hello runescape will miss it here with
the new video and how is everyone doing
you know the older runescape gets the
harder it is to track its history
especially in the 2001 era when the game
was new and the gowers were still in
their 20s
no one really expected the game to
become the mammoth it is today
that's what makes rab so interesting out
of nearly 300 million accounts and 20
years later
he is known as the very first player to
ever sign up to runescape
not only that but he's also the first
non-gower person to moderate and write
content for the game
to finish it off he was also a runescape
beta tester
having played the game already in year
2000 before
its official release some months ago in
relation
to other video projects i had the
privilege to talk to rab for some hours
turns out he's an old coder possibly not
very surprising considering his role
with the jagex in his part in runescape
history
but in his case that also meant that he
kept backups of many files in icq chat
logs
with people like andrew gower from
runescape's first months of existing
this gives us an exclusive look into not
only the first year of runescape
but also into what it was like being on
jackix's side during the release of the
game we've all come to love
i've already mixed a lot of these
details into my previous video about rap
so check that out if you haven't but
this video will mostly cover the small
bits and pieces i couldn't include
elsewhere
but take my word for it it's still
pretty cool
let's jump into it as a runescape fan
it's super exciting to look at the
origins of content
that's become iconic in the game what
you're looking at here is the original
code for the romeo and juliet quest
written in runescript in november of
year 2000.
what's really interesting is to see the
difference between the way the quest was
written and what it's like
in-game this is kind of like a first
version that was never released
like for example in the in-game quest
when saying juliet could do better
she says at least romeo's not obsessed
with fighting
magic and ranging in the original she
says at least he doesn't spend all day
on the internet
i found that kind of funny this is the
original script for the npc
bob the axe salesman what's more
interesting is that rap believes bob was
the original first npc
not hans like it's commonly believed
today following rap bob was introduced
earlier
but was removed for some reason and
quoted back in shortly after
moving hands up the chain of early npcs
but in theory
bob was designed and written before hans
the original lumbridge guide no longer
exists
this dude wasn't around for very long a
few months stops there's only one
unknown image of the lumbridge guide
today
which you can see in the green shirt
right there
the dialogue was mainly to guide new
players into knowing what to do and
where to go with the different modes
that you could choose from
an interesting point in it is that the
dialogue mentions some palace guards
walking around
probably in lumbridge but i found no
proof of them existing at any point
i can only assume there were meant to be
guards walking around in the lumbridge
courtyard which would be high enough
level to kill new players
instantly there's also a few scripts for
some unreleased npcs
mainly a variation of beggars that you
could give brett and me to
but if you said the right thing they'd
give you money instead
here's some scripts of unreleased npcs
that seems to be from quests that
doesn't exist at the moment
the script references to a monk quest
but there's not much context to it
outside of the scripts
but it gives you an idea of the things
that jagex had planned for runescape in
2001
that didn't make it into the game
there's also the original concept for
the family crest quest
which interestingly enough wasn't
released before in april 2002
the funny thing is this quest was
actually written by lady killjoy
a very popular player back in the days
she originally called it the quest of
the magical symbols or family honor
rap also shared some screenshots like
this one which is a great view of the
walkable areas and teleport coordinates
between lumbridge to varrock
or all angles of a sheep also melzora's
may's original design
which was originally supposed to be a
lot larger with a lot more convoluted
ways to get around it
there was a big challenge with mazes
back then because of the minimap
so in its original design it was
supposed to be too large to be able to
see all of it using the minimap
making it harder to navigate through it
the maze was used though
partly obviously it was decreased in
size though and added in with the
dragon's lair
this one is the map editor which andrew
made for runescape
there was a bug with it though where
everything added became mirrored in-game
it's interesting because it means the
game world is actually supposed to be
backwards
like the original maps of the game
famously shows
not making it so wasn't a decision made
somewhere
it was a bug with a map editor this is a
mousemat design that rap made but wasn't
used
it's quite high detailed with all the
sprites and stuff though here's an image
of rap getting 90 woodcutting together
with other legendary players tks and
lady killjoy
now this is probably the most
interesting part
this was an old guide for rap to learn
rune script originally
but some other files have been added in
advance i received this as a zip file
meaning the dates are intact
note the modification dates 2001
2002 summer even dated december 2000
before runescape was even publicly
available what this
is is original design files for the
concept of runescape
this one seems to be an overview of all
in-game commands a moderator account
could use on the launch of runescape
a guide in how to use your moderating
powers as written by andrew gower
it's kind of interesting though a little
confusing from an outsider perspective
i find it kind of cool that this was the
manual new moderators were faced with
though
there's an old archived page of the
cooking skill this page was archived the
day after
fishing was released which makes me
think this was a page released purely
for that
today this resembles the skill page you
get when you click a skill icon in-game
the highest level food back then was
anchovy pizza funnily enough
rabbit also saved some posts from the
old runescape discussion boards
this was like the forums but before the
official forums as we know them
i can't really show everything here
though because some of the things said
here are somewhat sensitive and
discusses a specific player
i'm not too keen on sharing that in the
video now this one is actually super
hilarious
it's the original first newsletter from
late 2002
it was actually changed some time later
the version you find today on the
runescape wiki for example
is actually slightly different what's
been changed is the funny world
andrew gara lived in when writing these
the version you find today
isn't too different but one change is
that the name gabra has been changed to
andrew
not that it matters too much but it's
kind of funny to read these letters
knowing it's mainly andrew garrow
boasting about his own system of banning
people
it all became too much for the mage
known only as gubber
whose ability to manipulate time meant
that these foul-mouthed ruffians now can
be caught red-handed by snapshots
this newsletter was released one month
after the reporting tool was released to
the game
and as the newsletter shows at that
point 439 players had been permanently
banned in total on runescape
where 995 additional players had
received black marks on their accounts
considering how canon these newsletters
turned out to be down the line
though andrew got his character in-game
with a get request i find it funny that
in theory
andrew gower is canon in the game lore
as this powerful wizard
this one is also very interesting it
seems that originally when logging into
a server
you could see who's online how long
they've been online and their total play
time
this page is dated to september 2002 but
i am not sure if that's when it was
saved it seems kinda cool to be able to
see people's activity upon logging in
though
new players at least would get an idea
of how popular the game is amongst the
current player base
this must have been early though
considering there were only 400 people
online at the time
there are a couple of interesting things
on the list there's the player jay
the original owner of the one letter
name who would at some point later go on
to get hijacked
lose the name and eventually have the
name banned due to the high number of
real world trading in the modern
runescape
world there's also mutant mount one of
the first player sign ups
this is actually ian gower's personal
account the longest play time i could
find was alchemon with nearly 14 days
play time
while the longest time without logging
out at this point was this guy with
nearly 4 hours
this page was made prior to the game's
release it was saved in december 2000
and seems to be explaining all the
skills in runescape
you can see that jagex planned to
separate the crafting skill
it's already known there existed a
tailoring skill on the release of
runescape
which was eventually removed but here it
seems it was supposed to be called suing
and was about using wool and what not to
make armor crafting is actually on the
list too
on the bottom here but based on the
description it seems the original design
for crafting resembled a mix of
fletching and today's crafting
seeing you'd be able to make arrows here
i find that interesting
considering fletching and the ability
for players to make arrows wasn't
actually in the game before in 2002
herblore released the has er blah was
spelled somewhat differently in the
original design
based on the description i also get the
idea that potions
wasn't really planned to be a thing but
rather just using the herbs directly for
various purposes
you could make bows with wood cutting
again added to the fletching skill in
2002
with fire making you could add coal to
the fire to make the fire better
whatever that means with smithing though
and this is a fun one
you were meant to be able to make money
by smithing a gold bar
over the gold coins now that'd be
interesting seeing how much has changed
on the list
i'm going to guess this was a very very
early design of the runescape skills
though the file was saved in december
2000
i'm going to be bold and suggest it was
probably made a lot earlier
that cooking is on the top of the list
makes me think that cooking was likely
the first ever skill to be thought up
for the game
i was also sent some old game clients
from 2001 and from when members was
released in 2002
they don't work at all other than
opening them though rabb wasn't
officially a jagex employee back in
these days
so he didn't work in cambridge like the
other jagex moderators did
i don't even know if he got paid for the
work he put into runescape but
that meant a lot of the dialogue he had
with andrew was through icq
chat logs this conversation from
november 2001 seems to be the origins of
the first 2000 player list
andrew seems to be developing the high
scores and finds it interesting that the
fletching boards shows the first 2000
sign
ups it also shows the player ignite is
andrew's personal account
where he also says he hardly plays the
game himself
andrew shows his sign of love for
cabbages which would get copied in game
over time
the most interesting part in my opinion
here is the mention of rs guide
a moderator who attempted to steal
runescape from andrew
what rab is mentioning in this chat is
some of the moderating rs guide was
doing
scamming was a big problem back in 2001
as mentioned in the first video about
rap bluro's impersonators were a
huge problem back in the day this chat
seems to be the origins of the second
trade window in-game
added purely to make sure people
couldn't get scammed by the different
blue rose cameras in the game
you'd think the trade window was a
general security measure in trading
so it's kind of interesting to see
something so vital to the game
being added because of a famous player
being impersonated
let alone being able to read about the
origins of such a fundamental update
duping seems to be a big problem back in
the day too even before the infamous
party hat dupe in 2003
there were several major duplication
glitches that's not been noted in the
game's history
in this chat log andrew and rabb seems
to be talking about a dupe that occurred
in november 2001.
it seems that early day bug fixing was
very simple
just ask whoever was doing it how it was
done andrew seems a bit skeptical
throughout it all though
possibly because he doesn't understand
how to fix the bug in discussion here
rs guide seems to be involved here as
well keeping track of the different bug
abusers
i don't really know if they got banned
though but i would assume so
it's actually kind of interesting that
back then they used to call the act of
banning someone for
deleting them i don't know if they
literally deleted the accounts in this
situation though
this also seems to be after the fact
that rs guide got found out for being a
fraud
in this chat robin andrews seems to be
discussing the rumors in the community
as to why aura's guide suddenly
disappeared people claim he was stealing
codes which
obviously wasn't the issue at this time
the guy literally tried to scam andrew
this chat from april 2002 shows the
moment runescaper close to hitting 10
000 players online simultaneously and
this one as they hit it
they seem to be quite a happy bunch for
the success the game is seeing
ram shared some other things too mostly
about the moderation in the game at the
time
a massive issue in 2001 with a growing
community was the lack of in-game
reporting
meaning a moderator had to be present at
the location where the rules got broken
to judge it
or take the word of other players that
an offense had been committed
rabb brought up an interesting story
which shows this perfectly in relation
to a well-known player in the early day
runescape
called huda best that rap caught botting
mining
this guy was well known and in a rival
clan to raps
meaning a simple ban would cause a lot
of controversy considering rap's
moderator position at the time
so what rap decided to do was to catch
the player in the act and teleported him
to the wilderness
other players in both clans were called
in to come look at the dude botting
by giving who the best items through the
in-game quick codes such as a pink skirt
and then using another quick code to
instantly kill him
he would lose all his items but keep the
pink skirt
and could then be safely banned since
everyone had seen him bought
i think it perfectly reflects how much
of a wild west the game was in the early
days
rap did tell me about the time when the
alcord palace rooftop was used as a
prism
and from time to time players were
teleported there by rap if he suspected
them of breaking game rules
if he wasn't sure he just had to pretend
as if he knew something had happened
and hoped for a confession it sounds
difficult to be a player back in those
days
everything was so raw anyway
that's all i have to show for now there
were some more interesting bits and
pieces in there but i'm going to save
those for a different time
anyway i hope you enjoyed seeing what i
had to share my name is will miss it and
i'll see you all
[Music]
later
[Music]
you