More ideas about Gravestones in Runescape

Two more plausible ideas I found on the official Runescape forum:

From Derick Z:
I think that I know what they will do. They ARE aesthetic, but they also serve a purpose . They will only appear if you lose items, not only so you don't see gravestones popping up everywhere, but also because that is the only kind of death that JAGeX needs to investigate...It will save a record of who died, who killed him, and maybe if the value of the drop is high enough, it will send a 60 second clip of before the gravestone appeared to JAGeX. In that way they will be able to see which are legitimate kills, which are set up RWT's, etc.

From Exagunimon2:
How obvious lol. The gravestones are for alerting people who see it that there may be items there if you wait (since items take awhile to appear). Thats probably why its only if you die with items. Plus if youre lucky, you can find your own grave and retrieve your belongings.