Name: RuneScape

Company: Jagex Ltd., a UK-based game developer.

Overview: Set in the fantasy world of Gielinor, RuneScape lets users undertake quests, battle monsters, learn skills, collect items, and chat as they explore the realm.

How it Works: RuneScape runs in its own browser window, using Java. Navigate in-world by point-and-click, and adjust the camera angle with the arrow keys. There's also a simple side menu to adjust in-game settings and manage inventory-- and all of it's introduced in a friendly tutorial that appears when you begin. All in all, it plays a lot like an old-school PC adventure game, with the ability to interact with and examine people and objects by clicking on them.

Payment Model: RuneScape offers both a free mode and a subscription option-- members pay $5 monthly. The free mode has limited access to the expansive world map, and is only updated with limited frequency. Other members-only benefits include weekly updates, exclusive skills and items, the ability to build a home, and a considerably larger number of available quests. Jagex gets part of its revenue from memberships and the rest from an advertising agreement with WildTangent Games-- which also distributes RuneScape through its network. Using ad-blocking software in the free version is a violation of the rules.

Key Features:
-Music and ambient sound effects play continually, unique to each game area
-Option to run game with either hi or lo res graphics
-Fans share information via official forums
-Two moderator types: company employees and vested players

Useful Links:
Membership Benefits
RuneScape Knowledge Base
RuneScape Forums
RuneScape Reaches 1 Million Members
WildTangent Explores RuneScape
Brunel Study Claims RPGs are Good For Kids

To adventure in Gielinor, you'll first need to sign up at the RuneScape site; once you've chosen a name and password, you can launch the game, which runs in its own window, and login there. The graphics in general are somewhat crude by current standards, but there's still a good degree of customizability when building your avatar. Though you're bound to the earthly semblance of a human-- no fantasy creatures or even unusual skin tones-- you can choose male or female, and fully customize the color and style of each element of the body, like hair and clothing-- and supernatural hair colors are just fine.

RuneScape starts all new adventures off with an in-depth tutorial; deposited on Tutorial Island, you're instructed step by step through the various elements of navigating and adventuring, and increasingly complex options open up-- all demonstrated to you little by little by helpful instructors along the way, who also give you all of the necessary starting equipment to perform those tasks on your own. You'll learn to fell trees for their logs, build fire, fish and cook, and will be trained in mining, battling, magic, banking and prayer, too.

All commands given to your avatar are performed through a menu that surrounds the play window; The interface is detailed but clean, avoiding overcomplexity. Free players will see banner ads running over their play window-- and using ad-blocking software is considered a terms of service violation. Using the menu buttons and tabs, users can manage inventory, exchange equipment and communicate with other players, in addition to managing friend lists and ignore lists. You can even change the background music, though you won't be able to access new songs until you enter the appropriate area.

The music is rather worth mentioning, actually-- it's lovingly done and detailed, and each action has an appropriate sound effect. During times of quiet, ambient sound helps craft atmosphere specific to the surroundings-- twittering birds, or the rustle of wind, for example.

Interacting in the environment is simple point-and-click, sometimes with the option to open a sub-menu for various tasks, depending on the object of your interest-- for example, you can select whether to examine a person or speak to them.

Primarily, though, interaction among players seems to be focused on the property trade-- you're free to exchange gold and spoils earned from monster battles, food, or items prepared or scavenged in your environment with others. People don't actually socialize much, focused on improving their stats, honing their skills, battling monsters and gleaning goods from their environment. All conversation is scrolled in a bar at the play screen's bottom, and you can read or join any chat in your vicinity, while a little map festooned with representative dots lets you see where all the other characters are.

Once you complete the Tutorial Island, a wizard kindly teleports you to the town of Lumbridge, where you can begin to mingle with the other active users. Talking to NPCs (non-player characters) will provide refreshers on your education, or offer new skills; though the range of skills limited to free players is pretty limited, there's still so much to do in RuneScape that you can get pretty involved without getting heavily invested. NPCs will also set you off on fairly typical quests, the reward for which is in-game coins or new items.

Since non-paying members are limited to a single section of Gielinor, that area's pretty crowded, even with a goodly number of available servers. Destructible environmental items-- like trees, which yield logs when chopped with an axe-- regenerate pretty quickly, and multiple users can engage with the same NPC at the same time, so there's no competition for resources, but it can still be tough to see your way around, or target other constantly-moving users for interaction. Not a lot of chat was going on during my visit; players seemed to be as occupied with exploring, cooking and fighting as I was.

With all of these features in common with a traditional fantasy role-playing game, the simplistic battle system feels incongruous. If you're appropriately equipped, all you need to do is click on an enemy to engage in battle-- from there it's simple statistics-versus-statistics. If you're adequately equipped and have an appropriate experience level, you'll win, slowly or quickly depending on the stiffness of the competition, but you have limited action-based involvement in the battle itself. Not uncommonly, nearly all items are lost if you're defeated-- fortunately characters can store their important stuff in RuneScape's bank boxes, so there's less risk.

One hangup is that navigation is slightly clumsy-- while being able to rotate the camera angle with the arrow keys to see the world from different angles is helpful, travel doesn't feel fluid; there's no way to walk or run continuously, and the avatar's prone to zigzagging off, or pausing to fell a tree should you mistakenly click a tree instead of the path alongside it. The environments are not particularly variant, either, and sometimes chipsets get repetitive.

Overall, though, it's clear how much fond attention was paid to creating the world-- it's charming and friendly, pleasantly traditional, and impressively detailed in terms of choices and controls, especially considering that there are so many wide-ranging options available in simple free-play mode. And at $5 a month, it isn't exactly pricey to receive far more features. Especially given the backdrop of the strong, active community using the forums and reading the involving and plentiful backstory lore provided on the home site, the low cost and the simple interface makes RuneScape a simple, low-fuss option appropriate for all ages (though most young children will probably find it too complicated).

Runescape will log you out after only a few minutes of inattention, though your gains will all be auto-saved for your next visit. In a game where you can be approached by a friend or attacked by a monster at any moment, though, that's only sensible.

First and foremost, RuneScape is a fantasy game. It's difficult to estimate the average age of a RuneScape player, but one could assume it's primarily-- but not entirely-- young teens. This is because it's a simplified version of the genre gaming experience that an older audience generally enjoys, and in terms of sophistication, it can't really compare. And that isn't surprising, given the wide range of gameplay experiences and opportunities available to free players, and the low price of a still-more-elaborate membership.

With that in mind, you can't really fault RuneScape for its shortcomings-- a little bit of a jerky navigation, rough graphics and stereotypical conventions. You get a lot for nothing, and a lot more for very little. The menu system is comparatively slick, though, and organizing your stuff and managing your character is pretty easy, thanks to clearly-marked icon buttons.

As a fantasy game, RuneScape's role as a social utility is minimized-- most of the conversation takes place to facilitate trading and questing. And there's quite a lot to do in these environments, with tasks that often make the game feel like a farming, cooking or building sim. None of these tasks are absolutely necessary; with a variety of ways to accomplish the same end, players have pretty much free reign over the way they go about developing their characters.

It's easy to observe that those who play RuneScape spend a lot of time doing so-- most characters had earned observably better equipment than the basic. Alternatively, they pay for it-- judging by the constant warnings in the world's peripheral info and advertising, gold and property sales in the RuneScape community are as much a problem for it as they are in similar-format worlds.

One of the most charming things about RuneScape is its overt wholesomeness. It's a world ruled by kindly NPC wizards and friendly milliners, with sheep that say "Baa!" and resources you can pick freely. It's a supportive community, too-- for example, soon after my entry into the world I was approached by a seasoned warrior who seemed keen on giving me brand new weapons in exchange for a few sheaves of nearly worthless, relatively-available wheat. Then we went to the bank, to see if he had an extra sword in his lockbox that might be better than my initial equipment. As it turned out, he didn't, but it's the thought that counts.

Right before you leave the game's Tutorial Island starting point to join the society proper, you're advised by a wizard on proper conduct. "Remember, the people in the game are real people with real feelings," he says, and it seems as if the RuneScape community as a whole keeps that in mind.