HiScores

The Hiscores are a website feature in which all players are ranked by their experience in skills. For players to appear in the hiscores:
 * They must be in the top 2 million (for any skill).
 * They must have a minimum skill level of 30 in the skill (13,363 experience points).
 * The player must not be permanently banned.
 * The player cannot be a Jagex staff account (starting with the word 'Mod', eg. Mod Dave).

The hiscores have caused a very competitive atmosphere, and players are very critical of others based upon their ranks. High ranked players are often sources of discussion, both positive and negative. After each new skill comes out, they are not as high on the hiscores as they were before, for a few days. During this time players may follow the top individual in the new skill closely. The hiscores are updated with a players' stats each time they log off.

History
The original hiscores table was updated weekly with players' ranks overall, levels, experience, and change in rank. It recorded the top 100,000 players.

The hiscores were redone on 21 November 2003. The update changed the maximum number of players on the hiscores to 250,000.

This was changed to a maximum of 500,000 on 24 May 2004.

On 1 June 2004 another update to the highscores allowed players to see the hiscores of all the people on that player's Friends list on one page.

On 25 August 2006, the number of people that were on the hiscores was increased to 1,000,000. The change was due to a larger number of accounts, meaning many players were being left off of the hiscores.

It was once again changed on 30 January 2006. The 'compare' function was added and the look of the hiscores page was updated.

On 14 June 2007, Zezima became the first player ever to hit one billion (1,000,000,000) experience in all the skills combined. In February 2008, Uloveme became the second player to reach the one billion total experience mark followed by Yogosun on 1 August 2008, Kingduffy 1 on 30 August 2008, Gertjaars on 16 October 2008, Aasiwat on 4th January 2009, Green098 on 12 January 2009, and Lucipher6 on 30 January 2009.

On 4 May 2008 at 17:39, 4 years, five months and three days after the release of this last Free to play skill, Runecrafting reached one million people on the hiscores.

On 9 July 2008, the limit increased to 2,000,000 people. Although the Crafting skill had not yet topped out at 2,000,000 people above the skill level 30, later that day, the 2,000,000th person achieved 30 Crafting. Runecrafting remains the only Free-to-play skill which has not filled the hiscores.

Skill level of a 2,000,000 ranking player
The table shows the level of a player with a rank of 2,000,000 for each particular skill. A player needs at least this level to be in the top 2 million in that skill in order to appear in the hiscores. If a player falls below the top 2 million, then that skill falls out of the player's hiscores.

Most players develop their combat skills as well as Mining/Smithing/Crafting, Fishing/Cooking, and Woodcutting/Firemaking.

Skills that directly affect combat level (Magic, Attack, Strength), skills that are easy to level up (e.g. Cooking), skills that centre on extraction of resources (e.g. Mining) and skills that are heavily trained or used by bots (like Woodcutting) tend to be very high in the high score and therefore players must achieve higher levels in these skills. Skills that cost a lot of money to train (like Construction), skills that are available only to members (like Herblore), or skills that are slow to train (like Farming and Runecrafting), often have fewer players reaching high level and therefore easier to reach in the high score with lower level.

Skills with fewer than 2 million players above level 30 are marked as ---. See the table on the right.

Minigame rankings
For Duel Tournament a score of 1800 is needed for a player to be ranked. (21,507 rank as of 22 December 2008)

For Bounty Hunter a score of 250 is needed for a player to be ranked. (21,973 rank as of 22 December 2008)

For Bounty Hunter Rogues a score of 250 is needed for a player to be ranked. (78,393 rank as of 22 December 2008)

For Fist of Guthix a 500 rating is needed for a player to be ranked. (370,333 rank as of 22 December 2008)

Level 30 rankings
The second table shows the ranking of a level 30 player for those skills with less than 2 million players. Obtaining level 30 in any of these skills will place a player in the hiscores as long as they stay in the top 2 million.

Skills marked with --- have more than 2 million players with levels over 30. See first table above.

Gertjaars is now the #1 player, who overtook Kingduffy 1 on the 8th of November, 2008. On December 24, 2008, he also became the no.1 player in total XP, overtaking Zezima.

There are currently (as of 4 February 2009) 131 players in the hiscores with all of their stats at level 99.

Trivia

 * Both Hunter and Summoning were temporarily leaked to the hiscores before they were officially released.
 * As of 1 July 2008, when RuneScape HD was launched, the hiscores said "You have to be in the top 2 million in a category..." when you type a person's username who doesn't appear in the hiscores.

Sailing
Shortly before the update, allegedly, a new skill appeared in the hiscores called "Sailing." This has since led to a flood of related posts on the RuneScape Forums. However, this has been confirmed as fake by Mod Dave on the official RuneScape forums. Also, some people claimed the person on the boat in the picture of the RuneScape head image of the time appeared to be wearing a "sailing cape", a fictional Cape of Accomplishment.