At the end of March, I hit a major personal milestone on Runescape. My birthday is the same day for myself and my game account, so the best present I got this year was my 10 year veteran cape. A decade in Gielinor is seriously a long time, and I have seen a lot come and go and come back again in my days.  Ten year vets are rare to find. I don’t know anyone from back when I started this account that continues to play.  In my experience, a lot of people are only active on Runescape for about 3 or 4 years before they fizzle out. That means that by my calculations, I’ve seen three generations of players , of friends, come and go. It’s an odd feeling. Luckily being in a clan has allowed me to continue making great relationships and great memories. But enough about me, lets commemorate my milestone in a little more entertaining way.

So youngins, gather around Grampa Rickles for a little story time. I want to share with you all some memories from Runescape past that may not be known to those who haven’t played this game for as long as I.

Top 5 Interesting Things About Past Runescape That You Probably Don’t Know

5. If the EoC was Evolution, then Barrows was a Revolution

Back in 2005, the Barrows minigame was released and stunned us all. Many of you may have played this in an attempt to get some of the brothers’ well-rounded armor drops. Even today, barrows armor is a solid choice for many combat activities. However, back in 2005, it was as if the heavens opened up and saved us from the inevitable metal-based armor rapture. It was glorious. Armor that can’t be smithed? What is this madness?! With special set effects? Whaaa?

This armor type was never before seen at the time of release, and it literally changed how members did combat. Guthan’s healing ability allowed you to camp at monster spawns for hours instead of relying on your food supply. Dharok’s allowed you to decimate creatures and power train like never before. Think of how amazing God Wars armors’ release was, but imagine using only d longs and rune before then (whips were just recently released months before and extremely expensive, and dragon scimitars were just released a month before!) In fact, 2005 was a very good year for combat and Runescape in general, and in my opinion why 2006 is seen as the golden age of RS. Barrows gave mid to high level players a fun and profitable minigame, along with armor that gave us something better than a rune plate when a d chain wasn’t an option, and trust me, with it’s 15M price tag it wasn’t an option for most of us.

4. Holiday Rares! Holiday Rares for Everyone!

In today’s Runescape that seems to force feed us everything by exhaustively telling us what to do, old school holiday events were wonderfully simple in that you didn’t have to do anything special. Want a Christmas Cracker? All you had to do is LOG IN on Christmas. Want Bunny Ears? They appeared by the thousands on the ground either every few or five minutes. I remember wandering around north of Varrock and seeing all the red dots appear on the minimap to the accompaniment of “Happy Easter!”. Bunny Ears were the first non-tradeable holiday drop, so you could only get one. If you tried to pick up another, the chat box would tell you that you didn’t need another, because you only have one head. -.-

Little known fact about the party hats is that the Purple one used to actually be a magenta color, which players referred to as Pink. It was the most expensive of any Phat, until the duplication glitch of November 2003 allowed players to create these and any other rares in mass amounts. Even to this day, the now Purple party hats are the least expensive. It was kinda nice to just be able to log in and get something for a holiday – no Wizards Guild to decorate or Easter Bunny to do slave labor for to earn special stuff. Ah well.

3. Skillers Had to Sleep in Strangers’ Beds

Long before the random events were used to fight botters, there was fatigue. If you skilled for a long time, your player would become fatigued and need to rest before training more. All you had to do was walk your exhausted body to the closest house, which was probably about from where you are presently  in the real world to Madagascar scaled down to Runescape’s world size. Once you got there,  you just had to go sleep in a stranger’s bed, then type a CAPCHA-like word once you were well rested. Doesn’t that make perfect sense?

This made skilling horrible. No really. Ever wonder why there’s random houses in Falador, Varrock, and across the world with beds you can’t use? This is partly why (place holding and poor city design are other potential reasons, but I digress). Later, they released sleeping bags, which meant you didn’t have to trek to houses to sleep and you could sleep right there next to your mining rocks with the scorpions, but you lost an inventory slot. Needless to say, the whole thing was tossed out when we transitioned to RS2, and thank Guthix (may he rest in peace) for that.

2. Banking Was Like That of the 1930’s

Think of RS banking today as modern real world banking is, with the ease of online banking or going to an ATM. Put in your pin and you get your cash. Easy enough. In Runescape Classic, this wasn’t the case. Imagine those conveniences didn’t exist, and you had to wait in line like your grandfathers used to have to do to talk to a teller for any sort of transaction. This is RSC banking. When you wanted to bank, you had to chat with a banker and sit through the whole dialog spiel . Oh, and only one person could speak to a banker at a time! If someone else was going through this dialog, you had to franticly click until they were finished and you saw the dialog appear for you. If you had a lot of stackable items, like coins, you had to hold down the mouse button or spazz click and watch it tally until you put in what you wanted to bank or trade with someone. There was also no automatic bank notes – we had our friends Niles, Miles, and Giles running stalls at Draynor that could convert bars, ores, or fish into notes or swap notes for that item in ONLY five amount increments. You may recall seeing these chaps in now defunct random events, where they would appear to have developed dementia in their old age as they ask you if an item was a fish or not. This is where they came from.

I won’t even bother going into explaining pre-GE days. I could rant about World 2 Falador for several articles. All of it was awful. All of it was annoying. I wasted many DAYS of playing time without these conveniences. Be thankful, whippersnappers.

1. Breast Plates. No Really…

Probably the most obscure fact and fondest early memory of mine is that there used to be female variants to traditional “male” armor, in which males couldn’t wear female armor, however females could wear either. You could have a smither in Varrock alter a platebody or legs to a platebody with, ahem, busty enhancements or a skirt. Back when this was around, seeing a female player was rare, but when I did, my teenage self knew so right away. Because of the time it took to do this, female variants were often cheaper than the traditional versions, so people would buy them from a desperate or lazy seller and convert them for a profit. Sadly, this practice was discontinued in RS2, but skirts still remain cheaper than their plateleg counterparts even to this day. If I had my way, I’d reinstate this practice simply because it’s kind of silly to think of an item like Verac’s Brassard not needing to be altered to accommodate a woman’s modesty. Nearly all armor looks different on females than on males, but nothing is ever done to change its appearance, if even to just its inventory picture.  Ah well, I suppose I am just expecting too much realism – or maybe just have the wrong kind of fantasy game in mind.

Well noobs (used affectionately, of course), I hope you enjoyed  my little trip down memory lane and learned a thing or two about RS history. I’ve seen a lot in my time, but you know what, it boggles my mind that it’s really been that long. And you’d think I’d be very accomplished, having so much time into Runescape, but I’m still learning new things all the time. Especially in the last year or so, I have amassed so much that I still need to do! I may have seven 99s with a total level of 2333, but there’s so much I still don’t know about this game. I’ve milked this game for so long, yet its utter still hasn’t gone dry for me. I guess you can attribute that to my play style, which has always been with the “it’s about the journey, not the destination” perspective. Try to keep that in mind as you play if you really want to enjoy this game for as long as I have.