Render's shadow always looks pixelated with Blender Render i am fairly new to using blender, so i am sorry if this was a really simple error on my part.
as you can see (hopefully) its rendered at 200% because thats what other people did when asked similar questions, yet the end product is still pixelated in the shadowed areas.

EDIT: thank you Duarte Farrajota Ramos, turning the "raytraced" option on smoothed out the shadows perfectly
for anyone interested the render with the raytraced on looks like this:
You are probably using Shadow Maps type of shadow in your lamp object.

Shadow maps are good for real time rendering, but not really necessary for "offline rendering". Switch to other "true" raytraced shadow type.

You are also possibly in Game Engine mode, switch the active render engine at the top of the screen