i find that conversing with people is really hard because of the hard lack of freedom of speech (cen·sorship) you are allowed to make ur name something yet when u say it in game it is nothing but stars. most of the time u cant even get ur point across because all they see is stars and its really frusterating . idk mabey something to work on. thanks
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Very much agree with this! The community feels very tight-knit, but with so much automated censorship, conversations especially in crowded areas can get blurred and disrupted. Maybe the censorship can be tweaked, or maybe high-traffic areas can be regulated with moderation making automated censorship a thing of the past. (pun intended lol)
Just a thought as I have more chats halted by ********
Cheers!
~Hydrated
I agree.
I remember back in the day, the censorship was just as bad. I think it’s arbitrary, and it is difficult to know what triggers it. I understand this server aims to be as original as possible, but for me, I would be okay with getting rid of the censorship rather than preserving the originalism in this aspect.
Maybe there can be a compromise by making it optional? Not sure how easy that would be to do in practice, though.
The chat censor in-game is exactly authentic to 2004 RuneScape. It uses the same regex and filters that Jagex did at the time. No more, no less.
Consider it a learning curve for communication, have fun!
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There are many things in this version of the game that are NOT “exactly authentic”.
For starters if it was then the 2004 wiki would be accurate to this version.
I have used a Classic wiki, A 2004 wiki and even the os wiki for one quest. So no, this version is tweaked to current mods flavors and they did not put out a wiki or even a quest guide to go by.
Just use wayback machine if you want to emulate the full experience in terms of wikis or online information.
The game is literally a 1 to 1 experience to 2004 Runescape.
I’ve noticed zero mods or alterations to any questing content, so not sure where you’re making that assumption
I laugh every time I see ***y after people trade, not sure when the censors change in the timeline but I love how insane they are. I remember struggling back in the day too haha.
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If you’re using Wikis as an example to prove that the game isn’t faithful to 2004 RuneScape, your point is moot. There are differences to the game from Classic as well as OSRS. A google search yielded no results for a 2004 wiki, either. A key fact that you must remember is that wikis are man-made and prone to error. This is especially relevant in regards to the 2004 wiki as I can’t even find it after searching, so it must be a small project if it exists.
You honestly think the devs haven’t poured hundreds, if not thousands of hours at this point to ensure accuracy of the game as compared to the May 2004 version of RuneScape? You genuinely think they would deliberately alter aspects of the game to their tastes?
If you’re hellbent on your false assumption, then you’re always free to create your own fork of the game with your supposed “authentic” modifications
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What 2004 wiki did you use?
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Good evening, I am one of the major collaborators to the effort, and directly responsible for implementing the filtering system onto the server. I am here to clear any misinformation about this and how this works.
To begin with, there are 2 ways the game does filter chats.
- Client sided filtering
- Server sided filtering.
Client Sided Filtering:
- To save on processing and data usage, Jagex in 2004 would automatically filter chats that YOU type into your own game client. This is because the client is already aware of what you typed and can just already do the filtering. Because of this, the filtering code is written as-is from Jagex themselves since this code is packaged along with the client, which came directly from them. So basically what I am trying to say is, everything you type on your end, is filtered by their own code. If you were to disable the filtering code, only you would be able to see the unfiltered text on your screen.
Server sided filtering:
- This is basically just the same as #1 but we copied and pasted the exact same code from the client, over to the server. This is because we need a way to filter your chat to all of the other players around you. This point is not very important but figured it was worth mentioning.
To be completely transparent, we have not really done comparisons of filtering to any screenshots, because there isn’t any reason to, since it is already just their code. However I can confirm I have yet to see any inauthentic filters from ones that I have randomly compared to, or that players “swear this is not right”.
You can view how the code works, on both the server & client. Warning, it is pretty complicated.
WordEnc
WordEncBadWords
(there is more)
And yes it has changed a many times over the years. More words got added between 2004-2006. Around 2007 a bunch of it got reworked when they started compressing the chats with a Huffman tree… and it just kind of goes from there.
As for the list of words and such, all of this comes from the game cache, which also comes from Jagex. And it is completely unmodified, because modifying it would completely void the entire point to 2004Scape. We have CRC checks to make sure inauthentic changes do not make it through, and I personally review pretty much every single PR that gets opened on GitHub. I can guarantee to you that if you were to follow our exact steps, starting with the original cache, you will end up with the exact same list of words/filters.
TLDR:
Yes it is just that bad.
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I agree it is that bad 
the game is authentic as it gets my friend, I started on June 23rd, 2004. everything is exactly as I remember and if you cant find a guide that is correct to 2004 its probably because the game has been changed for 21+ years. tips and walkthroughs on those guides today will be slightly or 100% different than they are on this and you can count on that 120%.
But but but… People can’t just write something on a wiki if it isn’t true!