Bluebrisingr

Even though people may say that Runescape is just a game that is only for entertainment, the game can actually teach many ethical skills to players.  Much like how video games have been proven to help thinking and problem solving, Runescape can do the same if you delve deep enough into the game.  Here are some of the skills you can find yourself being more competent at after playing Runescape.

Hard Work and Perseverance
This is a rather obvious – getting a skill to 99 or earning your own money requires both of these lskills.  You have to have a lot of perseverance in order to be earn all the experience to get a 99.  If you also make your own money and you don’t beg like a noob, that requires hard work.  This is similar to real life, when you eventually get a job and have to work for your own money.

Leadership
This is mostly based around the aspect of clans.  Leading a clan requires a lot of leadership skills, and if the job is taken seriously it can be similar to being a leader in any aspect of real life.  The better the leader, the more successful a clan will be.

Tactics and Strategic Skills
In PvP areas like Clan Wars (and Bounty Hunter but Clan Wars specifically), in order to outmatch your opponents you have to think of some strategy instead of the usual charge at your enemies.  Most of the successful clans who win many wars have good strategy and tactics.  While some win based on brute force, those with unique strategies can win as well.  This helps out in real life when you do things such as marketing and campaigning, in which you must use strategies to promote something and get it to catch peoples’ attention.

Teamwork
Around minigames, such as Castle Wars, Fishing Trawler, and Barbarian Assault, teamwork is essential if you want to win.  If you don’t help out your teammates and work together, it will be very easy to lose the minigame.  This is similar to sports or other activities in which you must work together as a team in order to succeed.

Socialization
This is pretty self explanatory.  I hesitated slightly to put this in because the level of maturity of the socialization in Runescape is not very high, but you are still able to talk and converse with others.  This helps with real life socialization as long as you don’t talk like some idiots do in Runescape.

Creativity
This is mostly based around fansites.  If you want to create a unique and successful fansite, you have to be creative and think of innovative ideas that will draw attention to your site specifically.  RSBANDB, for example, has many exclusive applications such as the podcast, stat sigs, and Runewire, all of which no other fansite had before.  This can help in real life when you work in areas of the arts such as writing, drawing, and music – all activities that require some creativity.

Problem Solving
This is a skill needed for some quests.  The one I thought of specifically was Ernest the Chicken because in that quest, if you didn’t use a guide, you had to think of how to get all the items needed since no one told you exactly how to.  If you don’t use quest guides for any of the quests, most will require you to think a little and use some problem solving skills.  As for real life, this is used everywhere, mainly in jobs that relate to math.  The one I relate this to is programming.  When you get errors in your coding, most times you have to think of what coding to utilize in order to solve the problem.

Sharing
This is mostly focused around item lending.  If people ask me nicely and properly to borrow an item, I’ll let them borrow it.  I also tend to lend out items a lot to friends, which is very much the same as sharing with people in real life.  This will help you out in real life pretty much the same way it does in Runescape when friends ask you for a favor or wish to borrow something.

So, as you can see, Runescape really does teach you many lessons of life that you should learn.  While some of them may not be very obvious or may not even remotely help you in real life, they may unknowingly increase your awareness of many basic ethics of life.