A Guide to Understanding RuneScape
What Makes Kids Like to Play this Game
RuneScape is a game set in Medieval times. It is an online game of quests, skills, and adventure. Come see why kids all over the world are so enticed by this game.
RuneScape was developed back in 1999 and is run by the parent company, Jagex Ltd. It boasts a user population of over 1,000,000 users. RuneScape prides itself on not only being an online game of adventure and quests, but also teaches kids about economics, boosts their thinking skills, and emphasizes teamwork to get jobs done.
Users travel through different towns, such as Varrok, Barbarian Village, and Falador to interact with other players and complete different tasks to gain items that they need for future quests and trades. Users have the ability to go into chat rooms to gain help in these different towns. There are two chat forums available. One is an open chat room, which lets you talk with any other members online, and the other is a private chat room in which you can just talk to certain members that you know and only you and your friends will be involved in the chat.
As with almost any online gaming, you can play RuneScape as a non-member (for free) or buy a membership ($5.00 per month). Being a member, of course, entitles you to more opportunities to succeed at the game. Non-members enjoy a fulfilling adventure and get to progress, but can only go so far in their levels. Members have an almost unlimited potential to become very wealthy and very powerful. They get to play mini-games that are not available to non-members, as well.
Each user has the ability to complete levels based on their own interests. For instance, someone wanting to gain levels in combat will need to fight others to gain more combat points. Whereas, someone interested in making items to sell may want to work on gaining more levels in smithing and mining. There seems to be virtually something for anyone's interests at RuneScape.
Quests are a big part of RuneScape and allow users to collect items that they need to build houses, boats, make money, and gain more levels. Examples of quests include:
- Cook's Assistant, which is considered a very easy quest to complete.
- Black Knights Fortress, which is considered a medium quest in terms of difficulty. Completing this quest will award you with 2,000 GPS (gold pieces).
- Dragon Slayer, which is a very hard quest to complete, but awards you with extra points, the ability to wear Rune bodyplate, and a dragonleather body.
RuneScape recently added a feature called "Achievement Diary." This tool now allows users to have a checklist handy of all the things that they can do in all of the towns or islands. This way, a user will know if he has completed everything in a town before moving to the next.
The Wilderness is a very dark place. It is a place where you can gather items that you need without completing quests or buying them, but you run the risk of being killed by demons, dragons, scorpions, and other members. There are not a lot of rules when entering the Wilderness, and you are pretty much open prey. Some do like the challenge, though.
No doubt, it is a pretty cool online game. It sounds complicated at first, but kids seem to become experts almost overnight.
