I have witnessed many wars in my soon to be six year history of Runescape. The most recent was the seven team "Multi Site Steel War 2" on Saturday 19-May-2007. The teams brought together players from all major fansites in a gruelling battle to the death.

• Runescape Community (Red Capes)
• Tip.it (Green Capes)
• Runescape bits and bytes (Black capes)
• Rune Village (Yellow Capes)
• Rune Crypt (Orange Capes)
• Sal’s Realm (Blue Capes)
• RuneHQ (Purple Capes)

At first I figured this war would come down to Tip.it Vs Runescape Community(RSC), a classic popcorn worthy battle for the ages, but Tip.it was highly unorganized and Runescape Community had sheer numbers on everyone, not to mention supreme organization, making Runescape Community the clear victor.

The server was nearly full with 1900+ players twenty minutes before the war. The initial action was fast and furious, and quickly spilled out from the ruin island to the wide
open area near the greater demons.

Tip.it was out leveled and poorly led, and as a result they may have lasted around five or six minutes, although RSC probably had triple the numbers of Tip.it.

Within the first five minutes, I could hardly see any blue capes present. Sal's Realm members must have died fairly quickly, as the same can be said for the black capes. I saw quite a few of these capes on the ground early on, but no massive organized force that could of played an upset role.

The fighting spilled out in the early minutes

In the below photo, I see a few lone orange, yellow, green and one lone blue facing a swarm of red up north.

One of the last times so many teams would appear in one picture

After around three minutes, I saw a large purple force charge north in attempt to cause an upset. They appeared highly organized and well led, but they were quickly slaughtered as they were out levelled and outnumbered rather badly, but they gave a great showing for RuneHQ.

The ruins were controlled by RSC early on

After purple ran in, I ran north to check out the action in the center, and as you can see, it was almost ALL red capes. RuneScape Community really took over the main battlefield quickly. They were chasing around some yellow capes who had fairly good hugging skills, so RuneVillage seemed to be the only team not wearing red that lasted the longest in the ruin area.

Another sea of red just moments later.

Suicidal player with a yellow cape

Orange was putting up a pretty good show

Yellow ran down pretty far south in an effort to pick off some smaller groups from RSC

Yellow and orange attempted to work together near the bottom to fight some decent sized groups of RSC

An organised RSC in red capes

You can see here two things: RSC was highly organized making calls like a real clan would, and some blue capes, which surprised me after looking at the pictures, because I did not think much blue capes lasted 10+ minutes into the carnage.

"DR" trying to crash

I ran north and heard RSC’ers shout “Rune clan west!!@@@” and ran quickly. Some small clan named “DR” apparently logged in to get free rune weapons or just to get some action, they were able to get a few items, but most eventually died.

RSC gave the crashers more than they could bargain for

The war zone area was fairly empty later on as it was mostly RSC left.

After the war they were trying to get finishing op’s and they had to have at least 100 players left.

NI attempting to crash

Shortly after I took the last picture, NI came storming in to kill people, but got more than they bargained for as well. Unfortunately I was killed by RSC at this time with NI, even though I wasn't wearing green hides like the rest of NI.

This war seemed to be enjoyed by all, and most fansites seem to be rather positive about the performance they had. Runescape Community is extremely proud right now, and Tip.it seems to be overly optimistic about how they did. On Tip.it I saw loads of pictures about them leaving edge to march to war, and it was this glob of people, no leaders, just a hoard of people marching forward at once. No wonder they fared so poorly.

Another thing I have noticed was accusations of RSC cheating. I did notice a few people who switched capes, but even that happened at the infamous Runescape Classic "World Wars". Nothing like seeing a famous Canadian poster drop his cape to become a Russian for the time being. I did not notice anyone maging except for the crashing clans, and i did not notice many rangers, although I saw a few. It also appears from various forums that Sal's Realm did much better than what I saw.

Enjoyed the war summary? Message Das1330 on Runehead forums to set up Runehead war coverage of your next big war.