Apoca's Review of Runescape

Runescape. I think we've all played, or at least heard of, it. It's one of the most popular free MMORPG's around.

But for some reason, most of the people I meet on the internet, except those that play it, seem to hate it. So did I, until recently.

Let's start with my first experience with Runescape....

When I first played Runescape, I was in grade school. 5th grade I think. At the time we had a dial-up connection, so it was incredably laggy. My neighbor had been playing it, and he thought I might like it, so introduced me to it. I really did like it, but the lag caused me to get angry, and so I quit.

From there, I seemed to pick up on the hate that everyone else seemed to have for the game. I wasn't sure why so many people seemed to hate Runecape, but I kept hating it with them, flaming everyone who said they liked it, and deeming them a total n00b.

I guess people might have hated it because they thought it was a cheap game that totally sucked, had crappy graphics, and was full of 10 year olds trying to get laid over the internet. And I'm probably right. Though these things didn't bother me much when I first played, it was only the incredable lag I got when I played.

Now that I've explained my past experience with the game, lets talk about how I feel about it recently...

A few days ago, I reached a level boredom that I thought I would never reach. And because of that boredom, I pretty much would try playing any MMORPG in the hopes of fixing it. So, I thought about Runescape. I had recently heard it had gotten a new graphics update and looked much better. And it might be fun to "mess" with a few of the 10 year olds begging for sex.

So, I opened up my handy-dandy browser and went to the runescape website, www.runescape.com. When I got there, I decided to check and see if my old account still existed, so I clicked on the "Existing User" option on the front page. It took me to a page that let me choose from the low-detail Runescape, and the High-detail versions. I chose the High-detail. And luckily my account still existed.

So, I logged in and was suprised to find out that Runecape in High-detail didn't look to bad. Sure it wasn't as good as some Free-MMORPGs, but it wasn't bad, perfect for a casual MMORPG.

I decided to walk around, the starting area, lumbridge, was still the same as when I first played it. I decided to kill some trolls. The combat, at least in the beginning, of runescape isn't to exciting. You can decide how you attack, but that's about it, all you do is right-click and choose attack and you wait.

So, after a while of killing trolls, collecting gold, doing some jobs and quest, and buring their bones, I now had access to some prayers, had some runes ( I bought a few from the general-store). Now, combat was much more fun. I could activate prayers to help with combat, and had to know just when to use them, because you only have a limited amount of prayer, and you need to go to a church to replinish it, and I found out that I could eat fish or shrimp during combat to get more health. I'm still a low level and so can't do much, but I can tell there are lots of things I can do in runescape once I get higher up. Plus, the random events that happen to you (The mysterious man that gives you a mysterious box, Frog prince/princess, etc..) are very fun, and make you feel like you're actually part of the world. Overall, I think Runescape is a fun MMORPG to play casually, whenever you have spare time or when you're bored.

Graphics: 6/10 on High-detail, 4/10 on low-detail
Gameplay: 7/10
Sound/music: 7/10
Combat: 5/10 in the beginning, 7/10 later on
Community: 4/10 (hard to meet people to play with unless you know them from other games/online communities, or in real life)
Lag: Almost non-existant if you have a broadband connection
Learning Curve: Not that big, you can pretty much play this game without any problem as long as you do the tutorial, or have someone to explain things to you.
Quest/jobs: Pretty fun actually, not as repetive as most MMORPGs
Level(Hardcore, casual, etc..) Casual, or if you want, it can be very hardcore.


I hope this helps anyone that reads this. Thank you for reading. :)