In this Dev Blog, Mod Jack talks about the new Prestige System, which will bring new life to competitive RuneScape levelling and allow high-level players to enjoy the game afresh. Read on to find out more!
Long, long ago, in the mists of time, the Runescape hiscore table was a place where the best players competed daily for the top spot. Then one day the first player reached 200M, and that race ended. Nowadays, no matter how hard you work, you’re never going to see that prestigious rank 1 because someone else got there first.
You may also remember a time when a 99 was a rare thing that made you stand out from the crowd. These days there are so many 99s that some players treat 99 as if it’s the bare minimum requirement for respect, rather than the achievement it really is.
Prestige is going to change all this. With this update, due to arrive at a Runescape near you some time in November, the hiscore tables will unlock and once again the top spot will be occupied by the player who worked the hardest, not the one who got there first.
But what is Prestige?
It’s actually really simple. The Prestige System will allow you to choose any of your current 99s, click a button and reset that skill to level 1. That means you can level it to 99 again. You’d do this because once Prestige goes live, the hiscore table will be sorted firstly by your Prestige level (the number of times you’ve prestiged the skill), then your current level, then your current XP (i.e. the progress you've made since you last reset the skill).
Here’s an example of what the hiscores might look like:
| Player | Prestige | Level | XP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darrrlek | 3 | 2 | 450 |
| Murderiffic | 2 | 99 | 26,068,862 |
| Sum of Awe | 2 | 97 | 20,400,000 |
| Xontax | 2 | 12 | 4,800 |
| Acceler8or | 1 | 87 | 8,200,000 |
| Monkey Bait | 1 | 83 | 5,400,000 |
| TwoTimesTwo | 0 | 99 | 157,000,000 |
| Ffarquar | 0 | 99 | 14,000,000 |
That’s not all, though. To really separate the legendary from the merely awesome, the amount of XP you need to level up increases by 100% of the base total for every time you’ve reset the skill. That means that reaching 99 for the second time takes 26M, reaching 99 for the third time takes 39M, and so on. That increase will be spread across all levels, so it takes two, three, four times as long to reach each individual level as well as to reach 99.
If you do reset a skill, you’re not trapped at low level. It would suck if a new quest came out and your Prestige level wasn’t high enough yet, or if you just wanted to go bossing for a bit and couldn’t. As such, you can turn off Prestige and revert to your previous skill level of 99. While it's switched off, you can’t earn XP towards your Prestige level. When you turn it back on, you keep going from whatever Prestige level you reached when you turned it off. You can only make this switch while you’re in a bank, and we’re considering adding a gold cost to it to make it clear that you’re not supposed to be flipping it willy-nilly.
The Overall category of the Top Players hiscore table has an additional restriction. If we sorted it by your total number of resets, everyone would just reset the easier skills a bunch of times. Instead, the Overall table will be topped by whoever has reset all skills the most times. The Overall Top Players table might look something like this:
| Player | All Skills | Total Prestige | Total Levels | Total XP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Immortalzor | 2 | 57 | 6993 | 762,000,000 |
| Twinkage | 1 | 60 | 8453 | 889,000,000 |
| Ruminati0n | 1 | 52 | 6498 | 492,000,000 |
| Chai Latt3 | 0 | 29 | 4221 | 328,000,000 |
| XX Nuff XX | 0 | 22 | 3258 | 296,000,000 |
| mondo1987 | 0 | 0 | 2365 | 283,000,000 |
| ar1gato | 0 | 0 | 1300 | 5,400,000 |
There are also some amazing titles, emotes and cosmetic overrides for showing off your Prestige accomplishments in game and on the forums. You’ll able to prove which skills you’ve reset, and how many times you’ve reset them, in a showy way.
You need to be a member and have 99 in a skill to use the Prestige System, but because it resets your skill level, beyond that everyone is on a level playing field. This makes it a true race from a fair start for all 99s.
We’re not forgetting the accomplishments of those who already hit 200M in the old tables, and those who haven’t yet reached it. You’ll still be able to view the old hiscores on the website, with the same rankings. We store your lifetime XP, which is all XP ever earned in that skill regardless of whether or not you've reset it. You’ll still be able to make progress towards 200M in your lifetime XP - which is still the cap - and earn your rank on the old hiscores.
We hope there will be some other positive side effects on the game as well. At the moment, since only the highest level content is relevant to the most dedicated players, this skews the economy towards certain things and away from others. With Prestige, players will be competing at all skill levels making items and areas that haven’t been relevant for a long time suddenly of interest again.
We're still ironing out the details of the Prestige system, and we want to know what you think. If you have any thoughts on how the Prestige System should work, ideas on how it should be improved or anything you're worried about, head on over to the forums and let us know.
Mod Jack & Mod Verrah