Think about it for a moment…RuneScape has but one season, Spring. It’s always the right time to farm, to fish, to cook, to adventure, or do anything else for that matter.

Why does this matter? The seasons determine many things, both by specifically limiting and specifically allowing certain things. Most people who have tried to grow almost anything will tell you most plants don’t grow that well in winter and only certain plants can grow well in summer without being continuously watered. Likewise many fish dislike being near the surface in rainy weather so they stay near the bottom, making hard or impossible to catch them. I’ve learnt that Cooking or rather baking specifically, is many times dependent on the humidity in the kitchen. Dough can be rather finicky and if you have too much or too little humidity it will either not rise at all or rise so much that it then sinks.

Adventuring is perhaps the most important task which is weather and season dependent. You can’t adventure very well when it’s freezing and it’s more dangerous to adventure, especially when in Full Plate, in the heat of summer because you could inadvertently bake yourself alive. Rainy weather also makes it treacherous to go on long excursions because the roads would turn to mud, making travel slow and dangerous. With rainy adventuring also comes the risk of damage to equipment. Metal armour, swords, axes, and maces could become rusted thus making them less effective and possibly more dangerous to use. Some items like bows also change effectiveness when wet, making them less reliable. Of course there’s always the fact that no one wants to be fighting for their life when soaking wet in the rain.

But, why am I mentioning this? Well today it was raining and I realized that many games have seasonal changes, rain/snow times, and day/night cycles. RuneScape has none of these. Granted, most of the games with these features are purely for aesthetics and do not actually effect gameplay. But what if they did?

“Woot! Winter break, let’s go pwn some dragons!”

Welcome to Runescape.
It is currently Winter.

“Yea, I know, ain’t it great? School is OUT!”
*Equips full barrows armor and runs to the wilderness to fight green dragons.*
“Hey? Where are they?”
*Looks around and see’s the place is completely devoid of creatures.*
You begin to freeze (-10 lifepoints).
*Messages friend*
“Hey, where did the green dragons go? Jagex remove them?”
“Nah, it’s winter. The green dragons hibernate during winter.”
You begin to freeze (-20 lifepoints,-10% run energy).
“Say wha? Where are they?”
“They’re gone until spring.”
You begin to freeze (-30 lifepoints,-20% run energy).
“Drats. I guess I’ll go…fish!”
*Teleports to Catherby.*
You begin to freeze (-40 lifepoints,-30% run energy).
*Puts gear back in the bank and takes out a fishing pole and some bait.*
*Baits hook and throws out.*
*Plink, plink, plink*
You start to feel the chill of winter (-50 lifepoints,-40% run energy).
“What? Catherby’s ocean is frozen too!”

Okay, so I guess that may be a bit of an extreme, but you get my point. It could be fun to have actual cooler weather which could allow our characters to do things like ice skating. I know we get some effects like that during the Christmas events usually but those only last 2 weeks, while winter lasts a good 4 months or more usually (depending on where you live of course). Of course like in my example it could also be annoying to have climate changes.

RuneScape does have a few areas like in my example where the character actually gets injured or impeded. Some areas include the Ice Path (extreme cold), the Al Kharid Desert (extreme heat), and the Dust Well (sandy air).

Of course y’all are thinking, “this is a game, it’s not supposed to be real, it’s supposed to be fun. If it was supposed to be real it wouldn’t be fun.”

And, that’s true in most cases. It wouldn’t be fun if during the winter in the UK we couldn’t grow any crops to train Farming even when we might live in Australia where it would be summer.

What does this all boil down to?

Dynamic weather is nice, but not for RuneScape. It would, however, be nice to see some more climate changes during and through season beginnings such as snow in certain areas during winter, small flowers popping up around RuneScaoe (like the Lilies, but more), perhaps rain in summer (everyone wants rain then, though rarely anyone gets it), and leaves falling off of redish/yellowish/brownish coloured trees in the fall.