The Great Orb Project

**The Great Orb Project** (commonly abbreviated as **GOP**) is a minigame in the MMORPG RuneScape, located within the Runecrafting Guild. It was released on 12 August 2008. The game involves two teams, distinguished by the colors yellow and green, moving orbs of their respective color that are randomly "spawned" within an area to a location surrounding the altar. Runecrafting Guild tokens are awarded for playing the game and can be used to buy various rewards from the Runecrafting Guild rewards shop, run by Wizard Elriss.

## Gameplay

### Overview

The objective of the game is to move orbs of the team's colour to the area surrounding the altar. This can be accomplished by attracting or repelling an orb (see Mechanics section below). It is also possible to erect barriers that prevent the movement of orbs and other entities mainly players in order to sabotage the opposing team. When an orb reaches the 16 squares directly surrounding the altar, henceforth referred to as the "scoring area", it is scored, meaning that the team of the color of the orb that has been scored gains a point.

### Mechanics

*See: Category:Mechanics*

Orbs can be moved by wielding either the Attractor wand or the Repeller wand. When an orb is clicked on while wielding one of the wands, the player will be able to interact with it provided the orb is within the player's line of sight. If the orb is not within the player's line of sight, the player will automatically move to the closest square from which the orb can be interacted with indefinitely (this is known as premovement if the player is not currently attracting and orb and drag if they are). When clicked, there is a one-tick delay before the player interacts with the orb, known as a prototick, before interaction with an orb begins when the orb is clicked unless the player was idle in the previous tick (meaning that they did not move) or the player had attracted another orb for at least two ticks in the tick before the switch. When a player ends interaction with an orb by clicking another orb, the ground or altar, or elsewhere, the orb will continue to travel along its path for two ticks according to the
direction rules of orb movement.
When an orb reaches the scoring area, it will despawn after one tick, giving the team of its color a point, and a new orb of the same color will spawn. There are exactly three orbs of each color in play at any given time during the game.

#### Attracting

Once interaction begins, the orb moves toward the player according to the direction rules of orb movement at a speed of one square per tick. The Attractor wand can reach orbs up to 10 squares away from the player.

#### Repelling

The orb initially moves away from the player in a straight line until it hits an object while travelling diagonally. When that happens, it will temporarily change direction such that it travels in the direction away from the player that was not prevented by the object. For example, if an orb being repelled to the southeast hits a pillar, it will turn south.

The Repeller can reach orbs up to 8 orbs away.

### Starting a game

In the Runecrafting Guild, a player may talk to or right-click Wizard Vief or Wizard Acantha to join the yellow and green teams respectively; if there is an imbalance in the members of each team, players will be unable to directly join the team with less players by talking to the aforementioned wizards. Alternatively, players can talk to or right-click one of the blue-robed wizards in the guild to be assigned to the team with less members, or, if the numbers of members on each team are equal, to a random team. A game requires four or more players to begin; when the number of players reaches four, a 120-second (200-tick) timer begins, and a portal will appear when the timer runs out, leading to the first altar.

### Rounds and scoring

There are six rounds in free-to-play and eight for members; each takes place at a certain Runecrafting altar. All players can play in the Air, Mind, Water, Earth, Fire, and Body altars. Members can also play in the Chaos and Nature altars. Each round takes 200 game ticks, or 120 seconds, and is scored independently for each team.

At the end of each altar, players receive a number of Rune Essence for free-to-play or Pure Essence for members depending on their team's score for that altar. If players decide to craft the runes in the game, they will receive double experience for each essence.

### Penalties

If a player leaves the game by destroying a wand or the barrier generator during a game, they will face a penalty before they can join another game. This penalty is initially 10 minutes for free-to-play and 15 minutes for members but decreases depending on how much time had passed from the beginning of the game to the point at which the player left the game. For example, if a player leaves a game after 4:23 have passed, their penalty will be 5:37.

### Glitches

If a player quits the game by destroying a piece of equipment on the tick that the first portal opens, they will not suffer any penalty before joining the next game. Another glitch is the Ring of Kinship (Dungeoneering ring) glitch, in which a player uses the teleport option on the ring just before they are pulled into the air altar, right after the "Waiting for orbs to appear" sign disappears.

The former is used to tjomp (helping someone into a game with fewer than 4 players) without receiving a penalty, though it should be mentioned that you can also tjomp without timing it, and take the penalty as intended. The Ring of Kinship glitch is sometimes used to sit a game, so you can spectate and learn from players without having to interfere with the game to keep your activity bar up.

## Rewards

At the end of the game, each member of each team receives 100 tokens for each altar that they won, 10 tokens for each lost altar, and 25 tokens for tied altars. An additional 150 tokens for free-to-play or 200 tokens for members are awarded to the team that won the most altars.

## Strategies

*See: Category:Strategies*

As the main objective of the game is to score as many orbs as possible within the 200 ticks allotted for each altar, GOP strategy primarily involves minimizing the time needed to score orbs. This is accomplished through various maneuvers, including moving the player to another square so that an orb is within the line of sight, utilizing premovement as well as preventing it, and skilfully switching wands, among other things.