Introduction
Welcome to the homepage to my final project! These are a series of five linked webpages that are all Oldschool Runescape themed! I have taken information from multiple pages from oldschool.runescape.wiki and adapted them to this project. Enjoy your visit to my site, and learn a little bit about one of my favorite games.
What is Oldschool Runescape?
Old School RuneScape is Jagex's official term for a previous version of the RuneScape game that was introduced from a backup of the RuneScape source code as it had been on 10 August 2007. It is also commonly referred to as OSRS or 2007scape.
This version of the game was announced in a news post on 13 February 2013, which was followed by the opening of a poll to determine community interest on 15 February 2013. The poll, which ended 1 March 2013, decided, among other things, whether an additional membership fee would be charged for access to the game.[1][2]
The poll ended at 00:00 UTC on Friday 1 March 2013 with the final tally of votes at 449,351.[2] Although 500,000 votes were needed to allow no additional membership fee, Jagex stated that the first six months of Old School RuneScape will not have any additional charge. It has since remained open without any additional charge. Currently, Old School RuneScape is running both free-to-play and pay-to-play servers, and players can create new F2P accounts for free without having to pay for membership.
Despite it having originally been stated that servers would take one to two months to be opened following a successful poll, on 22 February 2013 as part of an Early Access scheme, Jagex opened over 50 Old School RuneScape servers and gave a month of free Old School RuneScape membership credit to it to all of those who had voted in the poll. The game quickly saw player counts equalling those of RuneScape 3.
Old School RuneScape works similarly to RuneScape Classic in that players can use their main accounts to access both games. However, any accomplishments, such as stats, items and quests, are separate and non-transferable. All players, regardless of achievements in other versions of the game, begin Old School RuneScape on Tutorial Island with a new character.
Old School RuneScape is rated T for Teen by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, 16 by Pan European Game Information committee, and Restricted to 15+ by the Australian Classification Board.
Core differences between Oldschool Runescape and Runescape 3
This version of Runescape is fundamentally different than the other version of this game that is still supported, Runescape 3. It would be wrong to say that Runescape 3 is the current version of the game, as Oldschool is constantly updated with new content exclusive to its own version of hte game. Here are some core differences between the two versions:
- Players must be aged 13 or over to play Old School RuneScape.
- Old School has turn-based combat that is mediated exclusively with weapons, armours, and prayers rather than Evolution of Combat, which makes use of abilities.
- Graphics are basic, with no texture packs to enhance models.
- The official game client also does not make use of GPU processing, using CPU only.
- The latest quest from the original game is King's Ransom. Later quests are developed separately.
- Aside from membership bonds, there are no Jagex microtransactions, such as Squeal of Fortune, Treasure Hunter, or Solomon's General Store.
- There is no Summoning, Dungeoneering, Divination, or Invention skill.
- Distractions and Diversions do not exist officially; however, some that were later given this title exist.
- A number of minigames do not exist; however, there are some minigames unique to Old School.
- Items that have been previously discontinued still exist. There also exist items that were never available before, such as beach boxing gloves and black partyhats.
Content
Most new content in the game is decided by Jagex-run polls based on player feedback obtained from social media such as the RuneScape Forums, Twitter, and Reddit. Players must have at a total level of at least 280 in Old School RuneScape to be eligible to vote in these polls. In order for a poll to be successful, it must be supported by 75% of the votes. Players could vote on Old School RuneScape's poll page on the official website (prior to this features' removal) and currently vote in-game via poll booths that are located in every bank.
After initially remaining largely identical to the original 2007 version for the first few months after launch (save for minor bug fixes and quality of life changes), the God Wars Dungeon and the Nightmare Zone were introduced as the first major updates for Old School (the former was present in the archive, the latter was the game's first entirely original content update). In the years since, new quests (Monkey Madness II, Dragon Slayer II, the Great Kourend quest series), areas (Kebos Lowlands, Ver Sinhaza, Weiss), and skilling updates (Rooftop Agility, Aerial fishing, the Motherlode Mine) have gradually transformed Old School into a unique game separate and distinct from the "vanilla" version. The game world is thus in a unique position of containing updates from 2001-2007 and from 2013 to the present, with low-resolution locations like Lumbridge and Ardougne existing alongside more modern-looking locations like Mount Karuulm and Fossil Island.
Holiday items
Holiday items were first introduced into the game via random drop similar to the original holiday item drops. Each world only had one item spawned at a time in location chosen randomly from a predetermined list. Items stayed visible for 30 minutes or until they were picked up, at which point they would randomly respawn again. The first drop was held in the first week of June. Players could also obtain holiday items by killing a Jagex Moderator.
Later on, all holiday items from previous events were rewarded in bulk for completion of the corresponding holiday events (players completing an Easter event would receive all holiday items from previous Easter holiday events). This also included newly added holiday items unique to Old School—e.g. the rainbow partyhat.