Private Server

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The first RuneScape private server.

Introduction

A private server, or server emulator, is a program which emulates the official RuneScape server allowing players to login onto non-official servers using modified clients. Many private servers allow players to experience the member-only features for free and gain levels quickly. Some allow items and objects to be spawned, and others introduce their own unique features such as custom items, minigames and quests.

History

The first server

The first person to release a basic private server was wL (also known as winterLove) in 2006. The first released server was written in Java and was extremely basic: it could serve one client at a time and it was a mere proof of concept. The invisible player would fly around the world and see random items dropped on the ground. Due to this, it is sometimes nicknamed 'flight through RuneScape'.

The server required the 317 client to be patched to disable updating and RSA. To this day, the majority of old engine servers still use the 317 client patched in the same way.

BlakeScape added further functionality to the first server.

Further developments in 317

BlakeScape

Daiki (and others?) further developed this initial server to create BlakeScape which added additional features: multiplayer, walking, rendering, inventory, equipment, banking, and a few basic commands and actions. It was based on a thread-per-client model using standard Java I/O. The purpose of these first few servers was to test bots and cheating programs. Therefore, the stability and conventions are often said to be of a poor quality.

MythScape and WhiteScape

After the first server was released, work on more servers began. MythScape, created by Xsnip3rX, added more functionality and basic item and NPC support. WhiteScape, created by WhiteFang, further built upon MythScape and is the foundation of most servers today.

The two branches

At this point, servers split up into two main branches. CheezScape, created by xeroxcheez, and Project 16, created by Wolf, were two servers both based on WhiteScape. The majority of servers today are a derivative of either CheezScape, Project 16 or WhiteScape.

Little evidence can now be found for these two branches in current servers, due to the amount of code that is shared between both of them.

Private Server Communities

Since private servers were released, private server help websites began to appear with the older ones tending to be the more visited websites. The original being Kaitnieks which for unknown reasons was shutdown.

Not long after the demise of the first Private Server community, Dodian and Moparscape were created, followed by Rs-server which is now known as Rune-server, one of the more modern communitys today is RuneLocus.

These websites were made to allow anybody to make a private server for themselves to host. Due to this private servers became increasingly common, resulting in more and more people joining the overall private server community.