When dealing with almost any group of people it can be described using microcosms. Individuals within the groups can be dealt with with relationship webs.
Firstly, let us take a look at the greater world. There are many ways in which to break it down, but the purpose of this article is talking about RuneScape's microcosms. Let us look at everyone in the world that plays RuneScape. So now we have narrowed it down. There are many ways to look at it as well. You could break it up into country of citizenship, and then who plays MMORPGs and then into who plays a Java based one, into who plays RuneScape. However for the purposes of this article we will look at the people within this group.
There are many ways to break down those that play RuneScape, but I will focus on communities. Right now there is Tip it, RuneHQ, Sal's Realm, and rune village, RuneCrypt, and Pure Communities.
These communities can be further broken down and categorized into their respective clans. Even in the Tip it forums people are often classified into those being Off-Topic members vs those who participate in the more RuneScape themed forums. This can lead to some interesting relationships.
A while ago, I met Etpelletier at aviansies. I knew him from the community. Then another friend of mine from my clan started talking about him, and knew him from tip it and aviansies. This brings up another point of world selection. Although runescape is the largest mmorpg (in terms of numbers of players) when I'm on world 99 or 84 I routinely run into people I know. (99 being the homeworld of tipit, 84 being the homeworld of my clan)
This brings about the other part of my article. There are many webs of relationships that happen both in real life and RuneScape. There are countless people that I know. I've met many people from my friends, and I know many people my friends know. This is just one reason RuneScape and it's community is so interactive.
From now on I will focus on the many different forums and how they function. Firstly there are the general boards, where the majority of new members are. Here they debate things, but not as in depth as the debate club. These two boards have many similar members.
A component of that is the screenshot thread. Many people who want to share their achievements, but with low post counts hang out here and in Rate This. These forums are both for those that wish to have their achievements showcased. Rate This is also similar, but less in depth, to BlogScape. With the new forum updates came a Blog section which is also extremely similar to BlogScape.
The archive of Wisdom has an experience community dedicated to helping people with guides and making their own. It also has many people interested in learning about many different strategies for playing RuneScape.
Rants are a great place for people to burn off their frustrations, and falls into the same category as General Discussion and Debate Club. The events and gatherings page is a great place to find something to do. Some are organized by non official people, while others are organized by the TET (Tip it events team)
The clan forums has a huge community of clan representatives all discussing what's next, who we like and who we don't like, along with a Clan Discussion that often debates the affects of Jagex's updates on clans. Members of Pking or combat clans often inhabit the Pking forums. In addition many clans also post events under the events section.
Next comes one of the groups of forums with the most posts: Off-Topic. It is probably the most separated of all of the forums. These glass-eating people (as some forumers call them) debate all sorts of things. Many political people show up here to debate the newest news, as well as rant about their lives. Another subpart of this forum is Tech and Computers where people post tech problems, post their computers builds, and discuss the latest tech build.
All of these forums have their separate communities of sorts, however they overlap a lot. Take time to visit our forums and check them out for yourself!
