When I was a child I was not permitted to play with video games. My parents prohibit consoles in our residence, supposing video games were violent and boyish distractions from my academic and social life, and as a direct result of that prohibition I climbed up consumed with the urge to runescape shop play with video games at any cost. I traded lunchbox snacks at recess for twenty minutes with my classmates' Gameboys. None of this was sufficient. By the time I was 12 in the autumn of 2003, I wanted to perform more and get much better. That is when I found Runescape.

It was a fantasy game, where players created custom heroes that inhabited the planet of Gielinor and leveled up by mining, smithing, fighting, and casting magical spells among a host of other grindable abilities. There were quests to complete, dragons to fight, medieval cities to explore, and the social component of being able to play and speak with other players logged in to RuneScape.

Crucially and Additionally, Runescape was free and browser-based. I could play with it on our loved ones PC without having a console or consent from my parents. Checkmate into the rules. The version of Runescape I played is what is currently called Runescape Classic, the original version of RuneScape that launched in 2001. It'd laughably crunchy graphics and overloaded servers, but underneath it was the bones of this dream game experience I craved. My thirteen-year-old eyes looked past the boxy sprites and 2D animations and filled in the blanks to envision an in-depth magical world.

Even though Runescape enabled me to play along with other players, I was originally more interested in crafting an adventure for myself. I crafted a backstory for my character -- she had been a blue-haired squire out of Al Kharid searching for glory at the kingdoms of Misthalin and Asgarnia -- and earth my way up through levels to carry on tougher quests.

It seems quaint today, but I had been fascinated with the idea that I could simply log on to RuneScape and find myself talking to strangers online. By 2003 I had used AIM to talk to my friends from school and participated in the aforementioned Eragon message boards, but runescape gold for sale felt like an entirely different league of online interaction. I immediately learned the foundation rules of being a woman playing with an MMO, which include avoiding players who wrapped around in-game hotspots to search for a girlfriend rather than falling for scammers who promised to trim armor at no cost.