DEAD GOOD

RUNESCAPE is one of PC gaming's oldest and most successful MMOS, and with its upcoming NECROMANCY skill and content expansion, looks set to continue its storied legacy

- Robert Jones

Somehow, despite PC gaming since the early 1990s, I managed to completely miss the 300-million-account phenomenon that is RuneScape. Maybe it is because my genres of choice have always been RPG and FPS, or maybe it is because I played original WoW to the point where you got your mount and then immediately realised it was my end-game and that I was terminally demotivated to do any more boar slaying, dropping the game stone cold and never playing another MMO seriously since. Whatever the reason, the free-to-play MMO developed by British developer Jagex, completely passed me by.

As such, I was almost perfectly placed to get the lowdown on not just how the venerable 22-year-old MMO has managed to attract more than 300 million gamers to its fold at one point or another over the past two decades, but also just what its incoming Necromancy skill expansion is set to deliver to both new and established RuneScape players alike.

BROTHERS IN BEDROOMS

For those gamers, like me, who missed the RuneScape phenomenon, the story began back in 2001, when brothers Andrew and Paul Gower created the first version of RuneScape in their bedroom in Cambridge while at university. The game was very rudimentary at first, evolving out of MUDs (multi-user dungeon games), and with some initial art drawn by the Gower brothers' own mother.