‘The young mans head spun as he landed upon the hard, brown earth below him. He had fallen awkwardly, and scrabbled around in the compacted mud that made up the path. Impatient warriors bustled past him as he attempted to regain his composure, their heavy armour slamming into his sides and face, whilst merchants turned their heads up in disgust as he clawed around their feet… just another peasant wanting some of their gold, most probably.

Finally picking himself up, the man looked frantically around; surely someone could help him? Where was he? How did he get here?
He turned to look behind, and reeled backwards blinded by a ray of light in the distance. The source came from a man, totally encased in gold plated armour - the sun glinting from the highly polished metal. Surely this man could help him?

Fighting against the surging crowds, the young man made his way up the dirt track towards his target.

“Hello Sir” he stammered, “I was wondering if you could help me?”

“Get away from me…” came the snappy reply, as the man turned away and strode off.

Taken aback and confused, the man stumbled on in search of aid…

Welcome to RuneScape! proclaimed an optimistic voice in his head, as he was shoved out of the way by an angry looking man, dressed in what appeared to be the skin of a dragon.
It gave very little reassurance amidst the chaos and hostility around him…’

For RuneScape players, the scene above will bring back unhappy memories of their first day in the game - but unfortunately, these are memories that we often push from our minds.

Confused about the interface, and in the dark about where you are and what you should do. Starting RuneScape can be an extremely intimidating experience, filled, with often intimidating players, something that we once knew all to well… However, as time goes on, many of us turn into those like the “gold plated man”, in the short story above.

Many, see new players as an annoyance, newbies who simply cannot be bothered reading the manual. However for most, this is simply not the case.
For many players, simply signing up for the game can be a traumatic experience (something, which has luckily been improved lately with things such as the RuneScape website updates), and it would be unreasonable to believe that one can become an expert as something that they have started only hours, or in some cases - minutes before.

It seems that many players unfortunately, seem to forgot that everyone who has ever played RuneScape, was at one point like this. Zezima, Lover Romeo, Yogosun - we all need to start somewhere.

As well as this, with the addition of RuneScape to websites such as miniclip, the amount of new players has recently become something of a hot issue. However, why should it? Is anyone less capable of playing the game, just because they found out about it from a website, rather than a friend? I personally think that this is a horrific stance to take, why should anyone judge a book by it’s cover. (or in this case, by their experience in game,)

So - the next time that a newer player asks you for help, don’t just ignore them, try your best to make them… Welcome to RuneScape.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under newspaper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.