Run! Escape!

Most of my friends are gamers, with the major­ity play­ing World of War­craft as their main com­puter game. Lately, many of them are aban­don­ing the game, bored and unim­pressed with the expan­sion packs, and frus­trated at the option of Player vs. Player (PvP) as the only “new” thing to do, since they’ve man­aged to do all they can think to in Player vs. Envi­ron­ment (PvE). I’ve seen enough to know I’d prob­a­bly really enjoy WoW for a while, at least. I loved the orig­i­nal War­craft game (War­Craft: Orcs and Humans), play­ing it to the point that I swore off of com­puter games for a few years. I see the appeal of play­ing the evo­lu­tion of that game online with hun­dreds of other peo­ple, but I also sym­pa­thize with the burnout.

RuneScape is my online game fix. It’s the internet’s biggest free MMO, but amaz­ingly few peo­ple have heard of my main time drain, so I thought I’d intro­duce it.  I play for $5 a month, which is a grand­fa­thered rate from when I started my mem­ber­ship. The monthly sub­scrip­tion has now risen to $5.95 a month.  That price is nice, but free is even cheaper, and Jagex wisely offers a free ver­sion of the game.  Peo­ple can eas­ily try the game out with no oblig­a­tion. There are an esti­mated 2000 hours of game play on the free game alone, so it’s not like the typ­i­cal demo game where you play until you hit a time limit sce­nario and the mar­ket­ing for the paid ver­sion pops up.  Run­ning around on a Runescape free server is fun, but is admit­tedly frus­trat­ing, as of course much of the expan­sion of the mem­bers world makes the game infi­nitely more enjoy­able.  I became a mem­ber within a month after I was intro­duced to the game in Novem­ber 2006.

The game is Java based, and runs right from your inter­net browser.  There is an option to down­load a client if you are hav­ing issues with either your com­puter or your inter­net con­nec­tion slow­ing you down or lag­ging you out of the game. Char­ac­ter cre­ation is sim­ple and quick, teach­ing you the basics of inter­act­ing with the world. Char­ac­ters learn to smith their own weapons and armor, how to fish and chop trees, and other fun­da­men­tals of the game. Even hav­ing played for this long, I  have yet to run out of goals in any skill.  If I’m in the mood to bash some­thing, I can suit up and go fight mon­sters, or even go into a PvP world and get my butt handed to me in short order.  I can pit myself against other play­ers in ver­sions of cap­ture the flag, or plant a magic tree.  If I’m bored, there is some­thing new to do.  There are areas of the world I still haven’t explored, and mini-games (games within the game) I haven’t played more than once or twice.

This week Jagex released the 150th quest, and the sto­ry­line was enter­tain­ing and tied up loose ends in the story of the under­ground gob­lins and their strug­gles against the Humans Against Mon­sters move­ment.  In fact, I often wish I had a note­book with the details of the many quests I’ve com­pleted.  There’s an exten­sive Lores and His­to­ries sec­tion on the web­site where I can read about the rich back­story to the game world.  With a new CEO for Jagex, the direc­tion of the game is more pos­i­tive by the day.  The Jagex teams are con­stantly adding new con­tent, and tweak­ing what already exists.

LadyG­lut­ter is my “main” char­ac­ter, even though I also have a free-to-play plat­inum blonde that I neglect.  LadyG­lut­ter has red hair and I’ve cre­ated her to be an explorer.  Her main achieve­ment is a quest cape, which sym­bol­izes my com­ple­tion of every quest.  If you ever make a char­ac­ter, look me up.