Community



The Community of RuneScape broadly refers to the collective group of people who have an account. These are divided into members (those who pay a monthly fee and have full access to game content) and non-members (those who play for free with no time limit, but have limitations on skills, items and other content).

The community is composed of players of both the male and female genders, though there is currently a skew towards male players; a poll in March 2008 showed that 90% of respondents claimed to be male. In June, Jagex CEO Geoff Iddison said in an interview: "we’ve got some plans there" to redress the imbalance. Evidence of this appeared around the beginning of September, when the RuneScape banner across the top of the homepage was changed to feature two female warriors prominently.

There are no official figures on the distribution of players' ages, even in aggregate form. However, Geoff Iddison has indicated that most players are in the range 8 to 18 years old, and the trend is towards younger players.

The community includes Jagex moderators (Jagex staff members) and player moderators (ordinary players who Jagex hand-picks as trusted, and who have extra benefits). Members may also contribute to the RuneScape Forums, where the community can discuss various aspects of the game and website, speculate about future updates, and make suggestions for new content. The forums also include a section called "Community - Plan events and interact with other players".

Nationalities and languages
Players represent a wide range of nationalities, with local servers already available in four continents, namely North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico), South America (Brazil), Europe (the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden), and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). Jagex CEO Geoff Iddison has confirmed that he intends to expand the RuneScape player base into parts of Asia (specifically Malaysia and India) and Eastern Europe, but has ruled out Japan.

The game itself is currently available in only two languages, English and German, but a full French version is due for release in December 2008. This will be useful for players in both France and French-speaking Canada. There has been no announcement of a Spanish language version, despite the fact that a poll in August 2008 showed that more players wanted Spanish than wanted French. Additionally, Mod Jon H (a Jagex moderator) announced on the 15 October 2008 that a splash screen in the Dutch language is now available at www.RuneScape.nl

Players who speak languages other than English tend to gravitate to worlds that are populated by other players who speak the same language. For example, some worlds have a percentage of players who speak French, Spanish, Dutch, or Lithuanian.

Moderators
A moderator is a player who has been entrusted by Jagex with extra capabilities, such as the ability to punish rule-breakers. This might include the ability to mute or ban offenders. They are divided into three types - Jagex moderators (Jagex staff members), player moderators (ordinary players that Jagex has hand-picked and entrusted with extra capabilities), and forum moderators (ordinary players who have the ability to perform administrative functions in the RuneScape Forums).

Jagex moderators
Jagex moderators ("J-mods") are employees of Jagex, and occasionally log into the game to talk to players. All Jagex moderators with the exceptions of Paul, Andrew, and Ian, have "Mod" as a prefix in their names. In RuneScape, they are identified by a gold crown beside their names, visible during public and private chat. On RuneScape's official forums, the gold crowns are shown beside their name, and their posts appear highlighted in gold. They have the ability to alter their skill levels at whim and may generate items within their inventory to assist in testing content before it appears in the publicly in the RuneScape game. Jagex moderators also have the ability to appear at any location in the RuneScape world. They do not appear in the high-scores tables.

Player moderators
Player moderators ("p-mods") are regular players who have been carefully selected and invited by Jagex to help maintain the order of the RuneScape environment, keeping it safe and free from rule-breaking. Player moderators are identified by a silver crown beside their names when they send any sort of message in the RuneScape game. They are given the ability to mute players for a period of 48 hours and send priority abuse reports that are directly sent to a member of the Jagex team. Player moderators have access to the Player Moderator Centre, an area on the RuneScape website that allows them to perform their role more effectively. P-mods are not expected to spend greater periods of time playing RuneScape than normal players, and are not even obliged to make use of their special abilities.

Forum moderators
Forum moderators ("f-mods") are normal players who work to carry out the tasks of managing the RuneScape Forums. Forum moderators were hand-picked from a group of normal players by Jagex staff because of their ability to prove consistently that they have the temperament and judgement needed to help monitor fairness and rule breakers in the forums. They are given the ability to move and lock threads, hide posts or entire threads, edit titles, and temporarily ban players from posting. Like player moderators, they are given a private set of forums that are primarily used to help perform their role more effectively. Forum moderators have a green crown beside their name, as well as a green background when they post on the forums. They are not identified by a crown beside their name when they send a message in the RuneScape game.

Language filter
A chat filter is used in both the RuneScape game and the RuneScape forums. When a string of characters is censored, it is replaced by a series of asterisks. The filter is used to censor advertising and "offensive language" such as swear words, hate words, and certain words that could be inflammatory. Over the history of the filter, players have devised ever more creative ways, including use of a modified version of leet, to slip by the filter. This deliberate avoidance of the censorship mechanism is considered a serious violation of the Rules of RuneScape, and has resulted in more and more combinations of letters being censored. For example, for a long period of time, the internet slang word "pwn" was censored, as the "pw" in the word is a common abbreviation for the word password. Also, since advertising websites is in violation of RuneScape rules, all URLs are automatically censored as well.

Overhaul
On 16 May 2006, the chat filter was overhauled. Symbols, such as /, which had been completely locked out, are again permitted, and many words, such as the aforementioned "pw", can now be used. The filter was improved to allow additional symbols, such as vowels with accents as well as §, £, and °. Some non-Latin characters, such as letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, which had appeared as asterisks like a filtered word, are rendered as question marks. This update has also caused some problems. Some words were removed from the filters in error while some are now filtered for no obvious reason. For example, in some instances, when pluralising words, replacing the -s with -z now often results in censoring. Typing nothing but an "s" also results in a filter.

Jagex's community involvement
When RuneScape was relatively new, Jagex was often involved in community affairs. However, today, some players see that Jagex is separating itself from the game community. However, if Jagex continues such involvement, it may be accused of favouritism, since RuneScape has grown by many times. Examples of activities that Jagex used to participate in include:


 * Fan sites: Jagex no longer lists fan sites for security reasons, although some see this as a move to depart from the community. If Jagex actually listed fan sites, owners of sites not listed may accuse Jagex of favouritism. Now, Jagex explicitly states that it will not list fan sites for the above reason.


 * Player achievements: Jagex used to use system messages to announce achievements and player events, such as the wedding of Ladymedusa and M_Oldfield..


 * Jagex used to publicly welcome new staff, but no longer does so.


 * The "Community" section of the news has been removed.


 * Other affairs: Jagex announced the real life wedding of Lady Pooh and Topcat0711, as well as that of Pugxsi and Jenstarr. However, these were removed, presumably because it conflicts with Jagex's now existing rule 13. The passing of Siw39 was announced, but was also removed.


 * Jagex staff no longer post on fan forums under their Jagex names.