JAGEX
When Allana turned fourteen, the limits of her world shrank to the four corners of her bed. A heart condition kept her between hospital and home. She could not attend school or make friends. She was lonely. She could not live like a normal fourteen-year-old.
At the same time, Allana played
RuneScape, an irreverent, medieval MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game. She was Miss Misty, on an adventure through Gielinor.
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At first, she had bobbed about, chasing butterflies with an empty jar. Even for the time,
RuneScapeâs graphics were basic â the fields and roads of its pastoral world were flat single shades of green and brown. Its avatars resembled Playmobil, with smoothed faces, colourful capes and dinky swords. But, In Gielinor, Allana felt the world that had been closed off to her begin to unfurl again with possibility. She could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, chase cows in the evening, and slay monsters after dinne