A little late in the month, but no matter! Behind the Scenes August is here! We are now approaching the 2 month mark for Pre-Alpha, and I think we're all dying to get Alpha started, and that's what we intend to do. There are many great updates to come in the next following months, obviously making August our busiest month yet!
Pre-Alpha to Alpha First thing's first, we want to get out of Pre-Alpha as soon as possible and move onto our biggest, most insane stage yet: Alpha. We have no clue how many people to expect, but I think we can all agree there will be thousands of us who have waiting a long time for this moment. Alpha, if you don't yet know, is the stage where anyone (even non-donators) will be able to login and finally play a version of RuneScape as it once was in 2006.
There are, however, a few things you should know about how Alpha will run. First of all, only the Free-to-Play area will be accessible from the start. This is so that us developers can focus on expanding town by town (like opening Taverly 1 day, then Catherby the next, etc.). We are going to take our time to make sure everything in each area is perfect, from having all NPC's spawned, to finishing the minigames, quests, shops; the list can go on. Additionally, you should know that all accounts will be reset when Pre-Alpha is over. This means that all your items, skill levels, and content related things will be completely wiped. This is so that everyone gets a fair start when Alpha comes around.
Not only will it be exciting for us to see how players utilize the new areas we open, but it will be exciting for players themselves to see (literally) 2006Scape build and become a full version of RuneScape in 2006. We will also need the help from you, the players, to make sure we haven't missed any details in every new area we open so we can bring back the full nostalgic feeling of the game.
I hope you're as excited as we are for the next stage of 2006Scape!
Domain Change As many of you may recall, our previous domain (2006Scape.com) was hacked, but has been in my hands for about a month now. We should be moving back to the domain sometime this week. The 06Scape.com domain will automatically redirect to 2006Scape.com, so don't be alarmed when that happens.
Official Trailer
I was aiming to have the official trailer for 2006Scape out last month, but time did not permit, so the trailer will be out some time this month (probably towards the end). The trailer is about 3 minutes in length, and the first third (1 minute) has been fully edited. Now all I need are some clips of Pre-Alpha gameplay, and some pictures/videos of RuneScape in 2006. There is one thing I will warn you about, the trailer is very addicting (I literally cannot stop watching it), so I hope you like it as much as I do. If you haven't yet seen the screenshot preview, here it is:
Videos Section
We've added a Videos section to the forum for videos only related to 2006Scape (at least for now). We want to fully support the video making community as much as we can because we know, first and foremost, how important videos are to a game and its community. We're aiming to expand on this section by possibly adding a "Video of the Day/Week", or hosting some competitions. You'll just have to wait and see what we come up with!
New Smileys
We recently introduced some new smileys to the forums (inspired by the user "Da Jeroen"), mainly because the internet has evolved since 2006 and we needed a little more colour on the forums. Only donators can use these new smileys, so make sure to visit the donation page if you really want to use them! Here they are:
^_^ 
>:( 
:'( 
X( 
:! 
>:) 
<3 :$ 
:Z 
B) 
><
250,000 Registered Members A few days ago, we reached a QUARTER OF A MILLION registered members! That's 250,000! I cannot thank you all enough for making this such a success. A year ago, I would have never thought that this many people would be interested in something that, could be said, is an outdated game. You have no idea how much joy it brings to me and the team that this many people support us, and truly love what we're doing. Thank you so much for making all of this possible and making my dream come true. Here are some more statistics:
- 157,994 unique users (out of 250,000, which is pretty insane)
- 1,101,083 forum posts (we just passed 1,000,000)
- 131,527 forum threads
In other news... A few staff changes have been made. Mod Darrel and Mod Nuradin (previously known as S Y N) are no longer apart of the team. If I had to explain why, it would take up the majority of this Behind the Scenes, so I'll leave it at that. Mod Jack H has finished his job as a web designer and is now moving towards to becoming a Community Administrator!
Discuss this update here.
Mod Vault
Head of 2006Scape