Many of you might not be aware of this gem, but the current incarnation of Runescape is technically Runescape 2, the original now dubbed Runescape Classic. Runescape Classic has not been updated since 2004, when its prettier, more functional little brother stepped off the cart, took its name, and shoved it into the closet. Going further along the timeline, in January 2006 Runescape Classic was shut off from the public due to the game’s ancient engine, lack of real anti-cheat methods, and such. Jagex decided that it would be better to stop new accounts from being created for the game, and anyone who was not a paying member, and active on the classic servers, was given a permanent ban from the two remaining classic servers. No new accounts.
Earlier this year, the new CEO of Jagex, Mark Gerhard, announced that he was looking at bringing the Runescape Classic servers back, but in a new fashion. These new servers would allow players to use the kind of cheats only developers have access too: Editing levels, spawning items and monsters. The idea was brilliant: Make money and items worthless, and there is no incentive to gold farm. Make cheating allowed, and everyone will be cheating, and no one will gain an upper hand. The idea was to allow newer players to see the game that made Jagex rich, and famous, without bringing back the old cheating.
Fast forward to 2009: Jagex today released an article on their website, that gave a new take on the idea: Why not let the players run their own servers? Private servers for Runescape Classic exist, but they aren’t exactly legal. Jagex’s quote:
How about if players could rent and administer their own Classic servers? As a server owner, you could enable or disable any cheat codes you liked, add people to the invite list or banned list, or give individual friends any privileges you liked within your world. In this way, the activities of macroers would become pointless, as you could go on to a cheating-enabled world and get all the stuff you wanted for free if you wanted, but there would still be worlds where you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you worked for your stuff. I should explain that your character would be saved separately for each world, so you couldn’t cheat on one world then use the stuff you gained on a non-cheating world. The different rules set by the owner of each world would really make each world a different game, with different people in positions of power, wielding cheat codes and unleashing Classic’s most awesome spells and items, or making everyone work to get ahead…
Runescape Classic worlds? Rented and administered by players? I refer to this idea as genius because it kills several birds with one stone: It allows the game to keep running, it allows the players to police themselves by essentially creating unofficial, unpaid branches of Jagex, players are allowed to set their own rules, and every server is isolated. I’m going to assume administrators will receive abuse reports instead of Jagex, which means once the server is set up, there is no staff interaction with it afterwards, meaning no misplaced resources
Opening up their old game to the public is a great way to bring in revenue for Jagex, with the people who will be willing to open up their own servers. The question, of course, runs down to price. As of yet, there is no estimate on the price that these servers will cost.
MMO Fallout 