Jagex launches HTML5/WebGL game mode for RuneScape (beta)

I remember having to give up playing RuneScape back when I switched to a Mac many years ago, due to how poorly Java integrated and performed within the available browsers (not to mention the glitching hardware-acceleration support).<p>While I have generally lost interest in these sort of games since then, this is exciting enough to make me want to try it out again.

It's unfortunate, but this may be too little too late for Runescape. After Jagex was slowly bought by VCs company decisions became less about the experience for the player and more about the bottom dollar.<p>Maybe this will be enough to bring back some of their lost subscribers, but who knows.

Congrats, porting a Java codebase of that size is no small undertaking.

I click "go to beta" and then "register", and it says my Java is not up to date? I thought this was Java-free?

This is exciting news for the validity of HTML5 games in the browser!

This is extremely good news. At one time, back in 2007, Runescape was the elephant in the room for western MMORPGs - if you counted it amongst them, it made all the commercial ones clearly the long tail, not the short peak of success - <a href="http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/" rel="nofollow">http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/</a>

I've been wondering why this hasn't been done yet.<p>Their game being coded in Java should make it easy to port to many different platforms seeing as there's a library or framework for almost anything Java.<p>I don't play RuneScape but I'm happy to see this, this should help bring the game to other platforms like Android, Firefox OS and hopefully iOS (they could make a native app for iOS).

If anyone still remembers RSC (Runescape Classic) and would like to continue playing it, this is the most popular and well-kept private server for it FYI: <a href="http://www.rscemulation.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rscemulation.net/</a>