Welcome Screen
The Welcome Screen is the interface that is shown after logging in. It displays a welcome message, the time since you last logged in, several informational tiles about your account and about recent updates, and a button to start playing the game.
The welcome screen will not appear if the player logs in to a dangerous area, such as the wilderness, or if the player is creating a new account.
Features
Top banner
The banner at the top of the welcome screen welcomes you to Old School RuneScape, and displays the time that has passed since you logged in. The time passed has a precision of up to one minute. The largest unit it will display is a number of days. This time since last login is shared between Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. Long-time returning players will often find their welcome screen to show a time since login of thousands of days.
Center banner
The large banner at the center of the welcome screen displays a specially-designed graphic, chosen by Jagex and updated regularly. Commonly, this graphic will be relevant to the current events of the game, showcasing new content releases, holiday events, or important announcements.
Clicking the center banner will start playing the game.
Inbox tile
The inbox tile displays the number of unread messages in your account's inbox, and visually depicts a sealed letter.
Clicking the inbox tile will open your account's inbox, to view unread and previously read messages.
Play button
The play button is the primary interact-able tile on the welcome screen. Visually, the play button depicts the sword seen in the Old School RuneScape logo.
Clicking the play button closes the welcome screen and allows the player to start playing the game.
Membership tile
The membership tile displays the number of days left in a player's membership, if the player is currently a member. Visually, the button depicts a pile of coins.
Clicking the membership tile will open your account's membership page, to purchase or renew your membership.
Bottom banner
The bottom banner displays a message of the week, chosen by Jagex and updated weekly. Commonly, the message of the week will summarise the major changes in the most recent update, often with a humorous twist. Visually, the banner is fielded by two animated characters, items, or objects that are relevant to the message of the week.
Clicking the bottom banner will open the newspost for the most recent update.
If a player has been away for a long time, the bottom banner will instead welcome the player back and when clicked will open a summary of recent game updates. This special banner will be fielded by multi-coloured question marks.
History
The Welcome screen was present in the initial launch version of Old School RuneScape.
Before the update of 24th of October 2013 you could see the IP address that you logged in with. After certain complaints by Old School RuneScape streamers Jagex updated the Welcome Screen to not show your IP address.
Since an update on 5 September 2019, a new banner space showcasing the game's content replaced the tiles about Bank PIN and the tip on not giving an account's password to anyone. It was only available for "a selection of new players".[1] The new welcome screen became the default for all players on 26 January 2020.[2] A "Switch style" button was added to toggle it on and off.
On 2 February 2023, Jagex announced that they would be discontinuing the older version of the welcome screen.[3] The classic welcome screen was discontinued on 8 February 2023.[4]
Changes
| Date | Changes |
|---|---|
| [[{{#explode:8 February 2023| |0}} {{#explode:8 February 2023| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:8 February 2023| |2}}]] (update) |
The older version of the welcome screen has been discontinued. |
| [[{{#explode:29 January 2020| |0}} {{#explode:29 January 2020| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:29 January 2020| |2}}]] (update) |
The new welcome screen was made available to all players, co-existing alongside the previous version. |
| [[{{#explode:5 September 2019| |0}} {{#explode:5 September 2019| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:5 September 2019| |2}}]] (update) |
A new variant of the welcome screen was introduced and made available to a selection of new players. |
| [[{{#explode:24 October 2013| |0}} {{#explode:24 October 2013| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:24 October 2013| |2}}]] (update) |
The welcome screen no longer displays the IP address from which you last logged into the game. |
References
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