9 June 2009 game engine update glitch
The 9 June 2009 game engine update glitch occurred on 9 June 2009 at around 16:00 UTC after the RuneScape game engine was significantly rewritten. Just minutes after the update, however, players were experiencing a huge variety of bugs, and soon the RuneScape Forums were overloaded with bug reports and confused players. One of the earliest reported glitches was that players could not run and eat at the same time which, according to Jagex, involved accidentally removing a feature that allowed the player to perform two actions at the same time.
Banks
Many banks became inaccessible, the most notable one being the Grand Exchange bank. If a player attempted to talk to a banker, they would get the error "I can't reach that". Zanaris bankers would give players the "Nothing interesting happens." message when they tried to use the bank. One way people could use the Grand Exchange bank was by clicking the Bank - Desk option.
Disabled Attack Styles/Non-Retaliation
All of the non-player characters were unable to use Magic or Ranged attack styles, and a number did not retaliate to a character in any way. This led to players successfully "solo-ing" the Corporeal Beast, going through the Fight Caves extremely fast, and killing the bosses in the God Wars Dungeon, as they had no worry about taking any damage.
Other glitches
Apart from the major game glitches, several other minor bugs prevented players from accessing features of the game as they normally would be able to:
- Crystal chimes stopped cleansing warped creatures.
- Attempting to use a combat spell on players in the Soul Wars waiting room would give the message "Nothing interesting happens".
- While scaring away the dog in Varrock, you pivot sitting down then scare it away.
- Players could not remove their armour while running.
- Evil Trees could no longer be inspected.
- Players could only train Ranged or Magic standing right next to a foe, and the Dragon halberd could not be used to attack from behind an obstacle or a space away.
- The player-owned house doors disappeared, except for the doors at the entrance.
- Ava's accumulator didn't work, yet Ava's attractor did.
- Many players could no longer train Hunter.
- Players no longer automatically go west when they light a log.
- Players could get free Firemaking skillcapes if they had 99 firemaking.
- Summoned familiars became invisible.
- Players could no longer bless gravestones.
- Magic darts didn't work.
- Void Knights became invincible.
- Penguins could no longer be spotted.
- Triggering a trap in Pyramid Plunder would get a player stuck and kill them in a matter of seconds.
- Players could not complete random events or leave the random event area.
- Players could not set up the Dwarf multicannon.
- Bankers were seen facing sideways.
- Players could no longer jump on the Basalt rocks to get to the Lighthouse or jump on the Stepping stones to get to the Tears of Guthix activity.
- Hopper controls in Windmills, including in the Cooking Guild, no longer functioned, and "couldn't be reached".
- Teleother spells could no longer be cast.
- When player tried to regularly bank at a banker it said "This booth isn't in service."
- The rope swings in the Brimhaven agility arena "could not be reached".
- Rock crabs would appear when players walked over them, but immediately disappear, making it so they could not be killed.
- Elementals in the Sorceress' Garden would not teleport players.
- TzHaar monsters became extremely aggressive and killed many players.
- The graphics on the doors at areas such as Yanille would show both an open and a closed door at the same time. Many believed it was possible to pass through them, although this is unconfirmed.
- Players were unable to pickpocket.
- Players could not create a canoe at the canoe spots along the Lum.
- Players could not use GreeGrees
- Players could not escape the Teleportation Lost and Found Office.
- Players could not consume anchovies.
Aftermath
Some players went so far as trying to get people to riot in protest. With the new "rest" feature, "sit-ins" around the Grand Exchange and other banks became popular.
Even after Jagex attempted to fix the glitches, other bugs continued to appear. After a fourth system update (with a total of six for the day), most issues seemed to have been resolved.
Many players complained about the fact that Jagex had refused to roll-back to a previous state before the update, and angry over the fact that the people who exploited the glitches were not banned, as it was a violation of the rules. Even though Jagex had said that they would not need to do a roll-back, they did roll-back World 64 which crashed on the same day.
In an attempt to quick fix a bug that made it impossible to run and eat at the same time, Jagex inadvertently made it possible to do up to two different actions simultaneously that were previously impossible to do before. This made power-training skills like fishing and woodcutting faster, because you could drop items without having to re-click to gather more resources. At first, Jagex considered it all right, but as more posts came in, Jagex fixed this because "A lot of the careful balancing of the game was being thrown off". In one extreme case, it was possible to create gem bolt tips and make the bolts at the same time.
It was reported that the cause of this was that the entire game system had been reintroduced to improve the game engine. It was said that after 6 years of updates the foundations were very messy and this tidying up allowed it to perform more easily. So, contrary to popular belief, the run update wasn't the reason for all the glitches, the new game engine was. No one was banned after these glitches.
Jagex had received so many bug reports on the RuneScape Forums that they had to close all the threads for a while so they could read and sort through all the reports.
Gallery
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A player abusing the glitch by "solo-ing" the Corporeal Beast.
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The doors in a player-owned house disappearing.
