![]() ![]() Most combat spells now only require elemental runes and the appropriate magic level to cast, and all abilities generate Adrenaline that can be expended to use powerful threshold and ultimate abilities. A series of abilities are now unlocked with the Attack, Strength, Defense, Magic, and Ranged skills, offering more hands-on and combo-based fighting mechanics. Older returning players will have to learn the new combat system introduced in November 2012's Evolution of Combat update, which took a serious departure from the classic combat mechanics of standing still and taking turns to hit each other. The content from updates spanning the past decade is all still there, with every quest and area having been kept up to date and in working order. For most recent players, the upgraded client simply acts a shiny lens through which to view the world and the overhauled user interface. The new HTML 5 client looks a hell of a lot better than the Java version, the audio has received an overhaul, and the entire user interface is now customisable, but the core game is still the same. If you've played RuneScape in the past nine months, the gameplay won't have actually changed all that much. Now officially named RuneScape 3, the game has evolved far beyond the previous numbered versions, and I found it a hell of a lot more fun to play. The latest release is a similarly huge step forward, adding an all-new HTML 5 client that will run on any PC, tablet, or smart device, as well as a dedicated downloadable desktop client for Windows. The first fullscreen client landed in 2008 as RuneScape HD, which offered players a new high-detail mode that required a graphics card. Smaller incremental upgrades were made in the years that followed, and developers began releasing new quests and content every few weeks. This was the version that most people played, and it can still be played on the Oldschool RuneScape server with a new character. RuneScape still looked a generation behind the big industry players, but for the first time it was a fully 3-D MMO. The first major engine overhaul came with 2004's RuneScape 2 beta, which replaced the 2-D monster sprites, and characters with basic animated 3-D models and produced new graphics for practically every object in the game. Writing the game in Java presented some pretty serious graphical limitations but was ultimately a huge boon for developer Jagex as accessibility through a web browser helped the game's initial explosion in popularity. The original RuneScape was crude even for its day, with a world that barely qualified as 3-D, no sound effects, and very little to do but grind skills for months on end. In this hands-on opinion piece, I put RuneScape's three major versions side by side and look at how far RuneScape 3 has come since those early days of punching 2-D goblins and mining for fish. This combines with last year's Evolution of Combat update and over a decade of new quests and zones to produce an MMO with more depth and character than many other AAA titles. It now boasts a visually improved HTML 5 client with graphics acceleration, orchestral music, some voice-acted quests with cutscenes, and a fully customisable UI. The game was recently reincarnated as RuneScape 3, which is as far as it gets from the primitive game many of us grew up with. The secret behind RuneScape's success is that it's been continually updated throughout its lifetime, not just with regular infusions of new content but also with several major graphical and gameplay overhauls. The 2007 Sunday Times Rich List even estimated the Gower brothers' business empire to be worth over £113,000,000, due almost entirely to RuneScape. RuneScape launched to the public in 2001 as a low-res browser game with only a few hundred players and 2-D sprites for monsters, but several years later it boasted over a million paying monthly subscribers. Over a decade ago, two brothers working out of their parents' house in Nottingham set themselves the impossible task of building their own graphical multi-user dungeon, a genre that later evolved into the MMOs we know today.
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