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Mein a small stone church, on the edge of a medieval desert, two women are getting married. Attendees wear rainbow hats, glittery accessories and top hats. A scantily clad man with angel wings led the ceremony. On the heads of the two brides you put the words “I do” in bright yellow letters. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has been, throughout its life, an important place and part of daily life for thousands of players.
Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the newlyweds, met her husband on a dating show but first reconnected with their love on the show. “Our first and second day were talking about RuneScape,” he recalls. After four years they got married, soon followed by their sports ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s best friends. They met in the game and ran the UWU Girls together, a RuneScape tribe that Morgan founded to support players of all genders. “We do IRL meetings, and for many of these women, it’s still their first meeting with strangers online — it’s the same for me.”
RuneScape started in 2001 as a project by Cambridge undergrad, Andrew Gower. The game’s bland graphics and sloppy mechanics (chopping down trees to get wood, right-clicking to attack them) weren’t revolutionary – especially against titans of the time like Everquest and, later, World of Warcraft. But the novelty of RuneScape made it an unstoppable force in the late 2000s; it was simple, available to play in a browser, and most importantly free – although a more feature-rich version is available with a monthly subscription. Today, there are more than 300m accounts across all sports, with lifetime revenue exceeding $3bn.
The tone of RuneScape falls somewhere between Tolkien and Monty Python. Players embark on adventures that see them battle gods, solve deadly mysteries, and thwart evil penguins’ plans to rule the world. Although undoubtedly a British style, many of its players come from North America. Chris is one of them. He goes by NightmareRH online and was one of the most popular RuneScape creators on YouTube. He started the sport on his 17th birthday; his account is just over 21 years old.
Chris describes the early years of the game as “living in the dark ages”, as knowledge of the quests and mechanics was limited. He said: “I remember staying in one place for three months. I was so afraid to go to another place that I forgot how to get back.”
After playing a month of games for free, Chris started using his high school lunch money to pay for a membership – and hasn’t looked back. It is the quirkiness of the game that makes him interesting, including the eccentricity of his economy, which allows players to sell clothes, gems and treasures. One of the oldest items in the game – party hats – is worth billions of in-game gold coins. Naturally, he has one.
Shane Anderson from Edmonton, Canada, has played the game since he was 16 years old – now he is 39 years old. His friend showed him RuneScape and according to Anderson, it just happened: “You see someone walking around the world of games with the most advanced equipment, and that alone is like a desire to continue the journey.”
This dedication to self-expression has given rise to the term “FashionScape”, a style of play that focuses on dressing up your look in stylish accessories, rather than maximizing your chances of a smart game. Naturally, the subculture has its own Reddit forum. Anderson found his favorite place, followed by the longest running podcast on the game – RuneScapeBitsandBytesUpdate!
Originally, RuneScape was a sprite-based game with unusual graphics and a small player pool. In 2004, RuneScape 2 was released, upgrading the game with new combat mechanics, audio and a realistic 3D engine. “That’s when the game got really big,” Anderson recalled.
After years of popularity in the snow, Jagex interrupted its main development in December 2007, when an area dedicated to player-v-player combat – the Wilderness – was made safe to pass. This was followed by an update in January 2008 where developers added restrictions on sales, and players were prohibited from making more profit than each other. The decision was frowned upon across the region, and many saw it as the end of Gielinor’s golden age.
Years went on and Jagex continued to evolve the game to the more frustrated players. The middle-of-the-road sweet spot remained so popular in the community that in 2013 the developer split the game into two different versions: Old School RuneScape, a preview of the game from 2007; and what is known as RuneScape 3sleek, modern design. Last year, the studio released RuneScape: Dragonwilds, an online survival game in which players create items, build bases and develop skills to stay alive.
after advertising
Now, at 25 years old, RuneScape has been around so long that it had time to fall from grace and regain the trust of its players. Earlier this year, the company launched a U-turn for the game as part of its anniversary celebrations. In the ad, the narrator sarcastically talks about citizens “comforting in the old ways” and “attracting wealth (losing) its beauty” – a subtle acknowledgment that the game’s new features and microtransactions have slowly alienated its players.
Jagex is now eager to talk to its community. For the Old School model, every update is decided by a democratic vote, and RuneScape proper, the company’s team manager can be seen in Reddit threads that involve praise and criticism. Some of the Jagex team attended Amelia’s sports wedding.
The importance of the fans was not lost on co-executive producer Ryan Philpott. He started out as a freelancer, later became a game tester, and is now helping the future of the game. Nostalgia is definitely a big part of the model; Old School is considered the most popular format, with daily peaks often reaching 200,000 players at a time. The group’s Road to Restoration project is an attempt to redress the grievances of longtime fans. Philpott said: “It’s not about going backwards, it’s about understanding what we did best, or what people liked, and using that to move us forward.”
Instead of demanding more time from the players, Philpott says the team plans to make the game fit into their changing lives: “It’s that decision to play RuneScape alongside going to school, getting a job, having kids,” he says. “We have a famous saying: ‘You never really quit RuneScape, you just take a break.’ I have never met a person who actually quit smoking.”
In an online game that is dominated by giants like Fortnite and Minecraft, and World of Warcraft still exists, RuneScape has managed to find itself in a unique situation similar to its players – it is quietly renovating and showing no signs of hanging up its hat. Philpott said: “I want to keep going for the next 25 years. It looks like there are a lot of weddings coming up.”
