Chat

Chat is the main source of communication among players in RuneScape.

Chat interface
The default location of the chat interface is in the bottom left of the game window, although this can be moved to wherever players wish it to be. It displays various chat and game messages in the message box and has a series of buttons to control what is displayed in the message box. There are also several tabs to switch to, which display the contents of all messages received, or only those from one chosen type; Friends Chat, Private Messages, Clan Chat or Guest Clan Chat. Access to the Emotes interface is through the chat interface, and there is a toggle for displaying online status to all, friends or no-one, and toggles for always-on mode and chat badges. The Report Abuse button, help button and examine settings are all located here too.

In the Legacy interface these toggles can be found by right-clicking the "All" button in the left-hand corner of the chat interface.



Chat box
The chat box is a part of the chat interface located in the bottom left of the game window under the chat interface buttons. It displays chat and game messages and contains a prompt for typing.

The chatbox can be resized, if the game interface isn't locked in position, by clicking on the edge of the box and dragging it.

Pressing Esc can be used to clear the current text in the prompt. Shift + ←/→ can be used to move the cursor to the previous/next character. Shift + ↑/↓ can be used to move the cursor to the previous/next space character. Shift + Home/End can be used to move the cursor to the beginning or end of a message. Pressing enter when the prompt is empty will open up Quick Chat.

All
All Chat is a chat interface button that displays all messages in the message box. It is the leftmost button on the chat interface. Messages can be sent to Friends, Clan, Guest Clan or Group chats from this tab, using /, //, /// or //// respectively. Responses to private messages can be sent from here by pressing the tab key. (To "cancel" a private message and return to typing in local chat, delete any text and hit the enter key followed by escape.)

This tab is where local chat is displayed. Local chat messages can be toggled so that messages from all players, friends only, or no-one appears in the chatbox. Turning local chat to "Off" does not stop it appearing in the main game window, only in the chatbox, and Jagex moderator messages will appear in the chatbox regardless of settings.

Game messages and server wide announcements also appear in this tab. These can be toggled so that all messages appear, only some appear, or none appear.

Friends
Friends Chat displays messages from whichever Friends Chat players are currently in. Any player who is in the Friends Chat and has this set to display can see it. A / is not needed to send a message to a Friends Chat if in this tab. The filters on this tab can make it so all messages, messages from friends, or no messages appear in or from this tab.

Private
Private Chat displays messages from private messaging discussions with other players. Only the player the message is sent to and the one sending it can see these. Unfiltered game messages, server wide announcements and friends logging in or out will also be displayed in the Private tab.

Up to 255 characters can be sent in a private message - more than other types of messaging. As such, multiple lines of text can be messaged to a friend within private chat.

Clan
Clan Chat displays messages sent and received in the Clan Chat the player is in. Typing // is not necessary if players are in this tab.

Guest Clan
Guest Clan Chat allows players to talk to a clan whose chat they've joined as a guest. Typing /// is not necessary if this tab is active.

Group
Group Chat displays messages in relation to the Grouping System and the group players are in. Players can chat between those in their particular team or those within the activity. Typing /T will take the player into the Group Chat (Team) mode in the Group Chat interface.

Server Wide Announcements
Server Wide Announcements are messages displayed when a player achieves certain milestones such as level 99 in a single skill or met the requirements for the Completionist cape. These messages are displayed to other players if they have their Game Messages set to On or Filtered. Server Wide Announcements are not displayed, however, if Game Messages are set to Off.

Trade
Trade is a chat interface button that displays the current trade messages mode. It is located on the bottom of the screen along with All, Game, Public chat, Private chat, Clan chat, Assist and Report abuse buttons.

Left clicking the button toggles the dialogue window to only show trade messages. To see all messages the player must click the All button.

Right clicking the button allows the player to choose the trade mode. Modes include:
 * - Anyone can request a trade or challenge (e.g. duel) the player, except people on the player's ignore list.
 * - Only the player's friends can request a trade or challenge the player.
 * - No-one can request a trade or challenge the player.

This is usually used to avoid being bombarded with trade or challenge requests.

In RuneScape Classic, trade and challenge were separate options.

Assist
Assist is a chat interface button that displays the current assist messages mode. It is located on the bottom of the screen along with All, Game, Public chat, Friends chat, Private chat, Clan chat, Trade and Report buttons.

Left clicking the button toggles the dialogue window to only show assist messages. To see all messages the player must click the All button.

Right clicking the button allows the player to choose the assist mode. Modes include:
 * - Anyone can request assistance from the player, except people on the player's Ignore List.
 * - Only the player's friends can request assistance from the player.
 * - No-one can request assistance from the player.

Reporting Abuse
The Report abuse screen is used to report rule breakers in the game to Customer Support. To access this window the player clicks on the 'Report Abuse' button under the message box in the lower right hand corner of the chat interface. The reported player can potentially be punished, ranging from 0.1 black marks to a permanent ban.

To report someone breaking the Rules of RuneScape, players must select the name of the offender by clicking on the line of text in the chat selection box. On the next screen, fourteen different rule violations are displayed. Selecting the appropriate rule will submit the abuse report to jagex.

Once the report has been sent, the report abuse window will close and the message "Thank-you, your abuse report has been received" will be displayed in the message box. An option to temporarily ignore future messages from the offending player will be presented.

The sent report includes a log of all chat, trades and other actions performed by the reporting player and the player being reported.

Opening this screen is one step in the tutorial Learning the Ropes.

Guidelines

 * A report should only be sent if someone is definitely breaking the rules. If the report abuse form is misused by reporting for the sake of it, the reporter can be banned for misuse of Customer Support.
 * A player can only be reported if they have spoken or traded within the last 60 seconds. This is to prevent reports that do not have any content.

Profanity filter
The Profanity Filter is the "censor" in RuneScape. It will block any inappropriate words or sentences in RuneScape or in The RuneScape Forums. There is now an option to turn off the Profanity Filter, but it will still block any website. It will block any of the following words (if the Filter is turned on):


 * Any swear words or offensive names, hate words, and certain other words that could be inflammatory;
 * Parts of URLs ( "http://", "www", "com", etc.), and names of popular search engines (e.g., Yahoo!), since advertising websites is in violation of RuneScape rules, and strings of numbers and periods such as 111.222.33.44, as these can be a website's IP address.
 * The word "Google" was removed from the chat filter on 09/26/09
 * The game filter will often block two or three letter words which are preceded by a comma or full stop (.). For example, ", it". This is because these words are used as internet top-level domains.
 * Words that can be used to ask for personal details such as "email", "address" and "phone" were censored until a relaxation of the censor in 2009. This was due in part to a large number of players misspelling Phoenix (misspelled Phoneix) and having it come up as "*****ix". The filter also allows you to say some of the older swear-words, such as sod and git.
 * The EXACT spelling of one's password. In the event that the password is typed, a message appears in the game tab: You appear to be telling someone your password - please don't! If you are not, please change your password to something more obscure! It is not recommended that players test this feature, as mistakes or differences in the spelling could give away their password, unless they are in their POH and all visitors are locked out or are Dungeoneering in a solo dungeon.
 * Various phrases related to Insight Venture Partners, including the name of the company itself and the names of employees such as Jeff Horing.

Jagex has said that the filter is in place "to maintain a good playing environment for all players." The filter automatically replaces any inappropriate words with asterisks. For example, if a player typed the word "password" into the chatbox and pressed Enter, it would come out as "********" (the word "password" is censored in order to prevent password scamming).

Abusers of the filter can be reported to Jagex via the Report Abuse button. Players cannot be reported for filtered messages; in such cases Jagex claims no rule was broken as the chat filter did its job. Over the history of the filter, players have devised ever more creative ways, including use of a modified version of leet, to slip by the filter. Deliberate avoidance of the censorship mechanism with the intention of attacking or harassing another player is considered a serious violation of the Rules of RuneScape. However, Jagex's attempts to anticipate all these variations have resulted in more and more combinations of letters being censored, and it is not uncommon for the filter to censor inoffensive words accidentally. The internet slang word "pwn" was censored, as the "pw" in the word is a common abbreviation for the word password.

Changes to the chat filter are generally classified as hidden updates.

On the 9th of February 2011 an update was released which allowed players to turn off to Profanity filter which allowed players to view and say words which were previously filtered. Websites and passwords are still blocked by the censor as this is still breaking the rules, as well as bypassing the censor, even with it turned off.

Origins
In-game chat was first censored after an update on 14 November 2001. Before this update, the chat was completely uncensored. Instead of actually censoring words, it replaced it with the closest acceptable word in the dictionary. The filter was notorious for changing non-offensive chat; some players had their usernames completely or partially censored, even when they were not offensive. This was removed the next day and replaced with a filter that blocked out certain words.

"I have also reprogrammed the chat filter in the game itself, to use a more effective system. This is another feature which has been heavily abused, and I'm not willing to put up with it any longer. The new system only allows a limited vocabulary to be used. The new RuneScape chat is only intended for role-playing within the game, not for talking about real life!"

- Jagex

2006 overhaul
On 16 May 2006, the chat filter was overhauled. Symbols, such as /, which had been completely locked out, are again permitted, and many words, such as the aforementioned "pw", can now be used. The filter was improved to allow additional symbols, such as vowels with accents as well as §, £, and °. Some non-Latin characters, such as letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, which had appeared as asterisks like a filtered word, are rendered as question marks.

This update has also caused some problems. Some words were removed from the filters in error while some are now filtered for no obvious reason. For example, in some instances, when pluralizing words, replacing the -s with -z now often results in censoring. Typing nothing but an "s" also resulted in a filter.

2009 overhaul
An update in 2009 saw a relaxation of the filter, and some words that may be considered mild swearing, or may be used to give out personal information, are no longer filtered.

Bypassing the censor
The Chat filter can be bypassed by players by substituting certain letters and symbols in order to make a normally censored word visible in the chat window. If the goal of bypassing the filter is to be offensive or to harass another player, it is a reportable offence.

2011 overhaul
The Prisoner of Glouphrie and Gnome Graphical Rework update introduced an option to turn the chat filter, now renamed profanity filter, on or off at the player's discretion, since according to Jagex "RuneScape has a maturing player base." The default option is on: the filter works normally. When turned off, it only filters "kkk", IP addresses (to prevent hacking/key-logging), URLs, the word "zybez" (removed in October 2014), 2-letter country codes used for Internet domain names, various website names, and the player's password.

Chat Settings
Chat settings can be accessed via the Community ribbon, under the chat settings tab. Here the player can change the colours of each chat (public, private, clan, guest clan, group, group team and Twitch), as well as toggling chat effects on or off.



Chat Effects
Chat effects can be used to manipulate the text that appears above a player's head when text is entered into the chat screen. Chat effects can change text colour or animate text. Chat effects are often used by players to attract attention, especially when advertising a trade. In order to see chat effects, the player must have the 'chat effects' option turned on in the options screen.

Text colour
To change the colour of text, put the desired colour followed by a colon, followed by your text. Always remember to use a colon, as the effects will not work without one. Do not put any spaces in between the colour and the colon, although spaces between the colon and the text after it are acceptable. Other symbols such as semicolons do not work.

Format:

Example: "Green:I love this dragon armour!" will cause " I love this dragon armour! " to appear above the player's head.

A list of all chat effects which can be used to change text colour can be found in the Colours section. A list of all basic chat effects which can be used to change text colour can be found in the Basic colours section.

Text animation
To animate text, put the desired animation followed by a colon, followed by your text, as with a colour. The same rules apply.

Format:

Example: "scroll:RuneScape is the best!" will cause "RuneScape is the best!" to scroll into and out of view above the player's head.

A list of all chat effects which can be used to animate text can be found in the Animations section.

Multicoloured text
In addition to basic colours, there are several chat effects which cause text to change colours while it is displayed. In practice, these effects are used no differently than basic chat effects.

Format:

Example: "flash1:The RuneScape Wiki rules!" will cause "The RuneScape Wiki rules!" to flash between yellow and red while it is displayed.

A list of all chat effects which can be used to cause text to appear in multiple colours can be found in the Multiple colours section.

Combining effects
Animations and colours can be combined for maximum emphasis. To combine colours and animations, type the colour first, followed by a colon, the animation, another colon, and finally the text. Remember to type the colour before the animation, as both effects will not work if the animation is placed before the colour.

Format:

Example: "green:wave:Do the wave!" will cause "Do the wave!" to float in a wavelike motion in green text above the player's head.

Animations that change colours also come before regular animations.

Example: "'''flash2:scroll:Pretty colours!" will cause "Pretty colours!" '''to flash between cyan and blue text while scrolling across above the players head.

Alt codes
An alt code is a way to type special Unicode characters into the RuneScape chat box in the Windows operating system. These codes enable players to type characters which are not available on the standard keyboard. To use Alt codes, the player must hold down the Alt key and then press a specific code of numbers on the right side of the keyboard. The player must also have the Num Lock key turned on (i.e., the LED above it is on). It is not used often, since not many people know about it, but when it is used, users often gather around him/her asking him/her how he/she did it. It often is used to draw attention to a statement in chat or on the fora.

Colours
All chat effects which can be used to change the colour of text are listed in the subsections below. Note that all text, no matter the colour, will have thin black shading.

Basic colours

 *  Red  - Red colours the entered text red.
 *  Purple  - Purple colours the entered text purple.
 *  Green  - Green colours the entered text lime. Lime is a shade of green which is brighter and lighter than regular green.
 *  Cyan  * - Cyan colours the entered text cyan. Cyan is a shade of light blue similar to aqua. Note that "Blue:" will not work.
 *  Yellow  * - If "Yellow:Text" is entered, the text will appear as if the player hadn't used a text colour, as the default text colour is yellow. The "Yellow:" will be automatically removed.
 *  White  * - White colours the entered text white.

* Note that background colours were added to make light-coloured text easily visible, and will not appear in-game.

Multiple colours

 * Flash1 - Flash1 causes the text to flash rapidly between red and yellow eight times.
 * Flash2 - Flash2 causes the text to flash rapidly between cyan and blue eight times.
 * Flash3 - Flash3 causes the text to flash rapidly between darker green and pale green eight times.
 * Glow1 - Glow1 causes the text colour to fade slowly from red to orange to yellow to green to cyan.
 * Glow2 - Glow2 causes the text colour to fade slowly from red to pink to purple to blue to purple to pink to red.
 * Glow3 - Glow3 causes the text colour to fade slowly from white to light green to green to light green to white to cyan.

Note that seven colours are listed in the description of the Glow2 effect, while only six colours are listed in the description of the Glow3 effect, and only five colours are listed in the description of the Glow1 effect. This is because Glow2 causes text to fade from red to blue to red again, between which it passes through pink and purple twice each. Glow3 causes text to fade from white to green to white to cyan, while between white and green it passes through light green twice. Glow1 causes text to fade from red to yellow to green to cyan, while between red and green it passes through orange. None of these effects causes the text to appear for a longer period of time than another. Glow2 and Glow3 only have more colours listed than Glow1 because they pass through more commonly recognised colours more times while fading. Glow1 is unique in that it has five different colours listed in its description, while Glow2 and Glow3 only have four. Glow1 causes text to appear in the most individual colours of any chat effect.

Animations

 * Wave - Wave moves the text in a wave motion as if the wave is coming from the left.
 * Wave2 - Wave2 moves the text in a wave motion as if the wave is coming from the left also, but unlike Wave, Wave2 moves the text slightly more horizontally, as opposed to a more vertically like wave.
 * Scroll - Scroll moves the text from right to left across the screen. No matter how much text is typed, the text will appear for the same amount of time, so if more text is typed, the text will move faster. Is often used for advertising for "shops", or for telling a list of items the player is selling.
 * Slide - Slide slides the text downwards from out-of-sight to appear in the normal position in which text appears. It is also used a lot for advertising.
 * Shake - Shake moves the text for a second in a wave motion, then stops and flattens out and stands as normal for a second.

Badges
These badges (icons) appear in all chat channels.
 * Jagex moderator crown.png Jagex Moderator
 * Local moderator crown.png Local Moderator
 * Player moderator crown.png or Player moderator VIP badge.png Player Moderator
 * VIP badge.png VIP Badge, obtained by purchasing a Gold Premier Membership package and is not a moderator
 * Ironman badge.png Normal Ironman badge
 * Hardcore Ironman badge.png Hardcore Ironman badge

Note that the Forum Moderator badge does not appear in-game. Forum Moderators are only identified on the forums, not via in-game chat.

Trivia

 * In the early days of RuneScape Classic, the chat filter would replace the blocked word with the word "Cabbage".
 * In RuneScape Classic, chat colours were used via @colour@, a notable one being @ran@ which made the message flash rainbow colours.
 * Also in the early days, the filter would not replace words with asterisks; rather, it made it so that the message with the offending terms would not appear to any other player.
 * On 14 November 2001, Jagex implemented a controversial filter in which players could use only a limited dictionary. After much protesting, this was removed.
 * Admin commands used to begin with "::". Before, any chat that began with "::" would not appear, and the player would receive an "admin command not recognised" message. The message was later removed, although the chat would still not appear. Currently, any chat starting with "::" will show up for normal players. This was due to the admin console being changed to pressing the ` key.
 * The chat filter on the RuneScape Forums blocks the phrase "Insight Venture Partners", the name of the majority shareholder in Jagex.
 * Jagex Moderators have the ability to private message a player even if the player's private chat is set to 'off'. To reply, the player has to change their online status.
 * When using Local Chat, players are limited to 80 characters (255 characters for Private). These limits include prefixes, such as "/" to chat in other channels. For example, when speaking in Clan Chat with the prefix "//", players are limited to 78 characters of displayed text.