I have always been a big fan of exploration in RuneScape. Even if there isn’t a quest to do, a skill to train, or a minigame to play, I like to travel to many different places just to look around. More so after the graphics update, there are quite a few interesting places that can just be admired.

As I don’t want to walk everywhere, I use alternate forms of transportation like boats and giant eagles. One thing I have noticed is when using other traveling methods, you cannot actually direct where you want to go. Sure, you can charter the boat for Catherby, but do you have any control over how it gets there? You simply watch an animation of a map with a boat on it, sailing to your destination. Same with eagles. I don’t think I’m the only one that would find it massively cool to fly anywhere on the map and just explore RuneScape from the back of a giant eagle. The closest thing we get to freedom of traveling by ways other than walking are Gnomecopters, and those don’t even fly over real RuneScape.

Naturally there would be some problems with this. Freedom of sailing a boat wherever you please would have a good amount of potential (I know I’d like it, not sure about everyone else though) since sailing would be the only way to access islands and such. Giant eagles/gnome gliders/other kinds of transportation could be a little harder. If they were faster than walking, nobody would walk if they had their own personal speedy eagle to take them around. If they were slower than walking, everyone would just walk anyway. A possible solution to this would be making the free transportation (like guiding an eagle to anywhere on the map) one-way, so you’d have to walk to get back to the eagle, glider, etc. Of course, if you don’t want free control of the eagle or boat you can just go to the old animations and get there instantly.

I’d also like to see an improvement to accessible terrain. Our characters can fight dragons and save cities from disaster, but none of them can swim, sit, lay down, or jump on simple objects. An update to allow our characters to do those things would allow for added realism and more areas to explore.

Traveling in RuneScape could be more enjoyable and free if Jagex is willing to make some updates on the ways our characters can move around the world. As an explorer of lands from the heat of the desert to the dark Wilderness, I would like to see some changes made on the way we can traverse the paths of RuneScape.