October is normally the month in which everyone attempts to scare everyone else through some sort of Halloween trick. We played it relatively passive this year settling for hide and seek combined with the provided RuneScape community event, Death’s Door. Jagex on the other hand took it to a whole new level.

October saw the release of Ironman mode on RuneScape. Ironman is not the only that was released, Hardcore Ironman mode, the scary version appeared too! That’s why I’m going to tell you to read a Rapid Rundown from Jason on the subject. Continuing on the deathly subject of Halloween Alex tells us why this years Jagex created Halloween event was great. It’s that simple. Moving from Halloween to RuneFest Mr Bistro tells us why we may be seeing more world map expansions in the future. Also, on the subject of RuneFest, the world famous Lord Rickles tells us why Chronicle is different and why we should be optimistic about this form of gameplay.

Steeping away from RuneScape for a bit Duke Juker posits an idea as to why Americans lag behind others in the scope of competitive gaming. We also bring you a guest article from Arceus, appropriately titled, Can Games be Art? It’s an interesting discussion that brings up the very definitions of art and video gaming. It also lead me to some interesting thoughts pertaining to our future. Finally, capping off the month I gathered a collection of my favourite software and hardware explaining why they’re important to the future of computer development. Not only do they work beautifully they all solve problems in new and unique ways. You can delve deeper into this in The Quest for an Alternate User Interface.

At the end of the month the October Woodcutting Skill of The Month was scary for those not in first place. Arceus eclipsed the competition by gathering 20 million Woodcutting experience. Almost double that of second place, Flash, with 10.3 million experience gained. Third place was awarded to Pyrnassius with 7.7 million experience gained.

Arceus, here is your trophy:

That is all for this month! Hope you settle in for the winter ahead (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere) and enjoy yourselves!