The (Drop) Party Revolution: Egalitarianism, Communitas, and Control in Jagex's RuneScape

This paper argues that drop parties in early RuneScape were genuine expressions of egalitarian communitas, and that their decline reflects a recurring pattern in which established powers suppress festivities that threaten hierarchical order. Drawing on Victor Turner's concept of communitas, along with Bakhtin, Durkheim, and Ehrenreich's theories of collective joy, the author contends that the temporary dissolution of wealth and level distinctions produced a community of equals. Central to this claim is the observation that such euphoria depends on participants being roughly equal: when drop parties were hosted by high-status players or confined to exclusive spaces, they tended to reinforce rather than dissolve social stratification.

The evidence rests on the author's participant-observation of RuneScape from 2002 to 2012, supplemented by online ethnography and nostalgic forum discussions. These sources indicate that drop parties, once near-daily occurrences, have nearly disappeared from the game. The paper situates this decline within a broader historical frame, tracing how European authorities from the seventeenth century onward curtailed carnival and popular festivity as threats to social order.

Its key case study is Jagex's 2007 "Trade and Drop Changes" update, which relocated drop parties into the structured Falador Party Room and imposed trade limits. The author argues that this managed space converted egalitarian redistribution into spectacle and social control. The resulting frustration erupted in the "Pay to PK Riot," a carnival-like protest in which players redistributed vast wealth and mocked developers. The paper concludes that collective joy and egalitarianism are inherently linked, and that their suppression, in both physical and virtual spaces, illustrates how structural power seeks to contain revolutionary communitas.