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On the 19th day of Advent, Santa brings you an article about the history of RSMVs.

Runescape Music Videos, or RSMVs, is a subgenre of Runescape videos. It is made by piecing together recorded clips of your Runescape character dancing along to music, syncing emotes with friends, adding effects with video editors, and sometimes even adding storylines.

RSMVs started around 2006. The first RSMV creator is Xgen20o4. Back then he didn't just add unedited emotes and stood in the same area. He wrote out the lyrics and had friends help him with different clips and emote syncs. This was also around the time where the Unregistered Hypercam 2 meme came about - the iconic logo is omnipresent in videos from that era. Even though he disappeared shortly after in 2007, he paved the way for other creators.


From late 2006 to 2007, before Runescape HD, we had players like Regicidal, Sladeakakevin, Tyvak519, Sp613g, Kangarooo25 making RSMVs with Windows Movie Maker. They started having short introductions, clips with transitions, carefully chosen locations with little to no people in the background and having a close group of friends to do emote syncs with. This increased the hype for RSMVs, with videos hitting hundreds of thousands of views.



In 2008, during the Runescape HD era, the game received a huge overhaul. Graphics had detailed textures, realistic lighting and shadows. Terrain blending replaced the blocky squares for floors that we had previously. The character sprites also looked different. Some players call this the golden era of Runescape. RSMV makers around this time also upped their game, editing videos in Sony Vegas. A few Video makers even recorded their own voice and made commentary. We have Luckybucket, Boomertwins, Sosolid2k and many others.


The most watched RSMV of all time


Who would have known, this was the peak era of RSMVs. Creators with less than 10k subscribers will have videos with a few hundred thousand, up to over one million views which was unheard of back then. New creators' videos will get a few thousand views for relatively simple edits. Before Youtube shorts, things were different back then! Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

Before being known for his "max hits with x" videos, Sosolid2k was a RSMVer!


This was also around the time where our Sirapyro started his video making career.

Early 2010, MEP (Multi-editor projects) started to appear. Collaborations are great! Skype and Teamspeak was used. The pioneers for MEPs were players like dragonsonrs32 and Mastertuup.



During the EOC (2012 and beyond) period, RSMVs started to become less popular. However, the quality of the videos never stopped improving. This time, creators upgraded from Sony Vegas to Adobe After Effects, Premier Pro, and Final Cut.

Below is one example which was featured in the official Runescape channel. We have creators like Nicci Everheart and 99orwoh.




Gathering all the RSMV makers one by one, 99orWoh created the RSMV Discord, where players could collaborate and make multi-editor videos. Here, co-creators became friends. Jariouz, R0cketrock88 and many others never stopped making videos. The RSMV runescape private server also existed during this time, making things easier for people without high levelled Runescape accounts.


A tribute to Chester Bennington


In 2014 to 2020, around the time when OSRS came about, there was a slight surge in popularity due to the return on the old graphics. Many players returned to the game. During this period, creators pushed the limits of RSMVs. This period had the use of Runelite plugins such as OSRS high-definition graphics, entity hider and the extraction of 3D player models into Blender which facilitated 3D modelling.




Nowadays, RSMVs are still made. It will never be dead. There are a lot of us around, improving our craft and people still enjoy making them despite the busy schedule.


Shameless self promo :)


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