14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Jagex is announcing that RuneScape, its free-to-play adventure game, is now 12 years old and offers information about the future plans that the team wants to implement in order to celebrate the anniversary.
RuneScape was first introduced in public beta stage on January 4 of 2001 and since then, it has managed to get to 200 million accounts.
During 2012 alone, 3.2 billion player deaths were registered in the MMO and the community logged in no less than 486 million hours in the virtual world.
Mark Ogilvie, the design director working on RuneScape, states, “2012 was filled to the brim with game updates both large and small. Last year saw flurries of graphical reworks of the popular areas of the game, bigger and better boss monsters, an overhaul of the combat system, new starting areas as well as the challenging task of introducing voice acting into the game.”
He adds, “the highlight of the year was undoubtedly witnessing the creation of the 200th million RuneScape account, which secured the game’s place as the most played online game of all time. But 2013 is going to be even better.”
Jagex wants to introduce a new game client that uses the new HTML5 in order to make the game run faster and smoother on all machines.
On the gameplay side, the developers are working on two new skills, a GrandMaster level quest, called Wilderness Warband, a redesign for the Construction skillset and more customization options.
RuneScape was one of the first MMOs to use a free-to-play structure, with players able to engage with the entire game world without paying any monthly subscription.
The model was since adopted by a number of high-profile modern titles, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, with only World of Warcraft from Blizzard still asking for a monthly payment from players.