RuneScape Forums

The RuneScape Official Forums are forums set up by Jagex Limited to allows players of RuneScape to discuss the game with one another.

Early Forums
The first incarnation of the forums ran from early in 2001, when RuneScape first launched, to November of the same year. No official reason was given for this sudden shutdown.

The Forums V2
Jagex relaunched the forums in November of 2003, after a two year hiatus. These forums were a vast improvement over the previous version. Forum Moderators were introduced with this relaunch (originally called Player Moderators). This version remained in place until April of 2006.

Current Version
The current version of the forums differs slightly from the previous version. The most notable features are an ability to jump between forums directly, a "Quickfind Code" system that allows other people 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, an extended forum profile for seeing which threads one has posted on. In addition, threads and posts which are hidden no longe simply vanish; they are replaced with an indicator stating that the offending item has in fact been hidden from view.

Criticism
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. Flagarant spamming is also a constant problem.

Nevertheless, the official forums remain the most popular method of discussion among RuneScape players, and the marketplace forums in particular have constantly heavy traffic.

External Link
[The RuneScape Official Forums - http://forum.runescape.com/lang/en/aff/runescape/forums.ws]