I’ve restored a late 2002 – early 2003 version of Runescape’s website which is fully playable. This particular date range was chosen as it represents Runescape Classic at its height of activity and content. It was also the first redesign of the website away from the blue & gray motifs of the 2001 website and toward the more familiar stone motif.
The game applet has been modified to connect to the OpenRSC Preservation world. OpenRSC is a reverse engineered Runescape Classic server and the Preservation world claims ~98% accuracy with the original game. For more info, visit https://rsc.vet/.
The game is compatible with browsers running Sun Java SE 1.2 or higher. It has been tested working on Windows 98 and Windows XP running Java 5 in Internet Explorer 6. The game should also be compatible with classic Macs running OS 9 or early OS X. A Windows client is also available for download on the manual page which has been tested working on Windows XP but may not work on older operating systems.
To get started playing, visit http://www.runescape.com and click on “Play Game”. You will be taken to the selection screen for free or members game. You can create a new user by going to the free game page. Click on free game, select a world, and when the game finishes loading you will have the option to create a new user. After creating your user, you can play on either the free game or the members game with no restrictions.
Alternatively, you can create a Preservation account through https://rsc.vet/register on a modern browser which you may then use to play through Protoweb.
Overall, I am very pleased with how well the website turned out. An overwhelming majority of site content was recovered thanks to the Internet Archive, the Runescape Classic wiki, RSCPlus and OpenRSC’s preservation efforts.
