RuneScape Forums


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The RuneScape forums are a part of the RuneScape website that allows players to discuss the game with one another. These include specific areas for players to:
 * react to recent updates or to announced future updates, and even to speculate, and discuss suspected clues or hints from Jagex about future content;
 * submit proposals for suggested new features;
 * ask for help with aspects of the game such as quests and clue scrolls;
 * organise in-game events;
 * arrange to buy or sell items to other players directly, without the restrictions imposed by the Grand Exchange (though players' own trade limits still apply).

Most parts of the forums can be read by everyone, even logged out. Members, and as of 8 April 2009, free players with over 12.5 million overall experience, can post messages on the forums. The free players' access provoked a lot of discussion beforehand. 12.5 million exp. overall is about all F2P skills at level 72.

The forums are bound by their own set of rules, called the Code of Conduct, which "details exactly what is and is not acceptable behaviour within the Jagex Forums". The censor that filters in-game chat is also applied to the forums.

There was once a glitch on the forums when a forum moderator wanted Jagex to view a thread, usually when they banned someone, and if you searched for that particular thread there would be a red arrow icon, like the locked and sticky one, and when you hovered over it said "Thread is escalated". The forum moderators have declared it a glitch, and it has since been fixed.

Early forums (2001)
The first incarnation of the forums ran from early in 2001, when RuneScape was first launched, to 14 November of the same year. The earliest version of the forums had a threaded view, while it was later updated to have a linear view. The forums were available to all players. Later, Jagex added a 60 overall skill total requirement to use the forums, to discourage people from using "throwaway" accounts to cause trouble. The forums were shut down on 14 November 2001 due to abuse.

Return of forums (2003 to 2006)
Jagex relaunched the RuneScape Forums as a beta on 11 November 2003, after a two year hiatus. However, this time, the forums were only available to members. These forums were a vast improvement over the previous version. Forum Moderators were introduced with this relaunch (originally called Player Moderators). After the beta had ended, free users were given the ability to view posts.

On 18 March 2004, Jagex announced that the total amount of posts had reached 1 million, and that on average 8,000 users had logged into the forums every week. This version remained in place until April 2006.

Current version (2006 to present)




The current version of the forums was released in the New RuneScape Forums! update of 10 April 2006, and differs slightly from the previous version. The most notable features are an ability to jump between forums directly, a "Quick Find Code" system that allows other players to find threads quickly, a "Bump" button which allows a thread creator to bump his/her own topic without having to actually post on it, and an extended forum profile for viewing which threads one has posted on. In addition, threads and posts which are hidden no longer simply vanish; they are replaced with an indicator stating that the thread has in fact been hidden from view. Also, when a post is hidden, it is replaced with an indicator stating that the post has been hidden from view.

Jagex staff can use HTML markup in the forum. Players used to be able to use the  and  tags in the earliest version to create bold and italic text respectively, but can no longer do so.

Threads that fall beyond page 50 are automatically deleted. Some players refer to these threads as being "eaten by the page 51 monster", which has also acquired the nickname "Chewy". This personification has been used by a Jagex Moderator on at least one occasion.

On 8 April 2009, F2P were granted access to the forums, provided they had 12.5M total experience. This resulted in a huge amount of players ranting in the rant forums.

Home page
The RuneScape Forums Homepage is the portal to the entire forums, containing nearly every link to every page. It contains links to "My Profile", "Search Threads", and "Jump to Thread". Below the title, there is the Code of Conduct link, Forum Mods list and the number of active users currently viewing the forums.

The number of active users varies during different times of the day, from about 100 people at 9:00am to 800 at 11:00pm and even over 2000 after the removal of player killing and the trade limit, with most of those in rants.

Beneath the Active Users, then all the way down to the bottom of the page is the forums list, containing the links to every forum.

Code of Conduct
The Code of Conduct contains all the rules that apply to the RuneScape Forums. Jagex has recommended that every user should read the Code of Conduct at least once, especially before they start using the forums for the first time.

Recently, Forum Moderators have been issuing forum mutes for breaching the rules instead of forum bans. There has been discussions on the Forum Feedback Forum saying that "mute" sounds less intimidating than a "ban", and it works better. When a person is muted, they cannot speak or post on the Forums but can still see. If you are banned, you are excluded from using the forums. Therefore, forum mute has replaced forum ban.

Forum-specific rules
Every forum has its own forum-specific rules which are extra rules that players are supposed to follow on that forum. These are general guidelines on how to use the forum you are posting in more efficiently.

On 5 February 2009, the Forum Specific Rules were updated to include a new HTML coding. Mod Stevew, a Jagex Moderator, posted a thread about it on the Forum Feedback Forum.

Forum Mods list
The Forum Moderators list is accessed using the link below the heading "RuneScape Forums" on the Forums Homepage. It contains a list of every current forum moderator that helps Jagex maintain order. It is regularly updated when forum moderators take a break or quit. This list is updated manually.

Originally, the Forum moderator list showed if a moderator was logged in or not, meaning that a player could wait until there was minimal mod supervision so they were less likely to get caught. This feature was removed, trying to help stop spam and general rule breaking.

Jagex Moderators were also shown online on their list. This was removed, too, to avoid spam.

My profile


This is the page that for every user is different depending on what they have done on the forums. It contains a list of every thread that that player has posted on, their post count and the ability to toggle smileys on and off. You can access them by going the link to "My Profile" at the top of most pages on the forums, next to the image of a green man in a square.

At the top of the page there is your user name twice, once exactly as it would look on top of everyone of your posts and the second one in the brackets being the exact spelling including underscores but not using capitals. It is not known why this is included on the page since it has no apparent use.

Your ability to turn on and off smileys and your post count are located in the same box on the right hand side. By turning smiley faces on, smiley faces will rather than being made of text, they will be an image of a yellow smiley face with a grey hat. By turning smileys on, you reverse this. Your post count, which is right below the smiley feature is the total amount of posts that you have made on the RuneScape Forums. This number is used by some players in their signatures.

The table at the bottom of the page contains 5 columns and as many rows as threads you have posted on that are still active. The first column called "Status" and shows if the thread is sticky, locked or both. The second column is "Thread Title" or simply what the name of the thread is. Title is a link and therefore possibly makes it the easiest way of finding a thread you have previously posted on. The third column is the Forum that the thread was posted in. The forum name is a link to the forum which is sometimes practical. There have been some Complaints though about some forum names which stretch out the page by taking up two lines like News & Announcements and most Suggestion Forums. The fourth column is the date last posted on the thread. This is how the different threads in the list are sorted, with the first thread that you posted on at the bottom, second thread you ever posted on second from the bottom etc. The time automatically updates when you post on the thread again though it doesn't move it position on the table. The fifth and final column is the "Show posts by (Username)" part. By pressing show next to a thread, it shows every post that you have ever made on that thread, but it only keeps your first 100 posts. "View in thread" takes you to the exact page that it was posted, useful for finding out if someone replied to a message that you posted a while ago.That is the limit of its use though and is not used much for that reason.

Viewing a thread
By viewing a thread, you can read every single post that has been made by members on that specific thread. This allows you to read this then comment which is the basic principle of a forum.

Each thread is made up of posts, of which there are 10 posts to a page and 200 pages to a thread, the only exceptions being when either two people post on the same second for the 2000th post, one will go over the page, when a moderator has to posts to tell people to not spam for milestone posts etc. or for certain Jagex threads that are sticky.

Every thread page contains a Link to the Code of Conduct, a link for refreshing the page (reloading to see if any new posts have been made), an "up to (forum name)" link and a section for easy manoeuvring between pages on that thread. If the thread is not locked/hidden or reached 2000 posts, there will also be the option to Reply (see below). And if you created the thread then there will also be the bump option.

The section for easy manoeuvring between posts contains 5 options. From Left to right, "<< First" takes you back to the first page of the thread, which is the page you automatically appear on when you go to the thread. "< prev" takes you back one page. So if you were on page 5 and clicked "< prev", you would go to page 4. The middle section shows "Page x of y", telling you what page number you are on out of how many. By typing a number into where the x is and pressing enter, you can automatically go to that page. The fourth link, called "next >" takes you to the next page. So if you were on page 5 and clicked next, you would go to page 6. The last link which is "Last >>" takes you to the last page, showing the latest posts players have made.

The bump button allows players to bump their own thread to the top of the forum without spamming the thread by typing "bump". You can only press it once every 10 minutes and there is no indication showing when 10 minutes is up. This has received some criticism because some players have 20+ legitimate threads that require bumping.

Replying/posting


Being able post messages is the main difference between being a member and a non-member on the forums, with everything else that you can do revolving around posting. As a member, you can post on any thread on the forums as long as they are not locked or hidden by a forum moderator.

Posts can be made of straight white text or text with smiley faces. Jagex Moderators have the ability to post large Jpeg images, italics, bold and different colours though this ability is very rarely used.

In order to post a message, the link at the bottom and top of the page that says "Reply" leads a page that has a text box and 3 button links: Add message, Preview Post and Cancel which are all beneath the text box. There is also a hyperlink back to the forum you were looking at.

There is also a character count beneath the text box showing how many more characters you can type until you reach the maximum. There is a maximum of 2000 characters per post including spaces (about the size of the replying/posting section) and when you go over 2000 characters, it starts deleting characters from the bottom of the post. Beneath that is the smileys list, showing all the different smileys that you can post on the forums. By clicking on the smiley image you want, it will automatically be added to where your last typed something in your message.

The Button called "Cancel" is a link back to the thread that you clicked on reply for. It doesn't add the message and nothing is saved so it is basically the same as pressing back. The "Preview post" link right next to Cancel shows what the message will look like when it is posted on a thread. It contains the text box with your current message right below it. Unfortunately, there isn't much use for previewing unless you are posting ASCII art since the forums are just text based and therefore are very much what you see is what you get. The final button, labelled "Add message" This is final, meaning that everyone can read what you typed unless you edit your post afterwards. When you add the message, it is automatically placed at the bottom of the thread, visible to everyone.

Search threads


Using the Search Threads feature is a vital part of using the forums being used to help buy and sell items, find specific threads, find guides and locate gilded alters. A link to it is located at the top of every page, meaning that you can nearly always access it.

Search is really simple when you first look at it. You type a word or phrase into the box and press go, then it will be matched with all the different thread titles in the entire forums and the best matches will show. Next to all the threads, there are five swords representing how accurate the match was.

The Advance Search option allows you to minimise the results that you get, getting a more specific results. "Show threads created by" option lets you find your own threads with ease. "Include threads that are Locked/Stickied" feature is not used often, especially for sticky threads since there are so few of them compared to the rest of the forums. The Show threads is in the Group/Forum allows people to target specific forums, being the most commonly used advanced search feature. The forum feature specifically allows you to get about one thirtyth of the results. Created and last message posted don't really get any use at all.

Jump to thread and quick find codes
The Jump to a Thread section at the top of every page and the Quick find code combine to help make finding a specific thread that you have visited before a lot easier. They are vital part is for people that are constantly visiting the same threads over a long period of time.

The Quick find code is a 14 digit code that is located at the bottom of every thread in a 2-2-2-8 pattern. The first 2 numbers are unique to the forum (e.g. every thread in Forum Games will have the first 2 digits 55, General 14) You can copy that code then if you paste it in the Jump to Thread box on any other page, then press go it will take you to the thread it was originally located on.

Some users made a list of all their threads on a word document and then use it to help them visit all their threads to bump them to the top of the forums. It is also used to advertise threads in the Goals and Achievements forum by putting the Quick find code at the bottom of their post, hoping to get their total supporters list up.

Locked, sticky, moved, and hidden threads
Both Forum Moderators and Jagex Moderators use their ability to Lock, Move, and Hide threads to help maintain order and clean up the Forums. Jagex moderators can also Sticky threads. This is a vital part of the forums, with 100s of threads locked, hidden or made sticky every day.

Threads can be locked by both Forum and Jagex Moderators. When a thread is locked, regular users can not post on the thread, though they can still read what has been said on it. Locking threads is the most common thing that Mods do, with them locking threads to help stop spam threads or rule breaking threads, stop players from posting on certain sticky threads and help players that want their thread to die. Locked threads can still be posted on by Forum Mods and Jagex mods since normally when they see a rule breaking thread, they will lock the thread then post why they locked it afterwards.

Any thread can be made sticky, though only Jagex Moderators have the power to make a thread sticky, not Forum Moderators. Sticky threads are always at the top of the forums they are located on, though they still count to the total amount of threads on the forum. They usually contain either an important message from Jagex, a place for commonly suggested threads/ideas, things that Jagex would like players opinions on or a popular player thread. Some important Sticky threads include the "I Need A Mod!" Thread, "Need a Title Change/Move/Lock?" thread and most of the Guaranteed Poll Suggestions.

By moving threads, Moderators can help less duplicate threads made and therefore less locked threads are created. A moved thread is simply transferred from one forum to another, word for word and making the old thread have a direct link to the new thread and new Quick Find Code. Moved threads are quite rare since the thread has to be in the completely wrong forum and reasonably well written for a mod to move it.

Only the most serious threads get hidden where it is blatantly obvious that they broke the rules, since if a thread is hidden a mod can't post the reason for locking the thread. Threads are not hidden that often for that reason.

Jagex Moderators can also set threads so that posts have to be approved before they can be viewed. Only threads where players would need to post confidential information, such as the "Account Review Thread", have the auto-hide feature enabled, as the posts can only be viewed by Jagex Moderators.

The sticky called Need Title Change/Move/Lock? is found in the Contact Us Forum section of the RuneScape Forums. It is used for requesting a mod to change the title of your thread, move it to the appropriate forum if needed, and to lock your thread at your desire. You are entitled to one request per thread you have. This sticky is a response to all the requests player made on the Forum Feedback Forum to have this sticky created. It was crated by a former Forum Moderator and his thread was hidden. Few days after that, Mod Poppy, a Jagex Moderator, created the sticky due to popular demand. You can also request a Moderator to hide posts in your thread that messed up your reserves.

Criticism
A long time ago, probably a few years, a Jagex Moderator made a sticky in the Discontinued Items section of the official forums and claimed that this item was no longer obtainable and it was then discontinued. Merchants were paying up to 1M for them, but a few hours after it was posted, a different Jagex Moderator edited the post and said that it was a mistake. Many players felt this was an attempt by Jagex of "stealing from the rich and giving to the poor".

Too Draconian
The RuneScape Forums have always fallen under criticism by many users. The usual sources of criticism tend to be related to the overall behaviour of the users themselves, and to some degree the way the volunteer moderators handle problems that arise. Many people feel that Jagex empowers its moderators to the point where they are heavy handed, and any type of public protest/questioning of a moderator's conduct - warranted or not - is greeted with disdain and discipline. Jagex themselves also come under fire for problems which escalate from the aforementioned problems.

Nevertheless, the official forums remain the most popular method of discussion among RuneScape players.

Not harsh enough
Many users feel also that Forum moderators are too lenient and do not enforce the rules strictly enough. This has created opposing views on Forum Feedback where many of the problems they believe are actually due to the worst rule-breakers getting too many appeals, who then only come back to cause problems.

For example, spam is one area where many users feel that rule-breakers shouldn't be given second or third chances and they should remain banned, especially when it is mass spam.

Some forum users complain that stolen accounts are left unbanned due to the habit of leniency on general rule-breakers, and these occurrences are another example of where they feel stricter controls are needed when dealing with rule-breakers.

Between those two camps (those who feel things are too strict and those who think things are not strict enough) there may lay solutions and suggestions that can help improve the forums, making Forum Feedback one of the most important parts of the official forums.

Spam


Spam has become a constant problem in the RuneScape forums, most notably in the Suggestions and Game Feedback Forums. Sometimes spam remains unnoticed for hours, or even days, before a moderator takes action. The Game Feedback Forum is one of the most spammed areas; at any given time there are at least one or two 'I've been hacked' or 'I've been scammed' threads in the Game Feedback Forum.

Post farming
Some players believe that the Forum Games Forum should be removed because some players use it to quickly raise their post count by posting one or two word response games.

Rants Forum
The rants forum has come under heavy criticism ever since it has been around. Some believed that the Rants forum was too spam-filled, and promoted flaming. A thread requested for the Rants Forum to be merged with the Compliments forum to form a Game Feedback Forum, after all, Compliments and Rants were both made for feedback, but both filled with spam. This was achieved when Jagex finally removed the Rants and Compliments forum in 2008 and replaced it with the Game Feedback Forum.

In 2009, Mod MMG announced the re-opening of the rants forum. This caused mixed emotions among players where some were happy that it was back and some were upset due to the fact that it was dubbed a Spam forum or the "cesspool" of the forums. Upon mass amounts of spam, Jagex converted the rants forum into a sticky-only forum where people would post their issues on already existing threads. This was once again reverted and the rants forum was returned to being a normal forum where players could create their own threads.

Reality of the Internet
The reality of the Internet, however, means that no forum will ever be free of spam or of those wanting to take advantage of any potential lapses in moderation or policy that would leave players vulnerable to many Internet Security issues. To be fair, all popular Internet message boards have major issues with spam, flamers, trolls and sadly, scammers. In this way the RuneScape forums are required to deal with the same issues experienced by any other popular forum.

RuneScape Forums as an information tool
These forums provide a place for Jagex to further inform players about the dangers of account theft by Fake RuneScape Sites, as well as technical information in the Basic Technical Help Guide and a summary of how to seek assistance from the RuneScape website for Account Issues should players find their accounts compromised.

"I Need A Mod!" sticky


The "I Need A Mod!" sticky in Contact Us is used for reporting serious incidents on the Forums. Examples of reportable incidents include:


 * Password scamming/item scamming
 * Players posting third-party websites
 * Personal attacks
 * Mass spamming
 * Personal details
 * Selling/buying RuneScape accounts, gold or items
 * Offensive content
 * Trade thread hijacking

When reporting on the "I Need A Mod!" sticky, all users must use the required template or risk their report being ignored. Any posts that are not reports are considered spam, and repeated abuse can lead to a Forum Mute, which lasts for 72 hours.

Moderators hide reports as they are dealt with, and sometimes post messages to remind users of the correct use of the sticky.

Official notices on the forums
Due to the ease with which information can be posted on the forums as well as the fact this allows Jagex to get direct feedback from players at the same time, often official notices are posted in stickies in the Recent Updates forum or Tech Support forum. This has meant the Forums are often the first place where notices about minor changes or temporary issues are posted. A good example is the Last Week's Updates - FAQ which can be found stickied at the top of the Recent Updates forum.

Official marketplace forums
It is disputed whether the Marketplace Forums should exist due to the introduced trade limit, and the Grand Exchange, which is easier to trade with. However, due to the increasing use of a new player to player trading technique known as Junk trading, which Jagex have determined is permitted on the official forums, there has been a noticeable resurgence in these forums. The Marketplace forums can also be used to borrow or lend expensive item.

Though these Marketplace forums are nowhere near as busy as they once were, their importance has re-emerged, leading to further debate about how to improve their structure and supervision by Jagex Moderators & Forum moderators.

Search "Marketplace" on Forum Feedback to see players' current discussion threads about the state of these official trading forums.

Game feedback
On 2 September 2008, the Compliments Forum and Rants Forum where merged to create the "Game Feedback" Forum. The Forum logo is half of the Compliments logo (Yellow, left) and half of the Rants Forum logo (Red, right). The merging of these two Forums was originally suggested on a well-known Forum Feedback thread in late July 2007.

Game suggestions section
On 22 September 2008, the Suggestions Forum was deleted and along came the new category: Game Suggestions. There had been a sticky in the Forum Feedback forum for over a month asking players to offer feedback and suggestions on what Forums to add. The proposed layout was as follows:


 * Game Suggestions
 * Item Suggestions
 * Area/Achievement Diary Suggestions
 * Quest and Minigame suggestions
 * NPC/Monster Suggestions
 * Skill Suggestions
 * Other Suggestions

However, this layout was modified. Each new Suggestions Forum now has five sticky threads: "Welcome!", "Do Not Suggest - List", "High Level Content" (specific high level content for each Suggestions Forum), "Want To Be A Games Developer?", and "How To Report On The Forums".

Private forums
On 9 October 2008 Jagex announced the release of two private forums; the High Level Forum for players with a level of 99 in every skill and the Clan Leaders Forum for the leaders of established clans.

The High Level Forum was designed to allow Jagex to "tap into the expertise of some of their most experienced players". The Clan Leaders Forum was designed to allow Jagex to offer more support for clans.

On 14 October 2008 Jagex began allowing clan leaders to apply for access to the Clan Leaders Forum. Currently the only way to gain access to the High Level Forum is to achieve a level of 99 in every skill.

PvP and PvM forums
On 9 October 2008, Jagex released the PvP (Player vs Player) and PvM (Player vs Monster) Forums. The PvP Forum is the replacement of the Duelling and PK-ing Forums, as neither Forum was serving much of a purpose any more. The PvM Forum was created to save space in the Events Forum, because it was full of monster team threads.

Contact Jagex
On 23 March 2009, the Contacting Jagex sub-forum was added. This allowed players to get their threads locked, moved or get a title change. One can also use it to tell Jagex if there is a scam website.

Free-to-play Access
Ever since the 8th of April, 2009, free players with an excess of 12.5 million exp could access the forums without having membership credit. This allows high-level free players to access the forums. This was announced in the News and Announcements forum, on a thread entitled, "Forum Open to High Level F2P". This has had mixed response from players. Some welcomed the coming of new non-members to the Forum, while others did not, mainly on the grounds that members pay for membership. A mass number of similar titled threads have since ensued in the rants forum. Many members called for refunds whilst others asked for separate forums.

Rants section change
On 15 April 2009 Jagex changed the recently added rants forum so players put rants on stickies rather than making a thread about it. This caused some player outcry, with the most ranted thing on the forum being the new rants forum.

Now the Rants Section now allows players to add threads due to low feedbacks of stickies. Date is unknown of the change.

2009 poll
A poll started on 21 January 2009 investigated members' attitudes and behaviour regarding the forums. Players voted on what new feature they would most like to be added to the forums. The most popular answer was an "option to include an image of your in-game character [an avatar] when creating threads", with 25 percent. Jagex has been careful to point out that the poll was not a Guaranteed Content poll, implying that they may not add any features from the poll, regardless of the results. Nevertheless, CEO Mark Gerhard has confirmed that avatars will indeed be added. 11 percent of respondents in the poll said they "do not want anything adding to the forums".

The poll showed that 51 percent of respondents claimed to visit the forums only occasionally, rarely or never, including 8 to 10 percent who said they never visited (the figure varied between questions). 42 percent said they visit at least once per week, including 20 percent who visit at least once per day. 76 percent of respondents claimed to post on the forums only occasionally, rarely or never, including 25 percent who have never posted. 19 percent said they post at least once per week, including 8 percent who post at least once per day. The most popular single area of the forums was the marketplace with 11 percent, though a number of other areas scored almost as highly.