Runescape’s Player Base

Runescape is an MMORPG. For those of you who don’t know what term describes the game you play, that’s “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.” But that’s clunky and no one uses it, so let’s stick with Mu-mor-pu-guh, or just MMORPG for those of you who just want to say the letters and have no fun with the screwy, made-up pronunciation.

Anyway, in any MMORPG, players are expected to interact with each other. High levels are supposed to help low levels, and low levels are supposed to boost high levels’ egos. In theory. This is rarely the case, but no game is so notorious for a horrible playerbase than Runescape, the number 1 free online MMORPG.

I’ll get straight to the solution (finally) and elaborate afterward: Jagex needs to force all Runescape players to read an agreement (not a EULA) saying the equivalent of “grow up.”

There are plenty of good, helpful players of all ages. These are the kinds of people who are enjoyable to play with: the kind that don’t drive newer players to leave their public chat off, therefore making every self-righteous mod wannabe report them for botting. Turning chat off is not botting. Anyway, aforementioned nice players are the type who will help you with Shield of Arrav without first saying, “Lol, NOOB,” or something like it.

Picture this: a thirteen-year-old girl (female because I said so) finds Runescape. Her parents make her play with the chat off. Okay, understandable. Then she ends up immensely enjoying the game, gets a few friends playing, and eventually signs up to become a member. She goes off to Castle Wars because she’s been hearing about it from her friends, and inevitably turns her chat on at some point here. For the sake of argument, let’s make her level 35. She wields adamant armor and a mithril weapon. This is fairly good. She’s been playing for fun; not grinding at all. She walks into the Saradomin portal because she’s a good girl, just like Sanae–yeah, forget the obscure Touhou reference. She expects to communicate with her team of worshippers of the good god of Runescape, formulating strategies to defeat the evil Zamorakians. Instead, a few high levels “lol” at her, call her a noob, and run off. She follows, convinced that maybe there were just a few jerks out there. Then, to her surprise, every Zamorakian who kills her says “lol” at the beginning of the fight and “noob” at the end. Slightly disheartened, she goes into the Castle Wars lobby and asks, “Why does everyone call me a noob?” More “lols.” More “noobs.” Eventually, one player does tell her that it’s because she’s a low level. She thanks him and goes off to train. She loves the game and doesn’t want to quit because of a little discouragement. She messes with the hill giants just north of the minigame, figures out they’re just a little too taxing, and settles on killing things at the battlefield just north of that. This quickly gets boring, but she wants to become a high level. She doesn’t want to be called names for trying her honest best. But, as a lot of players are realizing now, the best way to level up quickly to avoid all that trolling is to download EpicBot and leave the computer on overnight.