Interviews with Runescape Fan Sites: RsHun

Today's interview is with the administrative team (including a founder and main developers) of RsHun (Runescape fan site for Hungarian players). English speaking community tends to overlook Runescape sites written in other languages, but these sites do exist and they are just as sophisticated and big as their English counterparts. Enjoy!

Q: How would you describe your site in a few words?
T34Piero: Well-organized, clean, if a forum fight starts it is usually controlled enough, there are a lot of features that not many RuneScape fansites have, such as many calculators. It is very useful for Hungarian players who does not have decent English skills.
Fupet: Mostly the players starts his / her career in this site which helps the player trough some tough times with helpful guides and members, good community. Even if we don't have many active players on the site we can still lend a hand to the new players and that makes us special.
Kisszuperman: I can't tell much more than T34Piero and Fupet. Nothing is perfect neither is our site, but we try to make as good as possible for the Hungarian players.

Q: Can you tell us about major milestones of your site? A little bit of a history?
Kisszuperman: As I remember RsHun was founded on October 1, 2003 by Fupet. At that time there were not so many Hungarian players in RuneScape, so the site was kind of empty, but after some time players began to register on the site and our community began to grow further and further.
And the milestones... we have an old site saved and the current site. The old site had 3326 registrations and 31055 Posts which was great (for that time), especially seeing that there were more than 3300 (mostly old and quit) Hungarian players. The current site has 135089 posts and 7328 threads at the moment and there are around 400-500 players visiting it every day.
Fupet: In the beginning the forum was free for us but after half year we had to switch to another one. I tried to make the new site look and work better than the old one. After the refreshing of the server we made players orientation a lot better within the Hungarian Community and the game. On January 31, 2005 we successfully got the rshun.hu domain and added couple new things to it: Tracker, Image uploader and our own RuneScape Wiki which was made on February 20, 2006.
Bucee: When RsHun moved to it's current site (January 8, 2007) it was white, while the old one was black, so it hurt my eyes at the beginning but I got used to it soon after. :D Marketplace was the most abandoned part of the forum and, of course, pictures and videos the most crowded one. At first there were only topics about single achievements, but later galleries started to open containing the majority of posts.

Q: What inspired you to start a Runescape fan site?
Fupet: When I was in high school I had 2 friends who wanted me to make a site for this game with guides pictures and stuff in 2003. During that time I didn't play RuneScape, didn't even know what was that. The idea came up in September and took me a month to implement it. When I completed the forum my friends stopped playing the game so I was on the site alone with no friends, not even a person I knew from the game. I started playing Runescape but without any players I knew it didn't take too long to stop. After a few months I checked the site again and realized that there were some players using the forums so I started to play again, met some new people from the forums and that gave me a push to continue playing the game.

Q: Was it the first web site you ever created?
Fupet: RsHun was my first.

Q: What technologies were used to create the site? Did you add new technologies into the mix after you created the original version?
Fupet: Phpnuke, then phpBB2 (was using that on the old site), phpBB3.

Q: Which feature/service took the most time and effort to create?
Fupet: Probably the Tracker because it's still has some bugs, but I'm trying to improve it.

Q: Is there a feature/service of the site you are most proud of?
Fupet: Our own image uploader.

Q: How much time do you normally spend supporting the site? A few hours a day? A few hours a month?
Fupet: Few hours a week.

Q: How many staff members do you have? How did you find/chose them?
Fupet: A lot for our little community. Around 15 - this includes moderators, Wiki editors, and so on.

Q: Did you even had to deal with hostility and/or attacks from other fan sites?
Fupet: No.

Q: Did you ever consider making money with the site or is it just a hobby?
Fupet: It would be good to get some money this way, but I'm not going to put advertisements all around the site. It has some but that's just enough to get something to pay for the domain, not to make any profit.

Q: What do you think about the current Jagex's fan sites support program? Do they do too much, too little? Is there something you'd wish would go differently?
Fupet: We have no experience with that. We're so tiny in this global RuneScape community that we didn't really took a part in it.

Q: Do you still play Runescape? If yes, how often?
T34piero: No, not really.
Fupet: I play a month every 3 months.
Kisszuperman: Few hours a day.
Bucee: No.

Q: What's you Runescape goals, if any?
Fupet: Well my goal was to get 85+ in every skill but the Dungeoneering skill made this impossible, because I don't like it very much. Besides, Runecrafting takes a lot of time too, so this goal is not completed.
Kisszuperman: I have no goals. If I can't achieve something it feels bad. So I think it is better not to have any goals and just play the game for fun and come what may.

Q: What kind of Runescape player are you? Which Runescape aspect is most appealing to you: quests, role-playing, skilling, pking, minigames etc.?
Fupet: I don't really like minigames, but I like doing quests and skilling.
Kisszuperman: Basically everything. I think I need to do anything I can so I don't get bored so easily.

Q: Are there other Runescape fan sites you personally use as a Runescape player?
Fupet: Zybez
Kisszuperman: Mostly Zybez forums, RuneScape Wikia.
T34Piero: Zybez
Bucee: Nope.

Q: Do you follow/read Runescape blogs and news papers from other sites?
Kisszuperman: Only reading RuneScape news.
Fupet: Only reading the RuneScape's official site. There are always some pictures about the blogs and news which make things interesting to read.
T34Piero: No.
Bucee: Only on our site.


Thank you very much, Kisszuperman, Fupet, T34Peiro and Bucee!