So, when Jagex a while ago released construction and player owned houses, they also fullfilled one promise they had done in 2001. We were supposed to get player owned houses to Falador and Varrock but with a bit different concept. Currently our houses are "in the middle of nowhere", but back in then it was supposed to be a bit like in real life: you buy it from place X and it's there.

Here's a map picture of the Runescape after Asgarnia was released but before we had p2p. Many banks were missing, we had no mining guild, Edgeville was still called Ghost Town and so on.


One reason for removing the player owned houses before they were even really released was that Ultima Online (one of the biggest online multiplayer games back in then) was suffering from problems caused by their housing system: all the good places were full of houses and the houses were going for big bucks in eBay. With this kind of System Jagex should have extended their maps a lot every now and then, every place would have been full of lvl 26's with their newbish cottages and it would have been one major thing why the game's growth could be stopped.

When construction came, people were mad how expensive it is to train. Yea, that's right, they were mainly released to drain off some cash from the game and stop inflation a bit. However in 2001 people hoped them to be something totally different. The Wanderers (the one and only clan in RS history that can be said to be full of legends) for example were said to have gathered 1 million gp from their members to purchase the rumoured Falador castle. Everyone who played back in then knows that 1m gp in 2001 was a lot harder to gain than now starting a totally new character and then working with it to buy a blue phat.

When you look at it now, it was a good thing that we got our own houses a lot later and with a totally different concept than was planned. The rs market would be totally different with houses ruling it, we'd have 1 skill less and 1 more half-discontinued (depending how much Jagex would have expanded the area and number of poh's) more.

Well the old system would have been nice because its more like real life as you said you would log on and come ut of your house and go into town and do what ever you needed to get done and then return to your home in the evening and log off.

the old system seems nice

Where would you get the space for over 1 million players that way? How big houses would we have? Exactly, we'd have 100 times bigger world map and only filled with square times square boxes.

Looking at all these old screenshots of RSC makes me want to play it again from scratch. :<

Wow ok this is really interesting information!!!!!! Thank you yet again for sharing these tidbits with us.


Well, first of all, I would like to comment on the construction skill.


When I first heard about it coming out, I was under the impression we could somehow build everything ourselves. I was so disappointed when I learnt that these things called hotspots were in place.


Wouldn't it be kool if it were like the game called Second Life? You could just create any type of building and custom design it. You would be able to zoom into a space on the fireplace for example, and tool in your own design to be a border for it. Or, sort of photoshop the staircase to be like polished gold or pearl.


ok fine that would be a bit extreme..but man oh man some of the brilliant structures we could make!!!



i was awee little bitty tiny wee bit disappointed with the skill altogether. ESPECIALLY the waste of money.

Yeah, the skill does take a lot of money...And they should make the idea except more than one person could fit in a house or something...like roomies or rent or something...but I don't like Con...

It's better as it is now tbh.

True. but like he stated. Jagex would have to expand the map to an unreasonable ammount. I myself played UO, very good game. Its starting to die out now. But the housing system, you buy the deed to the house, and go place in a spot where no one else has one. And it has to be flat, no trees. You could have castles and such, but they just cost more. And take up a poo pooload more space. It was very good, but there were alot of bugs with it.

Which is why I like the runescape POH, it does cost alot. Seeing on how, well it does IRL too.

And with the past of everyone High Alching their way to magic lvls. It has KILLED the RS econ.

It would take up a lot of space, and i doubt we would be able to have our houses as big as some of them are. Though it would be nice, but im not sure how it would work out.

I get your point, things changed in those years of creating construction. Having 1 million houses out in the open wouldnt have worked, so they came up with a new system.