My Strange Addiction of RuneScape

RuneScape can't be considered a game you can play into the early hours, yet I still find myself enjoying the game more than I first thought I would. Here's my story of how I got into the game and why I think it's so addicting. 

This is all just my story, so those who want a full review of the game should wait for a while because with how much I play RuneScape I won't be able to hold back from making a review on it.

Years ago, when I was still very young (way too young to fully understand English), I saw my brother and his friends play RuneScape. This is in the true Old School times, the game had not even barely gotten as far as the 07 version that people consider "Old School" now. It just seemed so cool to me that they were all interacting with eachother on this game even though they weren't talking to eachother like they would on the playing grounds, for example. They all had a smile on their face as they were trading their items in front of the Lumbridge Castle.

The Lumbridge Castle as of 2007

I imeadiately wanted to know more about it. When we arrived at home, I asked my brother to make an account for me. The one think I remember in particular is me not liking the need to choose yet another password I'd have to remember, so I used "nietleuk" as a password (Dutch for "not fun"). All of a sudden, I found myself in this alternate reality. It wasn't like the real world, but it didn't have to be: it was a place where I was able to interact with people from all around the globe without the need of spending countless hours in your car (air plane tickets were too expensive for our family). It was almost even divine.

My story, further on, was kind of like that of all other long-time gamers: I got hooked on the stuff, I loved the people I interacted with most as much as I loved my friends in real life. My life at school was great, I was not any different from the other kids and I truly had the time of my life.

That was until I skipped a year of school because of my "extraordinary" intelligence. The other kids were so jealous of me that they all picked on me. I was the outsider, the one that was given an unfair advantage and they wanted to take that advantage away from me no matter what. Thus I was bullied for years and years.

Unlike most other "nerds" that shared this fate, I was able to interact with girls just fine. Honestly, I had more female friends than male friends and by the time I left high school, I had already had three pretty long relationships. They were all ended just as quickly as they had began: the first one had to move for her parents' jobs, the second one went to a school so far away from my village that it was impossible to stay in contact with her and the third one turned out to like me only for the fact that I was the one that stood up for her when she was bullied (and getting myself in an even worse position in the process) so she left me once the bullies lost interest in her. I still hate her for using me like that, but I guess everyone gets a major slap in the face every once in a while.

Why are they relevant? Because they gave me bragging rights on RuneScape and they made me look cool. Unlike some other scumbags I no longer needed to lie to my clanmates when talking about love and relationships as we often did (very awkward to do over the internet without knowing who you're talking to, I know). That made me proud.

Others got some ingame cash as a gift for their so-called "marriage" but were forced to admit their lies only a week later. Those guys tried to go after me a couple of times, trying to make me "snap" and tell them that I had been lying too. But I hadn't been lying, so I was safe and they decided to admit that only a year later and ended up handing in all of the gifts I had given them for their lies over the course of that year. I was rich, all of a sudden.

That gained me respect in the game. That made me from just a clanmate into the cool guy. the one everyone wanted to be. Yet all I really was was a nerd behind his desk, telling his online friends the worst jokes you could find on the internet and having a good time. And the guys at school noticed that I had to be doing something in my free time and that it sure wasn't sports or hanging out with my friends and causing some fuss over the most stupid of things, so I was an outsider in yet another aspect and they trived upon that.

Their increased bullying caused me to not do homework, made me hide in a shell where all that really mattered was me and RuneScape. And eventually also MineCraft, Tribal Wars and such. It made me grab for whatever made me feel good, and that was mostly fast food and candy. So I got pretty fat all because they pushed me into a state where the only reliable entertainment I had was my PC.

I'm currently still trying to get rid of that weight. I have so much to look forward to in the future, and a terrible physical condition would ruin most of that. So at the moment I'm doing my best to grab for some actual strawberries instead of strawberry icecream, for an apple instead of a cookie and so on. It's actually easier than I had first imagined: you don't have to completely give up everything you like in life just to become healthier. All you need to do is force yourself to actually do it. The rest just comes with that.

And this is where all of that brought me, writing about my life online. My friends, that I now actually have, would probably think that it's incredibly weird of me to talk about my life so openly online as compared to in real life. In person I hate talking about myself. I hate talking in general. I can type my thoughts faster than I can express them using my mouth. This is what I'm used to. This is my life, and I welcome you to it. Please ignore the mess that is my past, and the cloud that hides my future from me. I've gotten used to those by now.

Please don't see this as me trying to get compassion, I honestly don't care about wether or not people are actually reading this. It's just a way for me to feel like I've actually expressed myself for once, and I must say it feels very good.

That's it for today's post, it's a little bit of a long one but in order to tell you guys about how I got into RuneScape I had to tell you about a very large part of my life story. I'm sorry for those of you that want straight up information, this was just the way I felt most comfortable with sharing this.

Player Power Has Decided - Icthlarin vs. Amascut is Coming!

Image by Originally Famous (http://blogagamerslife.blogspot.be/)

If you're into RuneScape and check their website on a daily basis like I do, you probably know about this already. There was a poll about what Halloween Event they should add, and the idea of Icthlarin and Amascut facing off against eachother won with pride.

As you can see, there was the choice between Spectres of War, Icthlarin vs Amascut and a sequel to the Broken Home quest. A vast minority didn't mind what they added, the Broken Home sequel was only just a tiny bit more popular than not caring about it and Spectres of War was popular amongst a quarter of the people who voted. Almost half of the players wanted the Icthlarin vs Amascut event, so there's no doubt they're adding that one.

I'm personally really excited about this because I'm really into the Desert storylines and I'll definately check the event out once it's there.

This is, by the way, going to be a Mini World Event so it's going to be like Tuska but on a smaller scale and less impacting to the overall lore of the game. This will be a one-time event, so you can't expect to see Icthlarin and Amascut facing off against eachother for millenia.

RuneScape Behind The Scenes 151: June Updates Coming to RuneScape (My Opinion)

A new episode of RuneScape Behind The Scenes has been released. This one covers the June updates coming to RuneScape, so I was immeadiately eager to see what it featured.

First of all, Mod Mark talked about the Tuska World Event. I'm personally extremely hyped about this one and I've spent a lot of time damaging Tuska with that amazing-looking spear.

There's one problem about it for me though: there's no Spear override that suits the Cursed Reaver overrides so I ended up going with the weapon that came as a default with that set instead. I do have the Zamorak override unlocked just to be certain I have it whenever I decide to change up my appearance, though!

I did actually think he overdid his description of the world event as it's not as exciting as he tells us it is. I'm not saying the event isn't good, it's just not as action-packed as Mark claims.

Then, the Slayer Belt. It's extremely satisfying to see that they've added this thing as I've always hated that whenever I train Slayer I need to take all of these items with me in my inventory. They've made a seperate belt for it, which I think was unnecessary: just add an icon to the Toolbelt interface and make that into the so-called "Slayer Belt" and everyone is satisfied.

Dragonsseed did a good job at creating a list of all items he'd like to see added to this belt and I think that the Ninja team was probably extremely pleased to see so much of their work had been done for them by one of the players. The community clearly agreed with his idea, and it ended up getting added to the game.

Adamant and Runite Dragons seem extremely cool for the high levels too, in my opinion. It's just unfortunate that my Ironman account isn't even close to good enough to reaching those levels and quests so I don't see the point of getting hyped up about them just yet.

Also, the hero-turned-god V has returned to Relekka and you can meet him to fight the dragonkin in some awesome raids.

Finally, the Lumbridge Crater is going to be turned into a huge Beach Party where you can play through some cool Summer-styled minigames and gain quite a bit of XP (as Mod Mark promises). I'm definately going to check that one out and if it's worth covering I'll probably create a blog post about that event when it has been released and I've had enough time to cover it.

Apart from that, they added some new headpieces and other outfits to the game. This is interesting for those who are looking for a new appearance, but they'll be staying around anyways and I already have an outfit so I won't really get into them any time soon.

I am, ofcourse, still going to make an opinionated review on the Tuska World Event, so stay tuned for that one. I'll see you all later!

RuneScape Podcast #48: Diversions, Distractions and Deaths (My Opinion)

In this episode of the RuneScape Podcast, the special guests are from the Ninja Team. The Ninja team does loads of smaller updates that are frequently requested by the players so that the game gets optimized even in the little details.

Wow, these guys really don't sit still, do they? The amount of additions to the game these guys just summed up is huge. I follow some of these guys on Twitter so that I get to see the smaller updates that are coming up in the near future as quickly as possible, but I never imagined it actually being the Ninja team being as active as they are.

Another thing I loved to hear is that they released an update for Free2Play. I'll need to dive into that and I will probably make a post about that pretty soon.

They also told us to submit any ideas to RuneLabs instead of sending it to anywhere else. This is something I think is unnecessary to notice: if people can't be bothered to go over to RuneLabs to submit their ideas, they probably don't think their ideas are that important at all. If it doesn't make it in RuneLabs, the community doesn't really want it. That's the way it works with RuneScape since the release of RuneLabs.

A quite interesting thing to note is that this is already the second podcast in line that is about the Ninja team. These guys are quite popular as they provide small tweaks whenever they get requested a lot and that is something that loads of MMO's should probably concider having a seperate team for as the community really has loads of cool ideas. I mean, seriously, the community are the people that pay for the game and keep it up and running. Why not give them the right to speak up for themselves and let them tell Jagex exactly what they want?

All of the questions they answered, ofcourse, come from the forums so if you want them to dive into any questions you might have about the game, simply go to the forums on the official RuneScape website. You'll get your answers in no time.

If you have suggestions for the game, simply head over to the RuneLabs section of the official web-site and you can submit it right away. If it gets loads of votes, Jagex will concider adding your idea to the game and your idea could be added in no time.

The Way I Game

Well, everyone has their own style when it comes down to gaming, and I want to talk about mine.

The games I play

RuneScape

It's an MMORPG based around you developing your characters and training various skills. The reason I like it is because you can choose what direction you want to go with your character: will you mainly train the non-combat skills, or are you the type for exploring dungeons and killing every monster you see? It's up to you, really. I play RS3, the newest version of the game. It's a brower-based game, but I have a downloaded client for it just to be able to start gaming faster :-P. It's an awesome game in my opinion, but it might not be for those that are easily fooled by scammers etc. because those are, unfortunately, still playing the game and want to get your account emptied as fast as possible so that they can sell your stuff for real-life money.
Apart from the scammers, that are almost as bad as the Indian callcenter guys, the game is very good: it gets frequently updated so that there will always be content for you to discover, the developers are constantly working on getting cheaters out of the game as effectively as possible and they are good at that and last but not least: the community is awesome once you get to know the way their personalities generally work.
I personally play a skiller: I try to make my way through the game without fighting ANY monsters. This is pretty hard, as the game is combat-based.

MineCraft

I know, I know... loads of people think this game is extremely childish. For me, it's a way to get creative without necessarily getting comments about what I make. I build stuff in Creative mode, mostly on the Vadact Buildteam server (part of the Shotbow Network). Those guys really know how to take creativity to the next level, and that's exactly what I like so much about the Vadact server. They are skilled, know how to have a laugh and you never see any of the actual Vadact members get mad in chat or anything like that. Their world consists out of plots, small areas of land you can claim and build your stuff on. You start off with absolutely nothing: no landscape, no structure, just a flat surface. This is what we make of that flat surface:

We fill it up with montains, trees, bushes, rivers, cities, hot air balloons and much more. If you build very good on your plot, you'll get promoted to the next rank and you receive an additional (sometimes also bigger) plot for you to build your next project on.

Gaming behavior

Gaming communities are just like real life communities (sometimes a whole lot weirder, but that depends on the community just like in real life). That's why you need to behave yourself in order to really fit in with a certain community. If you come across some guys building up a meme community, you should stimulate them and give them advice on what you think would be awesome in a meme. If you come across some Call of Duty try-harders, you shouldn't start to talk about that one cat meme you saw on the internet yesterday (even though it may be awesome).
In the Vadact community, you have to remain a bit serious but there is plenty of room for jokes. Helping others is mandatory, so don't get too selfish around there! If you don't help others and give advice about what improvements could be made to a build whenever it's asked, you won't really get into the community and you'll just be sitting there on the side.

Setup

Oh, the ever-so-important setup. My setup is pretty much just a basic home PC (Acer) with two relatively small monitors (Samsung) and a pretty cheap keyboard (Acer, came with the PC), a wireless mouse (Logitech, obviously) and one of the cheapest microphones (Audio-Technica) that delivers relatively decent quality. I also have headphones (Philips, ordered online because my Turtle Beach was broken), but those were in my bedroom when I took the picture.

That's basically all I can say about the way I game, I hope you all liked it!