So, how does it feel to be a god and have all the power and knowledge in Runescape? To be able to make all creatures everywhere bow to your might and awesomeness!

Yes, I know we have not been made a ‘god’ yet, but it is coming, soon.

It’s really not a church though.
It’s a cult.
The Cult of You.

Church:
“Public worship of a god or a religious service in such a building”

Cult:
“An instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers”

There are a few things I find wrong with this idea.

Why would NPCs worship a person who gets duped constantly?
A running line in many of RuneScape’s quests is that our character gets fooled, usually easily. I’m not talking about doing stupid things or nothing at all during cutscenes, that’s an entirely different issue. I’m talking about how we’ll start a quest by helping someone who our characters think is either good or innocent yet the things the NPC says and has us do are either extremely questionable or blatantly evil, and then our characters are so surprised when the person shows their true colors and betrays us, tries to kill us, or some other evil action. I can understand our characters not being able to read every single NPC perfectly, but seriously, we get fooled a rather alarmingly large amount of times for being a smart, intelligent, resourceful adventurer.

Would you worship some guy who was constantly being made a fool of by others? A guy who tries to help some people and then later is betrayed because the people he was helping were actually the bad guys?

Once we ‘ascend to godhood’ or however they intend to play it, they can no longer add quests that make us a fool. They also must have all the ‘be-stupid’ quests be a prerequisite to the ‘godhood’ quest. If not, you will attain ‘godhood’ and then be duped by a dumb NPC. Wow, nice job. Was Saradomin duped as well?

Which player do the NPCs worship the most?
Does Hans follow Shane, Mike, Jason, or Trekkie?
Oh snap! PK_nub12045Z just did the quest, now the NPCs all follow him! Darn you PK_nub12045Z! I shall never have a mega-cult with all these interruptions! Come back here my minions! Worship your all-powerful lord and savior!

This is a problem. If RuneScape is supposed to be an interactive world where the other players have meaning then you cannot have everyone being worshiped.
Or do they run it where Hans will praise Shane one moment and as soon as I talk to him he will praise me? Then Trekkie comes up and he bows to him? That changes the game to being single player because it acts as if the other players do not exist. Either that or all the NPCs are kiss-ups and we do not care.

I pray to me, not you.
Doubtless we will get to build, or rather have built, an altar and/or monument to our greatness. If we pray at this, we get our prayer points back…why? If the gods restore our prayer points when we pray to them, and we restore our prayer points when we pray to us (think about that for a moment), then why do we not just have infinite prayer points? Just be in constant prayer to our pleas to ourselves and we can take on the world.
Too bad protection prayers are only 50% protection now…

What happens when I die?
What if another player were to use an artifact like the Staff of Armadyl to kill me, would they not take my god powers, or at least some of them? Or if we were to fight Sliske and he use the Shaft of Armdayl… could he permanently kill us? Or would Death bring us back because our time was not up, even though we were a god? Do Death’s powers work on gods?

What do the ‘gods’ think about this?
They are not too happy about Sliske, so why would they be happy about me, or you, or you, or that scammer over there?
I’ve helped gods and hindered gods previously, and now am one myself? Will the ones I have helped take me under their wing? Will the ones I have hindered seek my downfall with all their might?
And what happens when little Bobby98512 starts doing quests? Will he have to help me or my followers with something?

—–

These are all problems that must be addressed. Sure, they are not really game mechanic problems, they are lore problems. But they still affect the game.

It’s fine for our characters to get some recognition for all the nice things we have done, but do we really want a cult following? We have fought against that very thing! In the Hazeel Cult quest we either fought against or joined the cult. Why would we want to create such a thing for ourselves?

This is a strange concept to add to a game. I do not know of any games that currently have such a thing. Usually the players choose which god they will follow or do not follow anything. Sometimes they follow many. Sometimes its not a choice of which to follow, but a simple fact that there are multiple gods, each over certain things whether you like it or not.

Diablo III has something akin to this – the Nephalem. The characters are Nephalem, a race borne of Angel and Demon union. Crazy I know. There are not really any gods in Sanctuary, just Angels and Demons. The Nephalem can rival both.

Of course, godhood could explain why our characters are so much better than most NPCs and why we can do so much.

But then that leaves two questions:
Have we been gods all along?
Why are we able to be fooled so easily?

EDITOR’S NOTE: RuneScape is far from the only game in which protagonists become incompetent in cutscenes. See TV Trope’s Cutscene Incompetence article.