Runescape offers alot.

Huge map, Mass amount of skills and quests, and occasionally funny NPCs.

But only to Members remember.