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 banned. Banned players are removed from the hiscores. If a player is unbanned, they appear on the hiscores again.
 * Jagex Moderators' test accounts (on which they can change stats and spawn items) do not appear on the hiscores. All these accounts begin with the word "Mod" except for Andrew, Paul, and Ian. Jagex Moderators' real accounts, however, do appear on the hiscores. These are just regular accounts with no special powers that Jagex Mods create to play on for fun. They are just regular players and there is no way to know that they work for Jagex unless they reveal this information (and typically they don't).

Some players view the hiscores very often and perceive the game to be very competitive. These players look up their own ranks often and may note how much experience they need to gain to reach a certain rank. Also, many players look up their friends in the hiscores often. Some of the top ranked players are often followed as well.

Other players do not view the hiscores very often and do not perceive the game to be as competitive.

The hiscores are updated with a player's stats each time they log out. An exception is that a player's hiscores do not update if they are automatically logged out of the game due to a system update.

The hiscores for a player do update if a player reaches the 6-hour auto-log.

Minimum levels
The minimum level to be ranked in the hiscores is level 30, unless more than 2 million players are already ranked, in which case a skill level of 30 will not rank a player. The following table shows the current minimum levels for each skill to be ranked on the hiscores.

Minigames set the minimum "level" differently, according to the minigame's scoring system. See the table below.

History
The original hiscores table was updated weekly with players' ranks overall, levels, experience, and change in rank. It recorded the top 2,000 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 hiscores allowed players to see the hiscores of all the people on that player's Friends list on one page.

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

On 25 August 2005, 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 the hiscores.

On 4 May 2008 at 17:39, 4 years, five months and three days after the release of this last free 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 skill that 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 (like Woodcutting) tend to be very high in the hiscores 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 hiscores with lower level. As of December 2009, the only skills in which nobody has reached 2,000,000 experience are Slayer, Runecrafting, and Summoning.

Trivia



 * In early July 2008, there was a rumor that an icon for a Sailing skill appeared on the Hiscores. However, this rumor has been confirmed as false by Jagex mods. Various mods have said that a sailing skill is unlikely.
 * Both Hunter and Summoning were temporarily leaked to the hiscores before they were officially released.
 * Summoning was leaked on 11 January 2008 when an "undefined" skill appeared in the hiscores.
 * 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.
 * There are currently, as of 27 December 2009, 469 players with all of their skills at level 99.
 * As of 26 October 2009, 10 free players have all 15 non-member skills at level 99.
 * On 2 September 2009, some maxed players (2376 total level) were shown on the hiscores as having 2377 total level instead of 2376.
 * Mod Fetzki has stated that new features are planned for the hiscores, as mentioned here.