Events like the Falador Massacre in 2006
will forever be a part of RuneScape history. A ticket came in, saying someone's running
around Falador, killing people. The Falador Massacre is one of the most
well-known events to have ever happened in RuneScape. Bro, there's... There's open world PvP.
People are getting killed outside your house. This is Durial321. One of the most extreme versions of bug abuse...
Was the Falador Massacre. In a way, this video doesnât need an introduction. The 6th of June, 2006. The Falador Massacre. One of the most infamous glitches in RuneScape
history. The day that the most popular free MMO in
the world saw players cut down in cities,
in places they had always thought were safe. The official documentary. The official history book. Its own space on wikipedia. Even being canonised in the lore and having
official ingame events to commemorate the 10 year anniversary. People have talked about and referenced
the massacre extensively. Heck, youâve probably already watched a
mini-documentary about it before. So what else is there to say on what is
probably the most documented event in RuneScapeâs long history? What can I tell you that countless of
YouTube videos and player interviews havenât already? Well, I never make a video unless I can
tell you something new on the topic. And after months of collaborating with
Jagex themselves, getting the inside scoop and diving through every other piece
of media made about the Massacre, weâre finally ready to give you the whole
story. Time to buckle up and bank your items,
because itâs time to unravel the 16 years of history that have piled up since the
events of the Falador Massacre. Our tale begins back in 2002,
somewhere in the mystical fantasy land known as New Zealand. 12-year old Lincoln has heard about this new,
cool game called âRuneScapeâ, and decides to sign up to it. A novel, medieval adventure game designed
by a trio of nerdy british brothers with a sense of wit and charm that you donât
really see in other MMOs of the time. The vast world is the perfect place for a
12 year old to get lost in. And blissfully unaware of where this road
would take him, Lincoln finishes punching in his details, and is ready to enter the
world of Gielinor for the first time. Lincoln, who you probably know better as
âCursed Youâ, his in-game name, is quickly hooked by RuneScape
and starts putting in some serious hours. Heâs eventually joined by his close friend,
Josh, who calls himself "Cursed Y0u" with a zero instead of an O. The duo play together and call themselves
the "Cursed You Brothers" since their names kind of look similar if
you squint hard enough. Lincoln quickly falls down the PvP rabbit hole,
becoming an avid player-killer who raises his stats and improves his gear
solely to get better at taking down other players. He finds a good amount of success in this path,
and becomes relatively rich quite quickly. When RuneScape 2 was released in March 2004,
introducing the Duel Arena alongside it, Lincoln turned away from the Wilderness and
went all-in on staking; 1v1 matches with some heavy bets on the line for the winner. Now, in 2004, most stakes were done through
magic rather than melee or ranged. Lincoln already had decent PvP skills from
his time before the Duel Arena but he could get an even bigger advantage
if he raised his magic level to the max. In fact, he discovered that he could get
250 exp per game tick by carefully using the Charge spell, available to everyone
at level 80 magic. With the wealth behind him to buy all the
supplies he needs, he quickly achieves 99 Magic in early 2004, becoming the 254th
person to hit the milestone. Now, with only 254 people at 99 Magic,
and only a fraction of them actually using the skill to stake, itâs not hard to guess that
Lincoln did very well for himself at the Duel Arena. If you knew what to do, staking was an
incredible moneymaker. And Lincoln sure as hell knew what he was doing. The only thing he didnât know was what he
was going to do with all the money heâd made. That is, until a little birdie told the
14 year old Lincoln how much his RuneScape gold was worth on certain sites. Lincoln started offloading some of his excess
wealth to third party sites turning his gaming habit into an actual
real-life moneymaker. Highly against the RuneScape rules, if you
werenât aware. But somehow Lincoln scraped by on just
temporary mutes or bans, never receiving anything permanent. This might come as a surprise to you,
but giving a 14 year old a slap on the wrist when they do something wrong generally doesnât
stop them from doing it again. And so, the staking proceeds kept making him
richer in real life selling gold for about $17,000 New Zealand dollars equal to about 10,800 US dollars in 2006. And whilst his throwaway accounts got banned
after selling all it had, his main account remained active
- and looking innocent in the eyes of Jagex. Now, Lincoln wasnât offloading EVERYTHING
through his alts. When you have that much money,
why not pimp out your account? So, he dumped some of his wealth into buyable skills,
achieving pretty respectable results such as rank 318 Prayer with a level of 91,
and rank 109 Crafting with a level of 95. Itâs just a shame that he started to train those
skills so much later than everyone else. If heâd been able to grind the buyable skills
from their release, heâd probably have been able to snag a few
Rank 1 positions on the leaderboard. Wouldnât that be funny? Anyway, youâll never guess what they released
on the 31st of May 2006. Construction.
The hottest new skill on the market. Released on a Wednesday as far as Jagex were
concerned. But that UK to New Zealand time zone meant that it
dropped on a Thursday night for poor Lincoln. A school night, no less! The burdens of real life stopped him from
securing an early lead, but he certainly put in the work. Buying up as many resources as he could
from the World 2 trading hotspots, he had the materials, he just needed the time. By the time he hit 65 Construction,
he was Rank 35 on the hiscores. Thatâs not that far from Rank 1. It actually seemed⌠doable. It was time to go all in. Cursed You sold two partyhats from his collection
to fund his construction supply, giving him 250m in liquid assets. This wasnât just enough for 99, this was
enough to splurge on it. Cursed You opted to build Mahogany Tables,
using a butler to turn logs into planks for him. A very expensive - but very fast - method. Beyond this, he also recruited three friends
to buy any and all mahogany planks they saw being traded on the public market. This wasnât just to increase his supply: this was to ensure his competition wouldnât
have any for themselves. While three people werenât going to be enough
to monopolise the market, they were enough to put a huge dent in it. As he stormed to Level 78, he still only had
half the exp that Rank 1 had accumuldated in this time. Both Monkey Moejo and Xn00bxfrei had 3.2 million
exp to Cursed You's humble 1.7 and there was no doubt that they also had
surplus cash of their own to throw around. Cursed You was fast, but he had an education
and a bedtime to slow him down. There was no way heâd be able to do this alone. So itâs a good thing he wasnât alone. He was one half of the Cursed You brothers,
remember? So, over the weekend, he brought in Josh to
work in shifts. While Lincoln slept, Josh would keep playing,
keeping the grind going until Lincoln awoke the next morning and took over again. 24 hours a day of nonstop efficient training
over the weekend - now his competition were the ones who couldnât keep up. As he reached level 88, Cursed You hit
rank 1 on the hiscores for the first time. The end was in sight - he just had to
keep the momentum going. Lincoln PLEADED with his parents to let
him take a few days off school to do this if he could train all day, the rank was his
for sure. But if he couldnât, his foes would have
a chance to overtake him. Upon hearing their child ask to take time off
school to spend the day playing video games his parents looked at each other, did the
responsible thing, and said... Yes. Who knows why they let him do it. Maybe they knew about his RWT earnings and
thought of it as him working overtime at a job? But whatever the reason, it cemented his ultimate
fate in unchangeable stone. Now that his name was up in lights
at the coveted Rank 1 position, a lot of eyes fell on Cursed You. And this was during the RuneScape golden era. Who was this kid who came out of nowhere? How did they overthrow the competition so
quickly? Can I see his house? The average player in 06 didnât really understand
the game especially when compared to the modern knowledge we have of its mechanics. Everyone had just assumed that Rank 1 Construction
meant that you had the coolest house in the game, and had pimped it out to the max. Cursed Youâs house was just
a collection of empty rooms, with naught but a single mahogany
table that was being destroyed and rebuilt over
and over. He didnât need anything else. That would be, dare I say⌠exp waste. Of course, it wasnât just adoring fans trying
to get in touch with Cursed You, cheering him on or begging to see his
ultra cool omega house. His competition slid into the PMs to ask
when he was ever going to log out. Or how big his bank was, because theirs was
definitely bigger. If you had 500m, they had 501m, that sort
of thing. RuneScape was really just a kids playground
back in the day, huh⌠The race was a lot closer than Cursed You
would have liked, however. Even after the days spent nolifing the skill,
his rank 1 position was dangerously close to being overthrown. Whatâs worse, as he reached level 96,
he was forced to take a break. Not by his parents, mind you, they were happy
for him to sink all day into the game. It was by his clan, DI, who were threatening
to kick him out if he didnât join them on a
PKing trip. Just ignore the fact that he was racing for
a historic milestone, I guess. RuneScape really WAS just a kids playground
back in the day. This actually gave Cursed You a reason to
spruce up his house, however. Since everyone would want to have a look at
it after the clan event finished, he threw up some minor furniture as decorations for the party heâd be hosting. This didnât last long, however, since he
really needed to get back to training, and he forcibly kicked out all the PKers from
his house party. Sometimes, foreshadowing is relatively obvious. This PKing trip could quite easily have cost
him the race. But, once again, fate intervened, and he not
only kept his rank 1 position - he finally gave himself a buffer. By level 98, he was 1.2m exp ahead of rank
2, and him being the first to 99 was basically
a given. With his future achievement locked in,
he wasted no time preparing to celebrate. Since you canât invite people to your house
in building mode, Cursed You decided to make flatpacks to get the last few drops of exp with his friends
and clanmates around. With a few planks and a couple clicks, Cursed
You became the only player in RuneScape with 99 Construction to a small and intimate audience that didnât
overwhelm his computer in the slightest. Foreshadowing- With his achievement immortalised in screenshots,
Cursed You opened the house to the masses of people who had been requesting a private
tour of the residence for days. Calls to action were posted on all the popular
fansites and official forums, telling people to subscribe to Will Miss It
and to hit the bell to be notified of all future uploads. Or, as he put it, âFeel free to drop by
right now - im on w111 with chat on. Rimmington btwâ. So, everyone remembers the Massacre as taking
place on 6/6/6. Itâs catchy, good optics, yada yada yada. But Cursed You is from New Zealand. Thatâs so far off the side of the world,
that half the maps donât even include it. So the timezones have gotten pretty muddy
here over the years some people say the party took place on the
5th, some say the 6th, some say the 7th. The uploader of the original Falador Massacre
video claims the party was held at 7pm Australian
time, which would be about 10am in the UK. But Jagex staff claim they were woken up at
2am to try and fix the resulting issue, so that doesnât
match up. Luckily, we donât have to guess. Cursed Youâs party invitation was posted
at 11:09pm UTC; 1 hour prior to Jagexâs timezone placing the party at just past midnight
in the UK on the 6th of June 2006, and still on the 5th of June for
our American friends. Funnily enough, Lincoln gave his buddy Josh
absolutely no credit for all the hours he put in working on Construction during those
late nights. He couldnât risk getting banned during his
own party. Foreshad- Party-goers rushed to the house, building up quite an audience in a very short
period of time. In only minutes, hundreds of players poured
in - all eager to see the Construction King, and the castle he had made. One such player was the (also) 16 year old
Brian, hailing from the United States. Brian was⌠pretty much a nobody, really. Just your average RuneScape player at the
time. A super cool teenager who was into metal music
and video games, unlike any other 16 year old at the time. Heâd actually got into RuneScape because
of a friend of his; VooDooLegion who heâd met previously on a different game. Brian first tried out RuneScape in May 2005,
making his first account, which you all probably guessed the name of. Thatâs right, it was⌠âs2 cellâ. Early on, he died to a scorpion and lost all
of his items, and decided to just make a brand new account
instead of rebuilding. From that point on, Brian would go by a new
name. One that would go down in the history books
forever. I mean, letâs be real here. You almost certainly
know Brian by a different name. That one being⌠Durial321 quickly fell in love with PKing,
just as Cursed You had done all those years ago. If he wasnât in the Wilderness, he was training
his combat skills or preparing to jump back into it. VooDooLegion eventually introduced him to
3v0luti0n X, a large PKing clan that had built up a good reputation in the community. They had weekly events where they would do
things like kill all the players at the Wilderness
Greater Demons, before the addition of Obelisks in April 2006
let them spread their reign of terror over the entire Wilderness. This was still 2006, so no-one was crazy at
it or anything but Durial definitely knew how to PK,
and he certainly had a taste for it. And sure enough, in the early evening
of the 5th of June 2006 US time, Durial was sitting on Teamspeak with some
of his friends when one of them, Alien, told him to come visit a house party in World
111 - the Australian Homeworld. Cursed You was the first person to hit 99
Construction, and was hosting a massive party that EVERYONE
was going to. So, sure enough, Durial decided to hop over
and see what all the fuss was about. Interestingly enough, Cursed You had made
a dungeon, a floor of the house where people could fight each other when PvP was turned on. Showing up with some basic gear he was wearing
at the time, he stepped through the Rimmington portal, and got to partying. And by partying, I mean bashing other peopleâs
faces in. Perfectly safe, of course. You didnât lose anything if you died in
the dungeon, it was just for fun. Youâd just re-enter the house, climb back
downstairs and start all over again. Thatâs all it was ever meant to be. A place for safe, friendly PVP. Now, when I said everyone was at the party⌠Out of the 1200 players online in the world,
Cursed You would in later years estimate that 800 of them were all at the party. RuneScape worlds could reasonably hold up
to 2000 people spread across the map without too much trouble. But if you had a lot of people in one place,
such as the 800 attendees cramped inside Cursed Youâs home, things started to chug. And boy, was it starting to lag. About 30 minutes past midnight UK time, Durial,
barely able to see what was going on, died in the dungeon and respawned outside before re-entering and made his way over
to the throne room to see what the âmagic ball thingâ was. And as he gets to it, the screen freezes completely. A loading message appears in the top left
of the screen. And before he knows it, heâs back in Rimmington, outside the house portal. So was everyone. Cursed You had kicked all several hundred
players out of his house, in a desperate attempt to
stop the lag. His house was now only open to his friends
- some of which joined him back inside, eager to keep the party going as a small gathering
that only the cool kids could partake in. The game lags, the minimap is filled with
white dots, and the main game is covered by an endless
sea of players obscuring everything. But somethingâs not right. Some players have⌠healthbars? And theyâre going down? Maybe theyâre being attacked by a random
event or something? No, they only just left the house. Nothing should be attacking them just yet. Trying to figure out whatâs going on, Durial
clicks into the ocean of players, expecting to walk to a different spot. But
instead, heâs given an âattackâ option, just like the one he had earlier while he
was in the dungeon. Oh dear. So, what just happened? You might be surprised to hear this,
but no-one is actually 100% sure what the cause for the open world PVP glitch
was. In the years that passed, a few theories have
circulated in the community. Depending on who you ask, youâll usually
hear that itâs to do with either the combat ring, where being expelled from the house while
you had combat enabled let you keep it, or the scrying pool, where being able to
spectate somewhere else in the game turned you into an invisible player,
and being expelled while using it in a PVP-enabled room let you spawn there with PVP still enabled. But thereâs no shortage of other theories,
such as it being down to a last minute code change with the kitchen larder. But hereâs the thing: Durial was by the Throne Room when he got
kicked out. Using none of those things. And Cursed Youâs clan party at 96 Construction
didnât result in the bug despite also expelling his avid PKing friends
then. And itâs not like they didnât try finding
one. So, what gives? Well, searching for answers, I got in touch
with one of the most important developers at the
time, Mod Ash, to shed some light on the whole situation. Keep that name in mind, weâll be seeing
more of him later. Ash didnât know for sure what the exact
cause was, but he knows a lot about why it happened, and so do we. As such, we can make some pretty good guesses
because of it. How the Player Owned House handled combat
was⌠weird. When you had PVP challenge mode enabled in
the house, it applied a variable to EVERYONE in the house that allowed combat. Literally, a blanket variable of
âyou can attack anyone, anywhereâ. You can kinda see how things went wrong, now. But wait, if this variable allowed you to
attack anyone, why does PVP challenge mode only work in the
dungeon? Thatâs because the House also had a second
variable. If you were on the ground or upper floor,
or the house didnât have a dungeon at all, the option to attack other players was hidden. A hacky solution, sure, but if you wanted
to make a pvp mode that only applied in the dungeon, it definitely worked. You just had to make sure that these variables
were wiped whenever you left the house. Using the portal, teleporting, logging out the developer of the skill, Mod John A, thought
of all possible ways you could leave the house, and made sure this variable was reset when
you did any of them. But clearly, something was missed. Knowing what we know now, thereâs a good
chance that this missed check has to do with a piece of high level furniture - the Greater Magic
Cage. Requiring 89 Construction, and only a week
after the initial release of the skill, most players had never seen one, nor interacted
with it. Neither had Cursed You built it when his clan
mates believed they found a bug the day before, as shown in the image they took in the Throne
room during the same party - all which would explain why the bug wasnât found until now. As the cage is used to trap people,
that means additional variables are applied to them, which may have muddied the waters for the
code. As mentioned earlier, Durial explained in
an interview 3 hours after the event that he
was in the throne room to check out the cage. But heâs not the only one. A Swedish user on the DI forums explained
only an hour after the Massacre that also he could attack
people after being teleported from inside the Greater
Magic Cage. None of the J-mods who had a part in the fixing
of the bug knew for sure what actually caused the variable to be smuggled out of the house. Even the skillâs developer explained in
the RuneScape history book that he missed something, but couldnât specify what. Now obviously, the bug canât be abused today. Weâre going to be talking more about that
later. But to get a true understanding of the Greater
Magic Cageâs involvement, I made a last attempt to find
the cause of the bug by messaging upload manager Mod
Easty. As a Jagex employee since 2008,
few J-mods know the gameâs coded secrets better than Easty. As an upload manager, heâs been in charge
of implementing all code involving hotfixes and new updates since 2010. Next to this, heâs had a pretty big interest
in bug abuse; keeping in touch with RuneScapeâs bug abuse
curator and learning the ways of how to break the
game both internally, but also externally. Some might remember him from the rotten potato
documentary, where Easty was shown to be in contact with
the old bug abuse communities. If anyone at Jagex would be able to look up
the code and find the bug - itâd be him. But, even Easty couldnât say for sure. The Construction code has changed a lot over
the years, and the closest we can get to the original
code is from August 2007 - being the same copy
of the game used to bring back Old School. Already at that point had Jagex made several
changes to avoid the Massacre from ever happening again. But Easty could, after reviewing the 2007
code, make a guess at what happened in June of 2006. Hold on for this, because weâre getting
a little technical now. When standing in the Greater Magic Cage
and somebody pulls the lever, it traps the players inside. If the player chooses to drop them down to
the dungeon, an animation plays where the player is falling. As we know, Cursed You expelled everyone from
his house whilst our known PKers were in the cage and the Swedish user did explain the cage
was in the process of âteleportingâ him when he was
kicked, suggesting the animation had been activated
when Cursed You hit the emergency brakes. Based on how the code worked at the time,
Easty believes this caused a rare instance where two actions happen in the opposite order
of what theyâre meant to do. Assuming Cursed You expelled everyone in the
same game tick as a different player sent the trapped players to the dungeons, the game prioritises
the action activated by the player with the highest Player Identification Number, or PID for short. In 2006, the number each player had depended
on how long you had been online on a server. The longer you stayed online, the higher the
number you had. And obviously, Cursed You had been online
for longer than most of his party guests making his action of expelling the guests
take priority. So when the hundreds of players,
including the ones in the cage, spawned outside the other action was still queued up, and
played directly after they all had been kicked. Since getting dropped into the dungeon would
register your account as being in the dungeon, the variable saying youâre on the upper
floors of a house disappears, and PvP mode becomes
activated. So, in summary, you have a variable that turns
on open world PVP, and another that stops it if youâre on the ground or upper floors
of a player owned house. This is supposed to be removed when you leave
the house, but the developer forgot about the Greater
Magic Cage, and now you have âopen world PVPâ turned
on thanks to stupidly specific circumstances. As long as you donât log out, hop worlds,
or teleport, the variable stays visible. Okay, enough on mechanics,
itâs time to talk about the carnage. As players start dropping,
panic spreads around the Rimmington house portal. Some people still have no idea whatâs going
on; others know exactly what is going on. Some players run as fast as they can,
not wanting to lose their expensive items they had brought to the prestigious party. Others are just deer in headlights,
unable to avert their eyes from the disaster unfolding before them. A partyhat is quickly lost in the chaos to
a player named Yeti 90, punching his victims to death with nothing but a pair of boxing
gloves. Others are dying to mere shadows;
killers avoiding attention by hiding in the masses. Some of the bug abusers likely teleport
or hop worlds in an attempt to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime chance,
only to wipe the variable they accidentally smuggled out. Attending Player Moderators sound the alarm.
With their Silver Crowns piercing through the chatbox like a sword of light dispelling the dark,
they warn players to run, report the bug abusers, and beg those same abusers to stop before
itâs too late. Others rush to the Player Moderator Forums
to open a direct line with Jagex, hoping to get in
touch before these random killings turn into a full-fledged
massacre. Meanwhile, at Jagex HQ, Moderators Mat K,
Mark R and Murdoch make up the entirety of the community management team this evening. Having been working for just over 6 hours
at this point, it wasnât long until they could finally
head home, as their shift ended at 2am. But as the ones to deal with Player Moderators, they quickly notice the reports coming in
over their P-Mod emergency ticket system; all repeating the same warning about open
world PvP. Receiving reports of similar nature almost
daily, most who are false alarms, the three J-Mods on duty are sceptical. But nothing is normal
about the sheer volume of reports flooding in; it was worth checking out. Mod Mark R and Mod Murdoch jumps in-game,
teleports to Rimmington and quickly discovers that the reports are entirely real. Trying to do what they can to remedy the situation,
they start warning players to run away and bank their items. Ironically, this just sends more players
towards the hot zones of danger, when they could have just logged out and
been perfectly safe that way. But it was late at night, people were panicking,
none of them were prepared for a situation like this; and it was likely just as chaotic in the office
as it was in Rimmington. While Jagex managed to get some of the abusers,
theyâre actually struggling to get them all. You know how you canât log out of the game
until 10 seconds after combat? Turns out even Jagex couldnât get around
that requirement, and so if someone attacks a player, and then just attacks someone else within
10 seconds of their last kill⌠They just canât be logged out. Sure, the moment they stop, theyâll be slammed
by their ban; but until then, they can go as long as they
want. The Rimmington mass cascades into a system
of predators and prey, with those expelled with the attack buttons able to murder any
other player in the game and those without unable to attack back,
stuck in a non-PVP zone, only able to watch as their health ticks
down until they lose everything theyâre carrying. With two J-mods unable to do anything but
watch the chaos unfold, those with items to lose run north to the
nearest bank, hoping to deposit all their items before theyâre forcibly stripped of them. Some players are quick to escape,
but not without trouble along the way. One of the bug abusers, Jonathizzle0, follows
the crowd north to attack players attempting to get
to safety. He gets no kills, and attempts his luck against
an unsuspecting player doing a farm run. Inside Cursed Youâs house, however,
the Construction King and his friends are completely unaware of the chaos theyâve caused outside. Theyâre just chilling and enjoying the afterglow
of their friendâs achievement. However, a lot of the reports flooding from
the P-Mods in are name dropping him and his party, so a scrambling staff team decide to lock
his account just in case heâs somehow enabling the bug. A temporary ban to save countless of playersâ
items would be a worthwhile trade, after all. So Cursed You is issued a ban, he is forcibly
disconnected from the game, and his house immediately closes with all of his friends forced outside into
the masses. Players are dying, PMods are shouting, and
even a couple JMods are there trying to save the
day. To call it a reality check is themunderstatement
of the century. Cursed You is informed about the chaos over
Teamspeak, and does a cheeky little bit of ban evasion by hopping on to his real world trading mule
account, Hidden P Hat, to check out the situation for
himself. Durial321, still in Rimmington, has spent
the past minutes observing rather than abusing the
bug. Though we know he attacked somebody in the
town and discovered the variable still applied to him, itâs likely he paused once the J-mods showed
up. They clearly didnât know about him just
yet; otherwise Durial wouldâve been just another
ban in the Rimmington carnage. But Brian had always been a PKer. Itâs the whole reason he played the game. And heâd been given the ability to attack
anyone, anywhere. There was no way he was ever going to resist
taking the plunge. His teamspeak friends, who were fully up-to-date
on what was going on from the perspective of Durial himself, all encouraged him to keep going. But they had to be smart about it,
and laid a plan to do as much damage as possible. He splits off from the crowd,
also making his way north towards the nearest bank but heâs not here to deposit his valuables,
heâs here to bring them out. While running with the fleeing masses,
he tells one of his Teamspeak companions, P6 emx60, to wait by the Falador bank,
so he can accept some items in a trade. By this time, Jonahizzle0 has also made his
way to the Falador east bank, still attacking players in the area. After finally getting a kill, he is attacked
by a different player who also has the PvP variable still applied, Runescapego1, who is much better
geared to fight. Jona teleports off to escape, simultaneously
ending his minutes of attention in the spotlight. As Durial arrives in the bank, Runescapego1
pledges to protect the bystanding players from future
killers. Little does he realise the largest predator
of them all is just a few squares away, getting ready to seize the moment all of his
days in PVP had been building towards. While most people were still attacking random
players in Rimmington, Durial and his encouraging
friends were ready to abuse this bug to its fullest
potential. He knew the consequences. He knew he wouldnât make it out of this
unpunished. But he knew this was his chance to go down
in history as a legend. He heads out of the bank and enters a trade
with his waiting friend. What items did he trade, you ask? âŚWell, weâre not sure. Thereâs no way to know what was in his inventory. Itâs a pretty safe bet to assume that Durial
was offloading some of his most valuable items, fully expecting an incoming ban for his upcoming actions. But with both of them ending the trade with
a âthanksâ, it was time to make history. Brian and his Teamspeak friends had laid an
evil plan. While players had started to reach Falador
to bank their items, no-one had reached the neighbouring
towns. So, taking a leisurely stroll, Durial made
his way to the once-named Ghost Town. If heâd tried to teleport with an Amulet
of Glory, heâd have lost his PVP variable - something he didnât know about, but avoided
by sheer luck. If heâd tried to world hop, in an attempt
to tear up the busy hotspots of world 2, heâd have also
lost the variable. There were many opportunities during the night
where Durial could have easily come to an early
end and he just happened to avoid them all. And so, Durial arrived in Edgeville with the
rogue variable still primed. The unsuspecting players in Edgeville thought
nothing of it; people go there all the time, after all. No one could have expected that it was going
to be a Ghost Town once more. With the element of surprise on his side,
Durial immediately started swinging at the players, targeting those bearing the most expensive
items. PKers returning from the Wilderness with hard-won
spoils, alchers barely paying attention to the game
as they tore through their giant piles of items, and
those displaying their obscene wealth through equipped
items. As Durialâs spree is going on, his friends
on Teamspeak are calling people over to Edgeville for Durial
to slay. One of the unfortunate victims answering the
call, is Primo a wealthy player carrying his beloved green
partyhat. Just second after he steps foot inside Edgeville,
Primo is dead. Brian is filled with adrenaline seeing the expensive paper hat appear on the
ground before him - and equips the infamous Green Partyhat that heâd wear as his spree
continued. As the kills racked up, players started crowding
around Durial, wondering what was going on, as the killings continued. Around this point, Durial removed both a white
and a yellow party hat from their previous owners. However, he was actually unable to pick up
much loot for himself, as the greedy onlookers seized
the opportunity to grab what they could, descending
on partyhats and high level gear like the vultures that they were. Durial knew a ban was incoming,
he wasnât in it for the money - he couldnât be. It was a bloodlust driven entirely by an adrenaline
rush, a lust for chaos. As fearful players fled Edgeville,
they made west for Falador, hoping to get away and, eager to hunt down the rich and wealthy
just within his grasp, Durial gave chase. While Durial has already torn up Edgeville
and is making their way to Falador from the north, players in Rimmington finally heed the advice
of the JMods and make their way to Falador to bank
their items, having seen all the bug abusers in the area
start to disappear and believing the glitch to finally
be over. Even Mod Mark R and Mod Murdoch fall for this
misconception, seeing a peaceful Rimmington, and believing
itâs all over. Rather than follow the players to Falador,
they log out believing their job to be done. Fresh blood runs to Falador from the south,
running straight north in hopes of finding safety. They slam into the refugees from Edgeville,
with the one man army hot on their trail. Rimmington may have found peace, but thatâs
because the chaos had all gone north. And with a mass amount of targets congregating
in Falador Square, and Durial descending from
the north, the stage is set for the greatest disaster
RuneScape has ever seen. Anticipating what comes next, some bystanders fire up their recording software,
not wanting to miss a second of what follows. And with players starting to drop like flies,
more and more eyes are morbidly drawn to the madness. But those pale in comparison to the hundreds
of thousands of eyes that would descend on the videos of the event over the years to come. Some of the most infamous RuneScape footage
that has ever been uploaded to YouTube. For five long minutes, the rampage razes
Falador to the ground. PMods beg players to get away and bank their
items, but people are enthralled by the history in
the making, and the pleas go unheard. Friends message friends to come see,
and as word spreads around the game, more and more people descend on Falador to
watch the bloodshed for themselves. Within the last hour, the 1200 players on
world 111 had reached its max capacity of 2000 with several more queuing up to get in. Mere hours earlier, this had been Cursed Youâs
day. It was now entirely Durialâs, with a ferocious
stack of people following him around an unhinged collection of people egging him
on, asking him to kill them, or chanting âDur
scaredâ on repeat. After building up this army of followers,
and clearing Falador of targets, Durial decides to head back to Edgeville - to take down the
sneaky players who thought theyâd managed to evade
him. With impending doom returning to the edge
of the wilderness, PMods continue to beg for help on the forums. Someone, anyone at Jagex - we need you. Well, they did have Jagex at the scene -
having realised the problem had spread further than Rimmington, Mod Murdoch logged
back in to try and solve the problem. If he could force Durial from the game,
they could slam the banhammer on him - but Durial was unbannable as long as he stayed
in combat. And high on the bloodlust of the bug, he wasnât
going to let enough time pass between kills to leave combat
mode; with a pool of targets around him,
why wait 10 seconds when you could immediately kill someone else? So, Murdoch went for the second best thing
Jagex could do⌠that is, asking Durial as kindly as possible
to stop, please and thank you. If J-mod powers werenât going to save the
day, maybe words would. Unsurprisingly, this didnât stop Durial. However, Murdoch was hot on Durialâs trail:
he had to slip up eventually. There was no way he could keep up the perfect
murderous pace for hours on end. And, sure enough - Durial slipped up. Ghjjf, who just so happened to be the leader
of Cursed Youâs clan DI, became Durialâs
last target barely surviving next to Barbarian Village. As Durial heads dead north to Edgeville on
the hunt for more victims, too much time passes before he manages to
strike again. 10 seconds are quickly gone. Mod Murdoch slams the disconnect button
and Durial is ejected from the game, the almighty train coming to an immediate
halt. Durial hadnât been banned, however, only
disconnected. Mod Murdoch were probably more concerned about
getting the biggest perpetrator offline before doing anything more complicated. Durial immediately logs back in,
but with the killer variable removed by the logout, his killing spree is done for good. Durialâs not stupid - he knows his time
is up. So, with his last moments in Gielinor,
he removes his green partyhat and trades it to his longtime friend - VooDooLegion. With his Harlequin prize in the hands of his
trusted companion, Durial turns to dust, disintegrating into nothing as he is
disconnected once more - with a permanent ban applied to his account. After about an hour of stress, fear and death,
the infamous Massacre had seemingly come to an end. The funny thing is, Durial had managed to
keep going for such a long time simply because he ran to a different town entirely to begin
with. By the time the reports of Durials rampage
had made it to Jagex, the killings in Rimmington and southern Falador had already lasted for
20 to 30 minutes. The largest predator mightâve been taken
down, but who knows how many other killers were
still running around in the game? Who knows what events havenât reached
Community Managementâs ears? And who knows if itâs not all about to happen
again; the bug was still in the game. This was only the start of a very long night
for Jagex. To say night shift were struggling was an
understatement. One of the biggest sources of stress was to
do with escalation - with no developers in the office overnight, there was no-one on hand
to fix the bug. Community Management certainly couldnât
do it. Do they hope for the best, cross their fingers
that the bug doesnât become widespread, with more offenders appearing, and let it
get fixed in the morning? Or do they nip it in the bud here and now? Well, by the time the British clocks got closer
to 2am and the end of their shift, the call was
finally made. They needed backup. Just two weeks prior, Andrew Gower had been
the only person in the system who had permission to add hotfixes to address issues like this but, by sheer coincidence, Andrew had recently
delegated this responsibility to a different employee: System Administrator Mod Slake. Slake had seized the opportunity with both
hands, and openly admitted that he would be more than willing to come in the moment an emergency
needed him. Anyway, faced with his first emergency,
Slake immediately called Andrew Gower in the middle of the night. Okay, thatâs a little mean to the guy
Slake was definitely up to the task, and willing to do his part in stopping the
problem. But while he had the permissions to deploy
a hotfix, he didnât really have the technical knowhow
to confidently stop the glitch without breaking
anything else in the process. He needed a developerâs insight. Stirred at 2am, a tired Andrew Gower was bombarded
with information about what had been happening
in the game. Unprecedented problems. Open-world PVP.
Players dying in the streets. They needed someone at the office to come
over and fix it immediately. Andrew, annoyed to be stirred by the very
person he appointed to avoid this sort of thing, told them to deal with it themselves,
and gave them the number of the only other developer who had agreed to do emergency callouts. The man, the myth, the legend: Mod Ash. Ash, not recognising the voice, was confused
by the call but agreed to come in regardless. Slake raced to Ashâs house, picked up the
developer, and beelined to the office. With the right mind on the task,
they quickly sussed out what was behind the bug. While they werenât sure how the PVP status
had been smuggled out of the house, they knew it was the rogue variable that had caused the massacre. It was a bug that had existed since the release
of Construction, but no-one had known about it until this perfect storm. With the variable identified, it was easy
to make a hotfix. Ashâs hacky middle-of-the-night solution
was to temporarily disable PVP in the entire game, meaning nobody could attack each other inside
any PoH or the Wilderness until it was turned back on. He also thought to make the game just stop
reading the house PVP variable completely, effectively
disabling it for any players who still had it active. Without knowing how the variable was smuggled
out, they simply didnât know if this was PoH-exclusive, or if a player could do it all again by using
a different source of PvP. With that done, they could fix this more elegantly
in the morning. Ash just needed to make a quick check that
there weren't any glaring problems in his code, to ensure that it wouldnât cause a second
major incident. All in all, Slake and Ashâs work took them
somewhere in the region of 2 hours - with the hotfix
being deployed roughly around 4am UK time. As the party had started just after midnight,
this gave a total of 4 hours from the start of the house party to the termination of the
glitch. It had been a night of terror, a night of
dread, a night of murder with countless bloodshed. But as Ash and Slake relaxed in their chairs
the three community managers now at home could enjoy a well deserved rest. Because despite all the things the night had
been, the night was finally over. Survivors of the massacre share their testimonies
over all major RuneScape forums in the following hours. Long threads tell the tale of the terrors
on world 111, calling it the âDoomsday Massacreâ due
to the coincidental date of 6/6/6. The rants forums are flooded by angry players
demanding their items back. Chancers try to capitalise on the opportunity, and also demand
their items back, even if they didnât lose anything some of them werenât online for it at all. Screenshots circulate the forums. DI member Sopp4, also known as S Y N I,
uploads his footage of the event to YouTube just hours after it ended - although YouTube
was still fresh at this point, so most people preferred to share the fileâs
download link on Rapidshare instead. Durial himself replied to posts on RuneScape
Community, in later years known as the Zybez forums, explaining some of his perspective of the
entire event. His appearance on such a popular forum made
it rather easy for people to get in touch with him. Players started to reach out, wanting their
items back, but Durial was in no position to return them
even if he wanted to. However, in a cruel twist of fate,
Durial checks in with VooDooLegion a few hours later, asking for his green partyhat back on a different
account only for VooDooLegion to refuse, sever all ties with Durial, and end their
years-long friendship over some money in an online game. The legendary green partyhat was sold just
a few hours later, shamelessly swapped for a yellow partyhat and a santa hat;
with VooDoo keeping the yellow for himself and gifting the santa hat to a friend he
clearly cared about more than Brian. Learning of the legendary figure at the heart
of the massacre, a writer from Tip.it called Therat got in touch with Durial
through the RSC forums about 3 hours after the Massacre had ended. Requesting an interview,
Durial gleefully accepts, with the transcript of their conversation
being posted in a tip.it forum thread titled The Falador
Massacre (or âThe Falidore Massacreâ to be exact) This was the first time the event was referred
to by this name, and due to the heavy traffic the site would see over the next few days,
it quickly became the âofficialâ name and the one that has stuck through all these years. Emerging from the ashes, 3 hours after the
Massacre, was Cursed You. Andrew Gower had eventually gotten up to check on what was going on,
and upon looking at the bans for the night, noticed that Cursed You wasnât maliciously
involved with the bug. There was no reason to keep him banned, so they let their
law-abiding Construction King back in to continue his RuneScape adventures. This didnât sit right with some of the staff,
who despite agreeing that he had nothing to do with the bug, could see a range of
alt accounts in Cursed Youâs possession with suspicious activity in the
real world trading market But nothing enough to issue a ban;
placing his account under surveillance going forward. The bug hadnât been properly fixed yet,
mind you but it was now close to the start of the workday
in the UK, and all hands were on deck once more. Itâs an odd morning for the staff as theyâre
met by the garbage fire that started blazing overnight. The community outrage is at an all time high,
a horrific glitch is being held back by a patchwork fix, and they all slept through one of the most
significant events in RuneScape history. With Jagex being made up mostly of young developers
and fresh faces in the industry, itâs an unusual and exciting day for them. Theyâve never seen anything like this before. Regardless, they get to work on properly fixing
the bug. Andrew Gower, upset that such an event happened
in the first place, admonishes his team for not partaking in safer coding practices. During this conversation, he realises that
the in-house programming language, RuneScript, doesnât really have an easy way to check
if a player is in a specific location or not. Sure, there are some hacky ways around it,
but it leads to stuff like the two separate variables for house PvP which led to the bug
anyway. So, Andrew just goes away and quickly codes
up an entirely new system for the game to fix
this. With the new code, itâs now possible to
check what instance a player is in alongside what coordinates theyâre standing on, and so the team ensures
that all variables which enable PVP also check
that the player is standing in the intended place. Wilderness PVP only works in the Wilderness. House PVP only works in a House. You get the picture; even if you somehow
smuggled these variables out somewhere, they wouldnât do anything since you
werenât in the correct place. There would never be a disaster of this
type or scale ever again. Additional fixes have been made over the
years to ensure bugs of similar nature truly cannot happen. Though unrelated to the Massacre,
the PID system was changed in 2013 to now be in a random order rather than
based on who had been online the longest, meaning bug abusers can no longer rely on
their actions being prioritised in the system. Other bugs related to the PoH and variables
have also been fixed in later years, which all in all creates a stack of safety
checks before you even touch the ground when you leave a player owned house. Jagex has basically built a fortress
of protection around the bug they couldnât identify for so many years. Having proved himself with his eleventh hour
aid, Mod Slake gives Mod Ash special permissions
to deploy hotfixes to the game without
requiring a system admin (such as Slake) to push it through for him. While Mod Ash tends to get a lot of the credit
for stopping the massacre, Slake was equally important in saving the
day. After all, Slake was the admin on call,
he was the one who drove to Ashâs house and the office, and the one who pushed the hotfix through. Without him, there was nothing Ash could
have done in this situation. As a last, but just as important, major change;
players could now be banned even if theyâre busy smacking down people in PvP. As for the people, Paul Gower took to the
rants forum with some terrible news for the players. Apologising profusely to all of them, there
was nothing they could do for the victims. The system wasnât able to perform a rollback
at this time, returning everyone to their state just before the killings,
and there was no way they would be able to issue item refunds. As Jagex did not keep a backup of that sort
of data, and legitimate requests were being drowned
out by a sea of people trying to get free stuff,
no-one would be getting anything back at all. Imagine permanently losing your best gear
and not getting it back solely because some kids were trying to scam the system in wake of
a huge tragedy. I know Iâd be upset. The discussions on the days following the
massacre saw people go back and forth between supporting and despising Durial. Some players felt a rollback was the right
solution, with his ban being reversed alongside it. I mean, who could resist such a tempting glitch? Everyone would go around and kill as many
people as they could if given the chance, right? Others thought the ban was justified given
he had exploited one of the most serious bugs the game had ever seen, and knowingly went
aroun murdering people to steal their expensive
items. While Durial was permanently gone from the
game, Cursed You was back in business, and enjoyed a reasonable status as an online
celebrity following the massacre. Despite not taking part in it at all,
his name was forever connected to it and everyone knew him. However, he was far from a golden child,
and received another mute just a few weeks later in July 2006, for reasons unrelated to the
massacre. Even in the evidence report you can see a
player calling him a legend. Must have been a nice ego boost for the 16
year old. Pride comes before the fall, however,
and with Jagex actively monitoring his account, only two months passed after that fateful
night before Cursed You pushed things too far Or, rather I should say âCursed Y0uâ,
since it was Josh playing on Lincolnâs account. While Lincoln was at school, Josh started
to brag about real world trading on the account, while also attempting to sell gold. The ensuing report alerted Jagex to Cursed
Youâs long and shady history on the topic, and so the account was permanently banned
for real world trading on August 25th 2006. Despite being banned, Cursed You still stood
his ground that what he did on his account was
a solo mission, claiming what ultimately nailed his coffin
was actions done by an intelligent account hijacker. With both Lincoln and Brian removed from the
game, the story of the stars of the Falador Massacre
came to a swift close. Okay, thatâs not quite true
while the Durial account was permanently banned, that didnât stop Brian from playing RuneScape. Durial321 was never to be let back into the
game, with Andrew Gower even leaving a note on the
account in the internal system saying it should never
be unbanned one of the only 4 known account notes he ever
left in the system during his 10 year tenure at
Jagex. But even if Durial was gone, Brian did have
other accounts to play on. Gifted âAzn Boi 763â from a friend,
Durial was able to jump straight back into the game without having to start th
long and monotonous grind from scratch. Jagex did also add a note to this account,
connecting it to Durial321, but decided to let it slide since he wasnât
breaking any rules. I mean, other than ban evasion and account
trading, but hey, whoâs counting. His new account wasnât a well-kept secret
either; sharing the username on a fansite he made
for himself Getting the status as an iconic player in
the worldâs largest MMO at age 16 mustâve
been awfully exciting for Brian. He continued to be a part of 3v0luti0n up
until February 2008, when he attempted to join a new clan of dastardly villains and terrifying
PKers Reign of Terror. Durial didnât last much longer, however,
as he eventually quit the game some time in 2009; and has not been an active player ever since⌠As far as we know. As for Jagex, they tried their best to avoid
acknowledging the Massacre for several years. After all, the incident was essentially a
major case of bug abuse; it was a failing on their end, and to give
it any credence would just be glorifying rule breaking, and encouraging future offenders. But time heals all wounds, and those personally
affected by the Massacre moved on with their lives, either rebuilding their accounts or
leaving the game for greener pastures. Avoiding the topic was the âofficialâ
stance right up until RuneFest 2014, at which point Jagex decided to start talking
about it in preparation for the RuneScape Documentary. It was still something of an awkward topic,n
though. With the rise of mass shootings over the years,
as Jagex started to bring it up, they had to make sure they never glorified
it. Staff members who had dealt with
active shooter incidents in real life never found Falador Massacre jokes to be funny,
so they knew how sore it could be for some community members. But still - itâs one of the most significant
cultural events in RuneScape history. People whoâve never touched the game have
heard of it. Whether you like it or not,
it left a permanent mark on the game right in the middle of its golden years. In 2016, on the 10 year anniversary,
Jagex decided to fully commit to acknowledging the incident by adding an ingame event that
recreated Cursed Youâs infamous house party; followed by a giant Durial321 miniboss that
players could fight together. Even oldschool held an anniversary event,
opening up a temporary world 666, where players could engage in open PvP in
Falador without it affecting their account on the
regular worlds. Jagex even added a new song - Massacre -
to play on this temporary world, bearing a striking resemblance to Nightwishâs
âPlanet Hellâ, but in the osrs soundfont. As Planet Hell was the background song for
the most well-known YouTube footage of the massacre, many players associate it with the event,
and to this day all the top comments on the youtube upload of the song are about RuneScape. Jagex also outsourced a gaming company
to create a simple game for Facebook titled the Falador Massacre. Described as a top-down view of Falador
as it appears in Old School, youâd have 3 minutes playing as Durial321
to get as many kills as possible. NPCs posing as players would pop in
from all directions wearing different items, awarding a variety of points depending on
the item. Unfortunately, Facebook wasnât too fond
of releasing a game holding the word âMassacreâ - and thus was rejected and never released. In the years after Durial left the game,
his details were somehow shared online - likely as a result of one of the many leaks
of the Zybez forum database, allowing imposters to log on and pretend that
they were the PKing legend in disguise. This tricked various content creators into
making videos about them, some of which has since been taken down. Many streamers have also claimed that they
were actually Durial321 returning to the game, but these were all fakers trying to use the
name to boost their audience. Believe it or not, Cursed You also eventually
returned from the land of the dead sneaking back into RuneScape under the
inconspicuous name âCurssed Youâ. See, two âSâs, itâs totally a different
guy. I bet the second S stands for secret. Anyway, he streamed consistently for about
a year, uploading several youtube videos during this
time, releasing some never-before-seen screenshots
from the Construction grind. He got in touch with Jagex moderators and
some content creators, sharing his stories before fading away once more - joining Brian
in the greener pastures that lie in the world outside of online gaming. Wherever the two of them may be now, they leave behind a legacy that will forever
be a part of RuneScape history, gaming history, and all of the players
that were there on that fateful day. Thank you all so, so much for watching
this deep dive into RuneScapeâs most famous bug of all time. Itâs kind of funny thinking that, even after
all these years, we never fixed the actual bug that caused the Massacre. They only added workarounds to stop it happening
again. Far down in the code, that bug is still there,
and honestly might always be there inside RuneScape for the rest of its life. If that isnât a poetic metaphor for the
legacy of the Massacre, I donât know what is. Anyway, I really hope youâve all enjoyed
this video Until next time, my name is Will Miss It,
and Iâll see you all later.
Willmissit has once again made an amazing video. Had the honor of being there myself that day and in all the chaos I did not pay attention to what was happening all around me as the young kid I was - I just ran and ran away.
This is incredible
This is an amazing video with plenty of information I've never heard/seen of before. Kudos to willmissit for this documentary!
I made that thumbnail, very cool.
I was in school during the event but I saw the aftermath.