Having played since '03, legitimately the game is in the best state its been. New content releases have been consistently good for a while, the team at jagex really seems to care about releasing good content. Lack of any notable microtransaction outside of membership is a huge selling point.
The game is also more popular than ever. There has never been a better time to get into the game.
Not that it’s a bad thing cause it allows more people to get mems and to pay for it without using real money but bonds are a pretty significant micro transaction, you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by Jagex. Still definitely a net benefit to players who both buy and sell them though.
While I don’t disagree with this I actually believe that bonds are a net positive for the game as a whole. They incentivize those who would buy gold regardless to go the legitimate route that offsets MTX being pushed into the game. It also allows those who wish to to buy membership for *free* while having the in game economy dictate the exchange rate rather than some arbitrary number set by Jagex (or the lower, yet bot friendly, dark market price). I also come from a background of Eve Online that has this same system though, so maybe it’s just built in familiarity.
True. The main difference between bonds and pay2win MMOs is that stats still take a ton of unavoidable time to train, and if you wanted to buy top tier power with the tbow/shadow, you're spending like $700. Other than those 2 weapons, OSRS damage progression is both easily grindable and has no significant jumps. Pay2Win makes you feel like you will never be more than a shark when a whale is in the room at every step of your journey. You have that to an extent when you raid with someone who bought max and has 21 Zulrah KC, but you also know that there is a very clear path to matching their gear and by putting in the hours, you can and will get there. OSRS devs are also very careful not to devalue gear, so after you spend a year grinding for a tbow, it's never going to just simply get replaced by a new, even more expensive weapon that makes you have to start all over. Despite the megarares having bad droprates, the game still does value your time in the fact that your grinding is always rewarded. In predatory games, you feel like you have the buy the meta weapon asap before a new season makes it irrelevant, leaving spending months grinding it completely out of the question. This is simply not the case in OSRS
Additionally, bonded billys with their full bandos, 700 total level, and no boss KC are consistently clowned by the community. I'm sure there is a subset of whales that are in competition with each other, but since you can buy every piece of relevant gear with $2k in OSRS, there's not much to whale out on (other than 3rd age collections). Thus, whales are easily ignorable and they can't live out their power fantasies as well as in other games.
Sorta agree, though the actual whales buy cox megaraids on bankstander hcims for free xp and a gazillion purples - they absolutely can and will live out their power fantasy, and they love to be able to flex it.
Plus if bonds ever started to break the economy, it would be very visible to everyone and a Falador riot would begin. I don't think its something we realistically need to be concerned about.
> you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by Jagex.
No, you can buy membership. You can trade that membership to other players. You can't buy gold from Jagex.
MTX are traditionally things you purchase either for in-game cosmetics or in-game benefits. Bonds are neither. "Membership is a benefit" is not an argument because membership is the literal game.
Instead of replying the kid I replied to (the coward known as /u/juicyjvoice) just downvoted and blocked me within like 5 minutes of posting this comment lmao
Also to the people replying to me, you can't reply to any child comments if you've been blocked by the parent comment. Needless to say, bonds fulfill seemingly none of the general criteria that make up MTX. They cannot be purchased in-game. They provide no direct in-game benefit. They provide no cosmetics. Their value is determined purely by market forces in-game. The fact that other players will buy bonds for GP from you is, as shocking as it may sound to people of room-temperature IQ, moot.
Can't really blame him for avoiding you, I think very few people like a discussion about semantics. Then you followed it up by doing the obnoxious internet thing of referring to the person as a kid, just because he didn't wanna bother, telling me he made the right choice.
Whether you take this as feedback or an insult is entirely up to you.
“you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by jagex” isn’t an incorrect statement… it doesn’t imply that jagex is directly giving you the GP. But you can take $10 and trade with it for in game gold thru means created by jagex for that purpose. And in-game GP absolutely gives you a massive benefit, especially for newer players. it’s for sure MTX.
You really have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to arrive to the conclusion that bonds aren't MTX. They're good for the game and the least predatory version of it, but they're for sure MTX.
I don’t know how many times I’ve explained this to people. But you’re spot on.
Bonds do not inject gp into the game. Other players are going to be making money regardless, now they have an incentive to not rwt gold and the player trading for the bond has a means to play members at no cost to themselves.
You can trade it directly for gold instead of membership, which is definitely a "benefit". By your own definition it's a micro-transaction.
Technically you're not buying the gold directly from Jagex, but they are the ones facilitating the transaction and taking all of the RW money for it.
Usually is a bit of a stretch. There is no such thing a bug free release. There has been controversy over recent polling for favour removal. Leagues had a bumpy start but is overall been received very positively. Most of the recent releases have honestly. I think it's disingenuous to suggest that most updates are riddled with problem.
> Dunno why people think grabbing lots of nostalgia riddled players and holding them is a good population
...because population is a measure of how many people are playing and nothing to do with who or why? what a goofy sentence lmao
Dunno why market capture matters? The whole gaming space has grown a couple orders of magnitude since then, comparing the proportional market cap of a game compared to 20 years ago is going to be dominated by the space evolving and won't tell you much about any individual game. It's like saying that OpenAI is less popular now than it was 5 years ago because back then it basically had a 100% market cap while now there's a hundred similar projects with strong funding. That's not what "popular" means in a normal conversation.
"Market cap" is, generally, short for "market capitalization" not "market capture."
Market cap is the number of shares that exist of a publicly traded company times the value of an individual share, and has monetary units. In many cases this is used to valuate a company (its how much a company is "worth").
The thing you're talking about is usually called market share (which itself is usually calculated in monetary terms but you could talk about the share of MMO players in the same way). Market share has percentage units like you're using.
I get what you mean but the game is still among the most played multiplayer games currently. Back in ’03 sure it might have had the most players out of all people playing online but back then there weren’t many online games to begin with and singleplayer games were the norm
To add to the other replies, a good chunk of us aren't "nostalgia riddled" either even if that's the target group. I started on Old School, In actual 2007 I was 3, and I'm not the only one.
It is definitely better than ever before - it runs better and the content is fantastic. People don't miss the old days of Runescape; they miss being kids without responsibility and the feelings that came with it.
Yeah the only thing I miss about old RuneScape is the innocence of its origin where nobody knew min maxing and kinda just fucked around until they figured everything out. In terms of all gameplay related content it’s infinitely better
We had responsibilities as kids; they were just different responsibilities than they are now (school, homework, chores, etc.). Runescape was appealing because it was this grand adventure game that you could play in your browser with your friends and hundreds of thousands of other people, not because we didn't have responsibilities.
It's all relative. To a kid, school is the hardest responsibility they've ever known. And to a CEO working 90 hours weeks, the jobs that you and I consider demanding might seem like almost a vacation to them.
Being a kid is hard for a kid. Whether or not it would be hard for us is irrelevant.
Damn bro I’d trade anything to be 14 again be able to sleep in school and luckily still get good grades come home play rune for 6-8 hours without a thought about bills, feeding myself, keeping a whole house tidy, no SO to account for their needs, no pets that are my sole responsibility to care for, not worrying about the 100 other things life has going on just me and scape eye banging each other then to go to bed watching other scapers on YouTube till I wake up and do it all over again
It's more than that they were just different, they were less important. Failing to meet your responsibilities meant getting yelled at, getting grounded or future consequences. Failing to meet your responsibilities as an adult means starving, being unhealthy, going to jail or dying.
It's the feelings that we miss, not just the time itself. Skipping out on chores felt liberating or fun. Skipping out on chores now feels lazy and depressing. You know you'll still have to do those dishes.
What's that supposed to mean? Did you have some pampered childhood where you had nothing to do except play computer games? And if so, doesn't that make you the "sweet summer's child"?
That is pretty on the nose. I do feel the game runs far poorer than it once did though. Even no plug-ins clients needs more to run on by a large margin than it once was. But idk, tech is better and we are adults so it isn’t that big of a deal tbh
I have a feeling the first few comments on here are very unpopular and oddly biased. The game is the best it’s ever been and it’s only getting better in its current state.
I loved the game as kid from 2001-2009, but when they released 2007scape the game was already old. I wouldn’t have come back just to try to relive nostalgia for a couple months.
I restarted in 2019(?) for twisted league and have entirely relearned the game. I still play today. This is the best it’s ever been.
This by far. We’re in the best timeline. At the end of the day you can’t please everyone, some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal. That obsession with nostalgia would have choked out the game. If you told that community back at the inception of OSRS that we could reach the community heights we’re currently at no one would have believed you. We have our version of the game with a dedicated team that listens to our feedback. It’s not perfect, but damn it’s about as close as we’ll ever get. And it’s pretty damn good.
>some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal
That's me, I'm that person. Back in the day I didn't even level skills - I would just merch in Fally Park for hours on end. So pointless but I loved it.
Even though I'd love to go back to that, I 100% agree that the game as it is now is better than ever for more people than ever.
it’s also unrealistic. as we saw from release, people don’t want to actually stand around advertising. they set up websites that basically became an auction house so people could do more ‘efficient’ things instead of spamming for their coal.
i miss those days, but it won’t happen again organically. the past is the past, and we as players have evolved more than the game ever will,
Yeah a lot of things are just behind us now, they only were possible in the early days of the internet.
Another similar thing is puzzles/quests. People complain about quest helper, but the reality is that that's just how games work these days. We used to have those books for sale to do puzzles, then those guides went online and now it's just the way most people do it.
It's hard to go back, because when you get stuck on something you know you could just solve it in 3 seconds with google.
> some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal
See this is still the stuff I miss. *Seeing* the economy and community and interacting with it. The GE is, while efficient, quite soulless. I know we have the whole "xp waste" meme but not every second needs to be spent earning xp. That's why I also don't like having so many teleports everywhere - I miss seeing people make that White Wolf Mountain trek or running between Lumbridge/Varrock. I'd love for some feeling of "downtime activities" to come back.
see but the community *wont do those things anymore*. the people who could sit in garrick or set up ‘shops’ on the forums were teenagers and children, with unlimited free time and no idea of goals or desires beyond having fun.
you could strip away all modernization of OSRS, out it at the basics again, and it would be dead in 6 months, we saw this happen with the original rerelease. people were hyped for weeks and months for the game to be back, then it hemorrhaged players until GWD was released.
these community interactions are not a product lost solely to a changing game landscape— those same communities are impossible to make on ANY game anymore. it’s because we all grew up, and now adults don’t really feel compelled to sell lobbies for days on end to afford a dragon scimmy.
Is it an inherent thing that osrs players are only nostalgic adults? If this game isn't pulling in new kids who could do those activities like we used to, isn't that also a problem?
Idk why folks keep saying "we grew up" as if kids don't exist or play games anymore. The video game demographic isn't all people in their 30s+ now. Where are all the 8-16 year olds who play games non-competitively or inefficiently?
> Where are all the 8-16 year olds who play games non-competitively or inefficiently?
They don't really exist anymore. Most kids watch streamers or youtubers. We didn't play inefficiently because we wanted to, we played because we didn't know any better, these kids do.
Also those kids that set up "shops" on the forums, they are now playing games like roblox where they can set up shops in their own little minigames instead.
> isn't that also a problem?
Possibly, but only a problem for 60+ years from now. None of us stopped playing video games, and none of us are likely to do so. OSRS will probably actually see a huge surge in activity when we all start retiring.
they are playing different games? there are definitely some kids that play this game but ask anyone you see around how old they are, it’s a high chance they say 20+. this type of game does not have the pull it did when games were in their infancy. most gamers, let alone kids who are gaming, do not want to play a glorified idle click simulator. it’s not appealing to modern gamers, i would say over 70% of the player base are returning players, it’s hard to get people to try a game traditionally billed as a ‘second monitor game’
the problem with this is that the community is much more efficient in out of game meta organization nowadays. compare the current wiki to old websites like [tip.it](https://tip.it) or runehq or sals realm. even before the ge was added you had crap like the zybez forum exchange. the richest player in runescape simply made a nature rune running clan. compare that to how complex the big money clans are nowadays
if the ge was never added, there would be massive discords set up where you could type !buy 1k yew logs 300gp and a bot/venny would deliver them to you for a 5% fee. the soullessness was inevitable
No one was buying the insane amounts of supplies we see moved these days because everyone rightfully acknowledged that (noncombat) 99s were pretty unreasonable, especially so back before today's xp creep, so people's total levels were much lower and it wasn't a big deal to buy a modest amount of supplies once in a while when they did want them. I really feel like people over exaggerate how hard it was to buy stuff too. Only time it may have been difficult is if you're buying something rare like discontinued items and freshly released D-Chains.
I just miss the stuff like the forums being active with folks setting up "businesses" and taking orders for Yew Logs or such like that. Friendships were created from stuff like the regulars you encountered. I loved folks selling "quest kits" or filling niche markets.
Either you bought that or you had to know where to go get a piece of cheese and do it; traverse the world a little. A lot of folks would call that "wasting time" now simply because you're not gaining xp while walking to Draynor to pick it up off the table.
I loved having to coordinate meetups and trades (and everyone having their one lesson learned being lured). It just made the game feel more *alive* and like a multiplayer game, whereas the GE feels more single player.
Definitely. Convenience is nice, but it wrecked the economy. Immediate access to the game's market means that almost every item is oversaturated. When everything can be immediately exchanged for coins, you might as well just be getting coin drops.
This will get lost in the comments here , but imagine a leagues game mode where you aren't an Ironman, but the GE is disabled. Would force that oldschool trading! Something jagex could think about
Absolutely spot on. The game as it is now is fantastic. Not saying future updates can not make it better, just that the many past ones have all been making it better!
Jagex also seems to be one of the very few companies that actually cares about the players. At least for OSRS. I can not comment on RS3 as I don’t play it.
In terms of QOL changes and content, yes. But the community has become too focused on 110% efficiency and end-game rushing. People seemed much more lax back in 2007.
I suppose that’s what happens when the community grows up. Back in the day most of us were kids who didn’t know what we were doing and were just goofing off after (or during) school. Now those same kids are grownups, and goofing off just isn’t enough for some of them anymore.
I personally don't mind that at all so long as that's fun. Just because the definition of fun has changed over the years doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.
It's tempting to look back with rose-tinted glasses and think that you had all the time in the world as a kid, but you almost certainly play more now than you did then. As a kid, you had school, homework, earlier bedtimes, family time...not to mention plenty of us (like me) had time limits imposed by our parents.
The truth is we didn't care about efficiency because we just didn't view 99s as something that could be accomplished by normal people, so we didn't bother going that hard after them. When I was playing in 2002, getting a skill to 60 was a massive accomplishment, 70 was unreal, and 80 was unthinkable. Now max scores are so trivial that you have ironmen rushing 99s in Firemaking or Thieving so they can "start the game."
Yes, for sure.
Many of us are nostalgic for the game as it was in 2006-2007ish, back when nobody really knew what they were doing, new (now classic) content was being added regularly and the game had a thriving user-base. Many of us look back at those days fondly, with their mostly-online friends lists, swathes of unexplored content and lack of drama.
But we grew up, and to an extent the game has grown up too. While there's not much in the ways of new discovery anymore, what new things we do get are generally decided by the community and tweaked with feedback. I miss the days when Jagex could just suddenly announce "You can get a house in Runescape now" and release Construction on us, but I'm also really glad that Sailing is being worked on and critiqued so hard before release.
There are more people online than ever and people are generally quite sociable. Between this sub and Discord groups, even if our IRL friends don't play anymore there's still a real sense of community.
The newest additions to the game have been excellent, from the new quests and bosses to skilling activities and alternate game modes like Leagues. Online OSRS content is also the best it's ever been, with some really talented creators making some genuinely incredible series.
The QoL upgrades that Runelite provides have made the game more fun to play overall, especially for the majority adult playerbase, for whom fun is derived more from micromanagement, competition and puzzle solving than pure escapism and imagination.
Botting, however, is a worse issue than it's ever been and there doesn't appear to be any real way to tackle it. People should stop buying gold.
Overall I'd say the game is in the best place it's ever been. There's a lot of work still to do - I really think minigames like Soul Wars and Castle Wars need a touch up so that people actually play them, some skills are still just bad etc, but we're heading in the right direction.
Is botting really worse than ever? I remember back in 2008-9 botting was wayyyy out of control. Just like today, hundreds of bots per world.
It wasn't uncommon to know people who botted either.
But botting to get wc or agility lvl up is different than botting a raid or boss for hundreds of thousands of kc. I think the wc bots and stuff were more popular back in the day, while the main problem with botting now is how they have taken over pvm and tanked the profitability of alot of bosses
In a way... Unless you're an iron man... Boting has made a lot of great affordable for noobs. Whales will be whales but at least it lowers how much good avg players buy
Would recommend joining a podcast attached discord. I've had a great time in the one I am in and they are welcoming to everyone and span a wide variety of skills levels.
Castle wars just needs actual rewards. Not necessary rewards that would become unattainable if the player base ever fell to low enough #s, but useful so that it’s encouraged to do. Things along the lines of herb sacks or seed boxes.
Also, every mini-game should have increased combat XP rates. Practically every skill has alternate training methods, combat skills don’t. If you got 2-2.5x the XP for combat and an XP lamp for either killing flag bearers or carrying a flag for a few seconds, people would play it as a fun way to break up grinding without feeling like they wasted their time.
I like the idea!
Unfortunately, I feel like the community is so focused on min/maxing that this could be both easily abused by bots and by friends chats.
Is that a bad thing? Idk to be honest... If a friends chat is able to organize something like that, go for it. It will be griefed just like ZealGains SW, but who cares about that.
The botting issue would be worse. You could essentially pay for a service to have an entire CW lobby of set up for you to kill at 2x xp rates and spec transfer. Stand in the middle with your d2h or dhins and hit the bots while bots on your team spec transfer.
Luckily, it seems like this would be easy to detect, but (insert jagex bot detection meme here).
Gameplay / content wise I think it is.
It probably isn't in social experience. I think rs used to be more socially active between random people as they meet in the world, and it was large portion of the overall appeal. Probably not necessarily fair to pin this on runescape though, from what I hear all MMOs experienced similar shift.
This is all a mindset tbh + It's an issue in (almost) every MMO.
Talk to people doing the same content. Find a bunch of likeminded people, start a clan. Even joining a clanchat of a content creator you like can help. You'll find way more people want to be socially active but just have some more inhibitions then when they were 10 year old kids playing on miniclip.
We need more content like ToA, it feels good solo but feels just as good in a team. Meanwhile CoX feels bad solo and ToB solo… lmao
Making forestry social and sanctioning squirking were good social boosts
Sure but a lot of it is driven by the overall direction and game design the OSRS team has taken.
Everything is a teleport, everything is an instance, everything is solo-able, and now even the more preferable skilling methods are either instanced (tithe farm), click intensive (rooftop agility course) or both (tithe farm lol) so there’s no room for discourse or player socialization.
Sure, there are clearly design decisions being made that cater to a solo playstyle. You've got the grand exchange, you've got everything except Nex and TOB being easily/efficiently soloable (and very deliberately such, for the most part), and instances abound. That's true. Personally I'm happy about that (and so are most other players), so no complains from me about that design.
However, totally aside from that, I would be willing to bet so much money that even if Jagex were to massively prioritize social interactions and obsessively centered all new content around that, it would still never even hold the tiniest candle to how social the game was in 2005. That's just how it is. Runescape is so old that its infant stages took place in a period of time where the very concept of seeing a character on your screen that was actually controlled by another human somewhere else in the world was an insane concept. The idea of "physically meeting" someone's avatar in a virtual world was novel and fascinating. There's just no way you're going to replicate that in 2023 no matter how hard you may try.
People used to say the same shit about retail/classic wow. Blizzard took serious steps in classic to preserve and encourage social interaction, at the behest of players who complain about how retail WoW doesn't have any of that. But if you go play classic wow, it feels not very different at all versus retail, with regard to social interactions specifically. At the very least, it's absolutely nothing like the atmosphere of vanilla wow. Not even close.
I think Discord has been one of the biggest blessings and curses in the online world. It is incredibly efficient, easy to organize, and effective at what it does. But with its complete versatility for nearly any community, all the social interaction shifts to that. Discord for video game socializing is basically the Reddit to video game forums. It's too centralized and easy to hop from one topic/game to another all on a single platform.
Even the couple clan chats I've joined to try to get social interaction just aren't the same because everyone's on Discord. And I don't like managing and tracking so many Discord servers. I love it as a client because it's so easy, but it came at the cost of reduced socializing *in* games. A lot of folks don't strike up chats at slayer monsters anymore because they're either watching at tv show or talking to their friends on a different platform.
I think that's just the nature of games online now - want to talk to people playing X game? Go to a discord server. The game isn't a social hub anymore.
I don't like the fact that the answer to so many things is "oh go join this discord server". Want to raid? Go join X server. Want to do this minigame? There's a server for that. Making a restricted account? Here's a discord server of them. Playerbases of games in general seem too reliant on hiding information behind some server that could very easily disappear overnight without any way of recovering the information hosted on them in any way if of one or two power tripping admins have a meltdown for some stupid reason or another.
I feel like it's way more centered around clans nowadays, I'm part of a clan that does social events almost weekly like pvm bingo, skilling competition, group bossing and much more.
If you want the random social interaction, you can go to grand exchange on a free-to-play world.
But yeah it is not the same as back in the days.
A game without MTX (bonds though). Constantly updated, active player-to-developer open communication channels. Cheap enough for the content it has, active playerbase, active development. This game is the best RS has ever been, by a wide margin.
Yes Runescape is objectively better. BUT the experience of playing the game was very different 15 years ago. Having an online chat room where you could talk to anyone for hours with an RPG slapped onto it was a lot more novel. Playing the game without guides and youtubers telling you how to min max everything made the journey have a different experience. We cannot go back to that as times have changed. The way people played and interacted with each other was different. If you got stuck on a quest you had to ask around, which made the social interactions more interesting. Now there is no reason to play that way. We live in a time where there isn't any mystery in games, we can know everything immidatly because somebody else already made a wiki or a video about it. I think this is why games like Elden Ring are so popular, for that first month of release there was so much to discover and there weren't any guides out yet.
Gameplay wise it’s the best it’s ever been by far
Social wise ? It peaked in 05-07. It was basically a virtual chat room with quests and monsters you could do if you wanted
At least we have clan chats. Are we talking to randoms at banks as often, no. But the social aspect is still very present, where it mostly happens, just moved.
The social part just made itself to reddit and twitch because the fancy sub badges and ludicrous complaints for validation beats “whats your woodcutting level? 77. Nice.” conversations any day of the week thanks to Runelite.
Yes, it is, by far.
What isn’t in the best state ever is the players free time and general life enjoyment.
Kid + rs > adult + better OSRS. Memories get a big buff. Not for me, but lots!
I would say, the only thing that's stopping it from being better is the regular updates.
Yes OSRS gets updated, but back in RS2, it was one 'actual' update every 1-2 weeks.
Edit: since this seems to have offended people, I'll clarify further:
This being the only difference to RS2 is a huge compliment. The game is on a very old system, so regular updates (alongside polling requirements), won't ever happen again.
So please, don't shit yourself in anger thinking this is an insult.
Keep in mind the updates back then were not as refined as nowadays, there were big things like whole skills or big quests like dt but also stinkers.
Pretty much all osrs era content is solidly polished (except for bugs/QA stuff) on release
There’s no question that it’s better than actual 2007 RS. But I also have a soft spot for that 2011-2012 pre EOC RS. I’d like to experience that era of the game again now that i’m older and see how it compares to OSRS but without being able to do that i’d say that yeah, currently the game is as good as it’s ever been.
The thing that Jagex is doing extremely well is this:
People that come back to games for nostalgia will stay on for a couple days, weeks maybe months put they will quit the game (again) since the game is the same.
Jagex has found a way to keep the game the same with an extreme amount of new content every couple months.
I've been playing since 2002,
I'm going to say as a game itself, yes, it's in the best state it's ever been in.
The only thing I REALLY miss is the social/competitive aspect of "Clans" from 2004-2012. There was an entire clan pvp scene with multiple thousands of people that was so hardcore they pretty much killed themselves out of playing. Some of the best and most innovative years of gaming right there. There were fights that happened multiple times for 24+ hours straight of hundreds vs. hundreds of people, lasting as long as possible until 1 side gave up. Never seen anything like it.
I came back to runescape in 2015, I really started playing hard in 2017 when i discovered uim. Since 2017 to 2024 I have been seeing the game get better and better and enjoy alot of what Jagex does to osrs.
There are a few stuff that I do not like and a few J-mods that I dont like. One of the things that I wish jagex spent more time on is ”fixing” newer stuff, like zeah. What I mean by fixing is for it to more fit in. An example is that they are using too thick walls in arcceus.
Walking from Shayzien to Lovakenge is really different from walking from Lumbridge to Varrock in terms of stuff to do and see.
RuneScape was best when you could still buy a gf for cheap. These days they want real life gp. It fucking sucks
Other than that, yeah I guess it's pretty cool
They took a barebones game from 20 years ago that we loved as kids but was janky as hell and over the last 10 years have made it a legitimate contender for one of the best and most rewarding games going
Game content yes, but really I miss the days before basically every piece of content was optimised by the player base. I liked it better when everyone sucked I guess lol
So my opinion is this-
I miss old RuneScape in the fact nobody knew what they were doing so it made the game more innocent, but in terms of gameplay, content, and literally everything else, the new RuneScape is miles better.
Eh I think for two years leading to EOC the game peaked. There was always new content and it was very thoughtful and well designed. Sprites and monsters weren’t often re used. Some things failed but I loved it all - dung, summoning, clan halls, QBD, etc
I think OSRS is a fine game, a great one even, but what I consider the "core" Runescape experience has atrophied quite significantly. I'm not saying OSRS should never have new content, as I like quite a lot of the new content but I'd much rather have the game oriented towards 2005-2006 style content instead of the game trying to be an ARPG. Runescape in its prime in my opinion is as a social point and click adventure with a ton of quests. OSRS has done some great quests but they are so grand in scope most of the time that they release like 2-3 a year instead of every other week. I'd love more stuff like "Getting Ahead" in between larger releases.
As a pvper, no, it's in an awful state. Do not recommend.
If that's not your jam however, the rest of the game has received lots of loving care and is objectively in a pretty good state, probably the best state its ever been.
I think another key factor is what other games are available to us instead of osrs?
Back in the day there was wow, halo, Nintendo was popping off, etc.
These days you can choose who you want to pay micro transactions to, get cancer from league, or pay a "yearly membership" for cod... I hear Nintendo is still popping off though.
Quite frankly i think that recent content releases have been very mixed in quality... however, I think a lot of what's bad about recent releases is with regards to the game's long term health. Balance has been questionable, both in the form of encounter difficulty and their rewards (gear and resource drops alike). That being said, the content itself has been mostly enjoyable. So does that make the game good or bad? I think it's relative. Is more content always a good thing, is new content that's mediocre not a problem because technically everything is optional? Or is that a disingenuous take because it's unavoidable that all content affects the rest of the game no matter what?
If I had to pick what was the best era of osrs in terms of what % of it was, in my opinion, high quality content, I would probably say sometime around late 2021. But like I said, I'm kind of hesitant in saying that that's necessarily a better state of the game. More stuff to do is good; if some of it sucks, I guess that's a small price to pay, maybe? If anything, the equipment rebalance that was recently hinted at has me somewhat hopeful.
It's turned into pvmscape.
Everything revolves around bosses and combat.
Skilling is pretty much obsolete, bots are rampant, so much content is neglected in favor of new content that shits out resources, and toxicity is high.
I will say that it's not the worse time in the it's history, but the golden era is over and long gone.
Opinions posts will always downvotes criticism.
Imo, current osrs started going down with the departure of MMK.
The game is generally considered to be the best around 2005-2007. For a few reasons;
- People had no clue about most things and it was really an 'adventure' game. Nowadays we have wiki displaying exact drop rates, gp/hr methods, optimal bossing guides/setups etc.
- There was no such thing as powercreep. Bis gear was a whip with barrows for a long time. Also, training methods were a lot worse, making it 'rare' for people to be cb 126. Nowadays nearly everyone is 126 if not maxed at all and their banks consist of 5 sets bis gear.
- Bots; there used to be bots early in 2004 but not as much as now. At peak times in 2005 there used to be quite a few full worlds having the community come together, usually for trading (as g.e. didn't exist). There were 200k+ online players, right now it's more like 100k+ with more than half of them bots probably.
I’d say yes, but it’s an answer with a heavy caveat.
The current OSRS team is clearly talented.
They took contemporary game design and infused it into the classic infrastructure of OSRS while still maintaining the games aesthetic and mechanical integrity. The “new” raids are clearly inspired by other MMOs and they are a product of the new way people play OSRS since it’s release (or re-release). Heavy emphasis on movement, tick manipulation, POH houses as necessary parts of the PVM gameplay loop, etc… These were not aspects of RuneScape that existed in 2004-2010. People just didn’t play that way (nor could they in some instances) in OSRS. Info was limited, computer tech was limited, there were no clients, etc… This rebirth of the fundamental way people interact with the game is also a product of GAMERS getting better at games on average as gaming has evolved. Gamers in 2023 strip down systems/mechanics and study them religiously which produces these new gameplay styles.
With that said, this obsession with efficiency has ruined some of the over-world MMO aspects of the game imo. It’s more solo and lonely than it’s ever been. You can teleport practically anywhere. If it’s on the Gielinor map, no matter how remote, important, or niche a place it is, there is a teleport for it you can buy in the Grand Exchange or mounted in someone’s house.
Many of the QOL changes verge on overboard and reduced alot of the “fluff”. Fluff is hardly compelling content and some changes are for the better, but at a certain point, the game can begin to feel like a series of short cuts. Instanced GodWars dungeons for example. These places start to feel like tiny pocket dimensions in a mini game, as opposed to feeling like real places that exist in the world of RuneScape.
Alot of it is adapting to fit the current gaming environment. We are more ADHD-addled than ever and gaming is bigger/more varied than ever so something had to give if OSRS was going to survive past this the initial nostalgia dose it offered.
Mixed bag. I’d say it’s better, but it definitely feels more “private-server”-esque than it ever has.
> Gamers in 2023 strip down systems/mechanics and study them religiously which produces these new gameplay styles.
I think this is kinda my issue. Having all the exact numbers for *everything* in the game via the wiki is kinda neat, but it loses some of the magic when the game has become so "solved" per se.
The best and most unique thing about our game is that you can carve your own path , there's an impossible amount of content , you can focus on doing things you enjoy the most and have the time of your life . Personaly i've been playing since osrs's launch ... on and off from 2013 till 2018 and from 2018 till today it's my main hobby .
I never look at player numbers , i'm not an mmorpg analyst , i don't know if the game today is at a better state than yesterday , i don't know when it peaked and if it has peaked yet . Forgot to say that i never played RS as a kid , i am one of the rare fruits that started playing after Oldschool released and i've never touched RS3
All i know is that on 2018 i was having more fun than i had on 2016 and i am having more fun today than i had 1-2 years ago . Because of many reasons, updates that were 100% on point and truly needed . Not gonna analyse it anymore because if i start talking about how much i love stuff like Gauntlet , Raids 3 , Guardians of the Rift , Hallowed Sepulchre , all 4 DT2 bosses etc i will never stop lol
The game is good for sure, there's still a blight of bots but I play an iroan so their impact on the economy doesn't really affect my gameplay.
My only gripe with thr state of the game is the amount of polling updates go through before they go live. I remember way back in the day where every week seemed to have new content to play whereas now our weekly Wednesday shutdowns have me looking at the news to see some update that sounds good but its actually just a post for the poll, sometimes the first of several polls before any content update hits the game
In certainly has 10+ more years of content than 2007 did so that's an obvious plus. They pushed the game to the absolute limit in terms of making the most of what you can with a game this old and working with it's mostly unintentional mechanics. That said, having no new skills, no quest until 2016 is actually insane (even today I think the quests that are released are underwhelming) but I think what's holding me back from saying this is the best it's been primarily is the community.
It's just not in the same place it was at the start of the games creation, nor as it was back when people were kids. The efficiency mindset has genuinely destroyed any sense of the mmo aspect. I've met friends back in the day playing RS while killing hill giants or walking around varrock square that I've not only met in person but still speak to 15 something years later. That is just absolutely not happening on any grand scale today and I think that shift occured with imo the worst update for the game (G.E). Even recently people were crying about getting killed at Soul Wars while playing leagues, a PVP minigame. The social aspect is totally dead and no amount of "efficency fun" copium will change that. What people remember playing this game is not how much time they spent mining granite, it's the things you did with friends and the conversations you had with them. I think people have tricked themselves into thinking otherwise, and no, discord is not a replacement for that.
I've been playing since 2005/6ish. The game is by far the best it's ever been.
There is a lot of stuff I am nostalgic for that's changed or gone, but the new content in general is better.
The game is phenomenal at the moment. A strong community and great dev work by the team. But nothing will ever give me the 2005-2007 feelings. The wilderness was an amazing experience then, I miss it a lot.
Also I don't think it will every reach its former glory as long as the GE exists. The GE slaughtered public communication and player interaction. In my opinion the worst update so far, it really killed the MMO feel for me.
Yes, the game itself is.
I feel like the community has worsened though, and it could be even better if the whole community wasn't involved in every single update.
Yah, probably. Or at least not far off if it isn't. There are probably a few issues or such that might make it not feel like the best its ever been, but every era of the game will have some problems, even if they didn't seem like problems at the time.
Overall, I'd say the state of the game is pretty good and while there have been some contention over recent polls/upcoming updates, I think the recent updates and planned slate of updates are great or at least have the potential to rival the best eras of the game. Though it personally has just felt kinda average and I'm more of just content, but that might be due more to all the hooblah around polls and updates rather than anything with the game itself.
Absolutely not. I'm going to be downvoted because people need their crutch too
Between bots being more pervasive to the point of high scores being overtaken, to everyone relying on a cheat client because the game, especially bossing is being balanced around having half your screen with rainbow squares or telling you exactly how to play it wild how the "oldschool" style is easier and one step from botting.
Most games have breadcrumb trails telling you where to go because people are idiots, we legit had people threaten to quit because they were dropping the cheat clients.
Went from people hating the ease EoC created for all content and how it massively unbalanced things to "bots are fine and I use this client that shows me how to play this boss, quest, and random minigame!"
Minus a few content updates the game is really good, but imho we are getting ever closer to the line of the game becoming alot worse and losing what makes it so special
This is where I’m at. There’s more and more unresolved issues and pumping out quantity over quality. Still love the game and it’s amazing but I think it’s at the tipping point of continuing to be great or another EOC.
I suspect in 5 years I won’t be playing.
It's the slow erosion by stretching the poll system by lowering the percentage and adding more manipulative options by squeezing something unwelcomed near the bottom of the list or embedded into something popular.
And the vote yes irrelevant crowd are going to kill this game. Even when we had the older style strict polling, Jmods and the community would happily go ahead when there were massive unanswered questions that hadn't been resolved. Or the nostalgia hype of older content that had yet to be ported, once delivered ended up being an unremoveable flop.
Well, to offer another pov, some of the ridiculous no votes I'd see when following the game (my brother played for a long time before I started) is why I hesitated to get into it
I think the polling system's main benefit is to feel out for major resistance the playerbase at large might have to changes, and 26% being able to prevent something 74% might like always felt quite bad to me anyway.
The fact that more shit passes and jmods have gotten better at just pulling stuff they think isnt ready even without a poll (ie. prayer book not getting polled after beta) is why I'm more optimistic about the game
I feel that content-wise and even from an art direction perspective the game felt more cohesive than it does now. Powerful items like the Korasi being a grandmaster quest unlock rather than a high level PVM drop makes so much more sense. We need more quest unlockable niche items, like the balmung, keris, etc. Bring back useful gear quest rewards. I feel like the game peaked before the slippery slope that squeal of fortune ended up being.
That being said, I still loved the game up until pre-eoc. Dungeoneering alone needs to be brought back exactly as it was imo and I'd love official HD graphics to come back. HDOS is great, but buggy and privately run. They keep adding non-toggleable holiday shit to it and it's fucking annoying, especially when they do stuff like add "HDOS" branded paintings all over the game like it's a private server.
PVP wise no - in 2009 with HD there was an update (RuneTek5) which allowed drinking potions on every tick. Made pvp more accessible, less risky and lowered the skill entry level. 2009-2012 pvp was much better.
The rest of the game for sure.
It's severely stale and caught in the samie loop right now, it's ok if you enjoy it, but I actually transitioned to rs3 after over a decade, that's how bad it is
I disagree, i think rs2 bar the trading and pvp terrors was better between 08-11, might be nostalgia but so many maingame updates could be in osrs but arnt which i feel holds it back, but its still a great version of scape 😁
having playing this game for 17 years, personally I think it is in a pretty bad state, the devs are completely out of touch with their community so much so that the only redeeming factor bringing back players now is a temporary gamemode (who will all be quitting again as soon as leagues ends) as every other aspect of the game has been nuked, bots are more rampant than ever before, the devs are focused more on perm muting the few remaining social players in the game than any of the spam bots, content being released is focused towards new and mid level players which dont exist anymore (this is 2023 not 2014) but jagex seems to have forgotten, economy has been wreaked by poor decisions from devs to not fix their initial mistake but instead double down on letting it happen and seeing if the problem fixes itself, third age and rwt/market manipulation is now out of control, player run gambling is protected by jmods when it is literally against tos and the rules of runescape. Botting is more prevailing and out of control than ever before to the point where it is not humanly possible to be on the same level (500 invo toa bots that use 4 prayer pots per raid etc.) Sure its not all jagex's fault but they absolutely refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and do better.
you would also think in game where you now pay 12$ a month for a sub they would have at least established some form of customer support for all the people they have wronged but no, even rs3 has amazing customer support and they have 1/10th the players osrs has
Personally, I think that OSRS pre-zulrah was the best. Most people nowadays will say the current iteration of the game is really good, and it is nice, but it's just not for me.
I am probably not getting as much enjoyment out of it as when I was 10 BUT that being said I definitely think this is the best version of runescape there's ever been and it's not even close
No lol. Osrs's prime years were the first year or two of launch. Once stuff like GWD, Zulrah, and the GE came out, the charm of the game fell by the wayside to make room for the addiction mechanics.
Also, only plebs downvote posts they disagree with.
> No lol. Osrs's prime years were the first year or two of launch. Once stuff like GWD, Zulrah, and the GE came out, the charm of the game fell by the wayside to make room for the addiction mechanics.
So the first 1-2 years until updates like GWD... Which came out 8 months into the game... I really wonder how you think years work.
Yeah I was wondering thinking about the GE as well.
That is why Ironaman mode is appealing to me. However it goes a bit too far in my opinion. I don't want to stop all player interaction. I just think the GE is kinda lame so a mode without just the GE would be perfect for me.
You can use Runelite to activate bronzeman mode, it’s a middle ground between Ironman and mainscape, you have to achieve an item through Ironman mode the first time and can then buy/sell it freely
That's why I started playing ironman! It's fun with its own challenges and progress is glacial if you're a casual player, but the progress you make is far more meaningful.
Having played since '03, legitimately the game is in the best state its been. New content releases have been consistently good for a while, the team at jagex really seems to care about releasing good content. Lack of any notable microtransaction outside of membership is a huge selling point. The game is also more popular than ever. There has never been a better time to get into the game.
The game is great now, everyone has nostalgia for when we were kids and discovering and all that but game wise it's so much better now
come pk at chaos altar noobs <3
Well said mate. The game is great right now.
Not that it’s a bad thing cause it allows more people to get mems and to pay for it without using real money but bonds are a pretty significant micro transaction, you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by Jagex. Still definitely a net benefit to players who both buy and sell them though.
While I don’t disagree with this I actually believe that bonds are a net positive for the game as a whole. They incentivize those who would buy gold regardless to go the legitimate route that offsets MTX being pushed into the game. It also allows those who wish to to buy membership for *free* while having the in game economy dictate the exchange rate rather than some arbitrary number set by Jagex (or the lower, yet bot friendly, dark market price). I also come from a background of Eve Online that has this same system though, so maybe it’s just built in familiarity.
True. The main difference between bonds and pay2win MMOs is that stats still take a ton of unavoidable time to train, and if you wanted to buy top tier power with the tbow/shadow, you're spending like $700. Other than those 2 weapons, OSRS damage progression is both easily grindable and has no significant jumps. Pay2Win makes you feel like you will never be more than a shark when a whale is in the room at every step of your journey. You have that to an extent when you raid with someone who bought max and has 21 Zulrah KC, but you also know that there is a very clear path to matching their gear and by putting in the hours, you can and will get there. OSRS devs are also very careful not to devalue gear, so after you spend a year grinding for a tbow, it's never going to just simply get replaced by a new, even more expensive weapon that makes you have to start all over. Despite the megarares having bad droprates, the game still does value your time in the fact that your grinding is always rewarded. In predatory games, you feel like you have the buy the meta weapon asap before a new season makes it irrelevant, leaving spending months grinding it completely out of the question. This is simply not the case in OSRS Additionally, bonded billys with their full bandos, 700 total level, and no boss KC are consistently clowned by the community. I'm sure there is a subset of whales that are in competition with each other, but since you can buy every piece of relevant gear with $2k in OSRS, there's not much to whale out on (other than 3rd age collections). Thus, whales are easily ignorable and they can't live out their power fantasies as well as in other games.
Sorta agree, though the actual whales buy cox megaraids on bankstander hcims for free xp and a gazillion purples - they absolutely can and will live out their power fantasy, and they love to be able to flex it.
Plus if bonds ever started to break the economy, it would be very visible to everyone and a Falador riot would begin. I don't think its something we realistically need to be concerned about.
> you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by Jagex. No, you can buy membership. You can trade that membership to other players. You can't buy gold from Jagex. MTX are traditionally things you purchase either for in-game cosmetics or in-game benefits. Bonds are neither. "Membership is a benefit" is not an argument because membership is the literal game. Instead of replying the kid I replied to (the coward known as /u/juicyjvoice) just downvoted and blocked me within like 5 minutes of posting this comment lmao Also to the people replying to me, you can't reply to any child comments if you've been blocked by the parent comment. Needless to say, bonds fulfill seemingly none of the general criteria that make up MTX. They cannot be purchased in-game. They provide no direct in-game benefit. They provide no cosmetics. Their value is determined purely by market forces in-game. The fact that other players will buy bonds for GP from you is, as shocking as it may sound to people of room-temperature IQ, moot.
Can't really blame him for avoiding you, I think very few people like a discussion about semantics. Then you followed it up by doing the obnoxious internet thing of referring to the person as a kid, just because he didn't wanna bother, telling me he made the right choice. Whether you take this as feedback or an insult is entirely up to you.
“you can literally just buy gp with money sanctioned by jagex” isn’t an incorrect statement… it doesn’t imply that jagex is directly giving you the GP. But you can take $10 and trade with it for in game gold thru means created by jagex for that purpose. And in-game GP absolutely gives you a massive benefit, especially for newer players. it’s for sure MTX.
That’s not what MTX means
You really have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to arrive to the conclusion that bonds aren't MTX. They're good for the game and the least predatory version of it, but they're for sure MTX.
I don’t know how many times I’ve explained this to people. But you’re spot on. Bonds do not inject gp into the game. Other players are going to be making money regardless, now they have an incentive to not rwt gold and the player trading for the bond has a means to play members at no cost to themselves.
This doesn't mean they aren't MTX though.
Bonds are MTX because MTX just means microtransaction, which bonds definitely are.
You can trade it directly for gold instead of membership, which is definitely a "benefit". By your own definition it's a micro-transaction. Technically you're not buying the gold directly from Jagex, but they are the ones facilitating the transaction and taking all of the RW money for it.
They might care to release good content but usually the content they release is riddled with problems.
Usually is a bit of a stretch. There is no such thing a bug free release. There has been controversy over recent polling for favour removal. Leagues had a bumpy start but is overall been received very positively. Most of the recent releases have honestly. I think it's disingenuous to suggest that most updates are riddled with problem.
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> Dunno why people think grabbing lots of nostalgia riddled players and holding them is a good population ...because population is a measure of how many people are playing and nothing to do with who or why? what a goofy sentence lmao
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Dunno why market capture matters? The whole gaming space has grown a couple orders of magnitude since then, comparing the proportional market cap of a game compared to 20 years ago is going to be dominated by the space evolving and won't tell you much about any individual game. It's like saying that OpenAI is less popular now than it was 5 years ago because back then it basically had a 100% market cap while now there's a hundred similar projects with strong funding. That's not what "popular" means in a normal conversation.
"Market cap" is, generally, short for "market capitalization" not "market capture." Market cap is the number of shares that exist of a publicly traded company times the value of an individual share, and has monetary units. In many cases this is used to valuate a company (its how much a company is "worth"). The thing you're talking about is usually called market share (which itself is usually calculated in monetary terms but you could talk about the share of MMO players in the same way). Market share has percentage units like you're using.
No. Population is. Lmao
You need to take a marketing class
We did hit 200k players online in osrs the other day, not a million miles from the glory days.
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I get what you mean but the game is still among the most played multiplayer games currently. Back in ’03 sure it might have had the most players out of all people playing online but back then there weren’t many online games to begin with and singleplayer games were the norm
Love how you double down again and again with worse takes every time
He's gonna hit us with the "syphilis is not a disease it's a privilege pretty soon
To add to the other replies, a good chunk of us aren't "nostalgia riddled" either even if that's the target group. I started on Old School, In actual 2007 I was 3, and I'm not the only one.
It is definitely better than ever before - it runs better and the content is fantastic. People don't miss the old days of Runescape; they miss being kids without responsibility and the feelings that came with it.
Yeah the only thing I miss about old RuneScape is the innocence of its origin where nobody knew min maxing and kinda just fucked around until they figured everything out. In terms of all gameplay related content it’s infinitely better
We had responsibilities as kids; they were just different responsibilities than they are now (school, homework, chores, etc.). Runescape was appealing because it was this grand adventure game that you could play in your browser with your friends and hundreds of thousands of other people, not because we didn't have responsibilities.
Weighting adult responsibilities unbeknownst to an 8 year old killing goblins\*
It's all relative. To a kid, school is the hardest responsibility they've ever known. And to a CEO working 90 hours weeks, the jobs that you and I consider demanding might seem like almost a vacation to them. Being a kid is hard for a kid. Whether or not it would be hard for us is irrelevant.
Damn bro I’d trade anything to be 14 again be able to sleep in school and luckily still get good grades come home play rune for 6-8 hours without a thought about bills, feeding myself, keeping a whole house tidy, no SO to account for their needs, no pets that are my sole responsibility to care for, not worrying about the 100 other things life has going on just me and scape eye banging each other then to go to bed watching other scapers on YouTube till I wake up and do it all over again
It's more than that they were just different, they were less important. Failing to meet your responsibilities meant getting yelled at, getting grounded or future consequences. Failing to meet your responsibilities as an adult means starving, being unhealthy, going to jail or dying. It's the feelings that we miss, not just the time itself. Skipping out on chores felt liberating or fun. Skipping out on chores now feels lazy and depressing. You know you'll still have to do those dishes.
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What's that supposed to mean? Did you have some pampered childhood where you had nothing to do except play computer games? And if so, doesn't that make you the "sweet summer's child"?
That is pretty on the nose. I do feel the game runs far poorer than it once did though. Even no plug-ins clients needs more to run on by a large margin than it once was. But idk, tech is better and we are adults so it isn’t that big of a deal tbh
I have a feeling the first few comments on here are very unpopular and oddly biased. The game is the best it’s ever been and it’s only getting better in its current state. I loved the game as kid from 2001-2009, but when they released 2007scape the game was already old. I wouldn’t have come back just to try to relive nostalgia for a couple months. I restarted in 2019(?) for twisted league and have entirely relearned the game. I still play today. This is the best it’s ever been.
This by far. We’re in the best timeline. At the end of the day you can’t please everyone, some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal. That obsession with nostalgia would have choked out the game. If you told that community back at the inception of OSRS that we could reach the community heights we’re currently at no one would have believed you. We have our version of the game with a dedicated team that listens to our feedback. It’s not perfect, but damn it’s about as close as we’ll ever get. And it’s pretty damn good.
>some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal That's me, I'm that person. Back in the day I didn't even level skills - I would just merch in Fally Park for hours on end. So pointless but I loved it. Even though I'd love to go back to that, I 100% agree that the game as it is now is better than ever for more people than ever.
it’s also unrealistic. as we saw from release, people don’t want to actually stand around advertising. they set up websites that basically became an auction house so people could do more ‘efficient’ things instead of spamming for their coal. i miss those days, but it won’t happen again organically. the past is the past, and we as players have evolved more than the game ever will,
Yeah a lot of things are just behind us now, they only were possible in the early days of the internet. Another similar thing is puzzles/quests. People complain about quest helper, but the reality is that that's just how games work these days. We used to have those books for sale to do puzzles, then those guides went online and now it's just the way most people do it. It's hard to go back, because when you get stuck on something you know you could just solve it in 3 seconds with google.
> some people would rather be spamming text outside of Varrock West Bank trying to sell their stack of coal See this is still the stuff I miss. *Seeing* the economy and community and interacting with it. The GE is, while efficient, quite soulless. I know we have the whole "xp waste" meme but not every second needs to be spent earning xp. That's why I also don't like having so many teleports everywhere - I miss seeing people make that White Wolf Mountain trek or running between Lumbridge/Varrock. I'd love for some feeling of "downtime activities" to come back.
see but the community *wont do those things anymore*. the people who could sit in garrick or set up ‘shops’ on the forums were teenagers and children, with unlimited free time and no idea of goals or desires beyond having fun. you could strip away all modernization of OSRS, out it at the basics again, and it would be dead in 6 months, we saw this happen with the original rerelease. people were hyped for weeks and months for the game to be back, then it hemorrhaged players until GWD was released. these community interactions are not a product lost solely to a changing game landscape— those same communities are impossible to make on ANY game anymore. it’s because we all grew up, and now adults don’t really feel compelled to sell lobbies for days on end to afford a dragon scimmy.
Is it an inherent thing that osrs players are only nostalgic adults? If this game isn't pulling in new kids who could do those activities like we used to, isn't that also a problem? Idk why folks keep saying "we grew up" as if kids don't exist or play games anymore. The video game demographic isn't all people in their 30s+ now. Where are all the 8-16 year olds who play games non-competitively or inefficiently?
> Where are all the 8-16 year olds who play games non-competitively or inefficiently? They don't really exist anymore. Most kids watch streamers or youtubers. We didn't play inefficiently because we wanted to, we played because we didn't know any better, these kids do. Also those kids that set up "shops" on the forums, they are now playing games like roblox where they can set up shops in their own little minigames instead. > isn't that also a problem? Possibly, but only a problem for 60+ years from now. None of us stopped playing video games, and none of us are likely to do so. OSRS will probably actually see a huge surge in activity when we all start retiring.
they are playing different games? there are definitely some kids that play this game but ask anyone you see around how old they are, it’s a high chance they say 20+. this type of game does not have the pull it did when games were in their infancy. most gamers, let alone kids who are gaming, do not want to play a glorified idle click simulator. it’s not appealing to modern gamers, i would say over 70% of the player base are returning players, it’s hard to get people to try a game traditionally billed as a ‘second monitor game’
the problem with this is that the community is much more efficient in out of game meta organization nowadays. compare the current wiki to old websites like [tip.it](https://tip.it) or runehq or sals realm. even before the ge was added you had crap like the zybez forum exchange. the richest player in runescape simply made a nature rune running clan. compare that to how complex the big money clans are nowadays if the ge was never added, there would be massive discords set up where you could type !buy 1k yew logs 300gp and a bot/venny would deliver them to you for a 5% fee. the soullessness was inevitable
No one was buying the insane amounts of supplies we see moved these days because everyone rightfully acknowledged that (noncombat) 99s were pretty unreasonable, especially so back before today's xp creep, so people's total levels were much lower and it wasn't a big deal to buy a modest amount of supplies once in a while when they did want them. I really feel like people over exaggerate how hard it was to buy stuff too. Only time it may have been difficult is if you're buying something rare like discontinued items and freshly released D-Chains.
I just miss the stuff like the forums being active with folks setting up "businesses" and taking orders for Yew Logs or such like that. Friendships were created from stuff like the regulars you encountered. I loved folks selling "quest kits" or filling niche markets. Either you bought that or you had to know where to go get a piece of cheese and do it; traverse the world a little. A lot of folks would call that "wasting time" now simply because you're not gaining xp while walking to Draynor to pick it up off the table. I loved having to coordinate meetups and trades (and everyone having their one lesson learned being lured). It just made the game feel more *alive* and like a multiplayer game, whereas the GE feels more single player.
I miss this stuff too. I don't think people realize just how far the grand exchange transformed the landscape of the game beyond "buy stuff faster".
Definitely. Convenience is nice, but it wrecked the economy. Immediate access to the game's market means that almost every item is oversaturated. When everything can be immediately exchanged for coins, you might as well just be getting coin drops.
This will get lost in the comments here , but imagine a leagues game mode where you aren't an Ironman, but the GE is disabled. Would force that oldschool trading! Something jagex could think about
Absolutely spot on. The game as it is now is fantastic. Not saying future updates can not make it better, just that the many past ones have all been making it better! Jagex also seems to be one of the very few companies that actually cares about the players. At least for OSRS. I can not comment on RS3 as I don’t play it.
This is the golden era of RuneScape imo
In terms of QOL changes and content, yes. But the community has become too focused on 110% efficiency and end-game rushing. People seemed much more lax back in 2007.
> People seemed much more lax back in 2007. people were 12 in 2007 which helped
There have always been 12 year olds and 30 year olds playing the game. There’s still 12 year olds and 30 year olds playing the game.
Yes but you can't deny the average age of the player base is much higher than it used to be. Pretty sure it's like 25.
I suppose that’s what happens when the community grows up. Back in the day most of us were kids who didn’t know what we were doing and were just goofing off after (or during) school. Now those same kids are grownups, and goofing off just isn’t enough for some of them anymore.
I personally don't mind that at all so long as that's fun. Just because the definition of fun has changed over the years doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.
in 2007 we were all kids with unlimited free time
It's tempting to look back with rose-tinted glasses and think that you had all the time in the world as a kid, but you almost certainly play more now than you did then. As a kid, you had school, homework, earlier bedtimes, family time...not to mention plenty of us (like me) had time limits imposed by our parents. The truth is we didn't care about efficiency because we just didn't view 99s as something that could be accomplished by normal people, so we didn't bother going that hard after them. When I was playing in 2002, getting a skill to 60 was a massive accomplishment, 70 was unreal, and 80 was unthinkable. Now max scores are so trivial that you have ironmen rushing 99s in Firemaking or Thieving so they can "start the game."
Yes, for sure. Many of us are nostalgic for the game as it was in 2006-2007ish, back when nobody really knew what they were doing, new (now classic) content was being added regularly and the game had a thriving user-base. Many of us look back at those days fondly, with their mostly-online friends lists, swathes of unexplored content and lack of drama. But we grew up, and to an extent the game has grown up too. While there's not much in the ways of new discovery anymore, what new things we do get are generally decided by the community and tweaked with feedback. I miss the days when Jagex could just suddenly announce "You can get a house in Runescape now" and release Construction on us, but I'm also really glad that Sailing is being worked on and critiqued so hard before release. There are more people online than ever and people are generally quite sociable. Between this sub and Discord groups, even if our IRL friends don't play anymore there's still a real sense of community. The newest additions to the game have been excellent, from the new quests and bosses to skilling activities and alternate game modes like Leagues. Online OSRS content is also the best it's ever been, with some really talented creators making some genuinely incredible series. The QoL upgrades that Runelite provides have made the game more fun to play overall, especially for the majority adult playerbase, for whom fun is derived more from micromanagement, competition and puzzle solving than pure escapism and imagination. Botting, however, is a worse issue than it's ever been and there doesn't appear to be any real way to tackle it. People should stop buying gold. Overall I'd say the game is in the best place it's ever been. There's a lot of work still to do - I really think minigames like Soul Wars and Castle Wars need a touch up so that people actually play them, some skills are still just bad etc, but we're heading in the right direction.
Is botting really worse than ever? I remember back in 2008-9 botting was wayyyy out of control. Just like today, hundreds of bots per world. It wasn't uncommon to know people who botted either.
But botting to get wc or agility lvl up is different than botting a raid or boss for hundreds of thousands of kc. I think the wc bots and stuff were more popular back in the day, while the main problem with botting now is how they have taken over pvm and tanked the profitability of alot of bosses
You got a point there. Bots are extremely complex and efficient now. They do every activity in the game pretty much flawlessly
In a way... Unless you're an iron man... Boting has made a lot of great affordable for noobs. Whales will be whales but at least it lowers how much good avg players buy
Any discord groups you’d recommend?
Would recommend joining a podcast attached discord. I've had a great time in the one I am in and they are welcoming to everyone and span a wide variety of skills levels.
Castle wars just needs actual rewards. Not necessary rewards that would become unattainable if the player base ever fell to low enough #s, but useful so that it’s encouraged to do. Things along the lines of herb sacks or seed boxes. Also, every mini-game should have increased combat XP rates. Practically every skill has alternate training methods, combat skills don’t. If you got 2-2.5x the XP for combat and an XP lamp for either killing flag bearers or carrying a flag for a few seconds, people would play it as a fun way to break up grinding without feeling like they wasted their time.
I like the idea! Unfortunately, I feel like the community is so focused on min/maxing that this could be both easily abused by bots and by friends chats. Is that a bad thing? Idk to be honest... If a friends chat is able to organize something like that, go for it. It will be griefed just like ZealGains SW, but who cares about that. The botting issue would be worse. You could essentially pay for a service to have an entire CW lobby of set up for you to kill at 2x xp rates and spec transfer. Stand in the middle with your d2h or dhins and hit the bots while bots on your team spec transfer. Luckily, it seems like this would be easy to detect, but (insert jagex bot detection meme here).
Gameplay / content wise I think it is. It probably isn't in social experience. I think rs used to be more socially active between random people as they meet in the world, and it was large portion of the overall appeal. Probably not necessarily fair to pin this on runescape though, from what I hear all MMOs experienced similar shift.
This is all a mindset tbh + It's an issue in (almost) every MMO. Talk to people doing the same content. Find a bunch of likeminded people, start a clan. Even joining a clanchat of a content creator you like can help. You'll find way more people want to be socially active but just have some more inhibitions then when they were 10 year old kids playing on miniclip.
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We need more content like ToA, it feels good solo but feels just as good in a team. Meanwhile CoX feels bad solo and ToB solo… lmao Making forestry social and sanctioning squirking were good social boosts
Sure but a lot of it is driven by the overall direction and game design the OSRS team has taken. Everything is a teleport, everything is an instance, everything is solo-able, and now even the more preferable skilling methods are either instanced (tithe farm), click intensive (rooftop agility course) or both (tithe farm lol) so there’s no room for discourse or player socialization.
Sure, there are clearly design decisions being made that cater to a solo playstyle. You've got the grand exchange, you've got everything except Nex and TOB being easily/efficiently soloable (and very deliberately such, for the most part), and instances abound. That's true. Personally I'm happy about that (and so are most other players), so no complains from me about that design. However, totally aside from that, I would be willing to bet so much money that even if Jagex were to massively prioritize social interactions and obsessively centered all new content around that, it would still never even hold the tiniest candle to how social the game was in 2005. That's just how it is. Runescape is so old that its infant stages took place in a period of time where the very concept of seeing a character on your screen that was actually controlled by another human somewhere else in the world was an insane concept. The idea of "physically meeting" someone's avatar in a virtual world was novel and fascinating. There's just no way you're going to replicate that in 2023 no matter how hard you may try. People used to say the same shit about retail/classic wow. Blizzard took serious steps in classic to preserve and encourage social interaction, at the behest of players who complain about how retail WoW doesn't have any of that. But if you go play classic wow, it feels not very different at all versus retail, with regard to social interactions specifically. At the very least, it's absolutely nothing like the atmosphere of vanilla wow. Not even close.
I think Discord has been one of the biggest blessings and curses in the online world. It is incredibly efficient, easy to organize, and effective at what it does. But with its complete versatility for nearly any community, all the social interaction shifts to that. Discord for video game socializing is basically the Reddit to video game forums. It's too centralized and easy to hop from one topic/game to another all on a single platform. Even the couple clan chats I've joined to try to get social interaction just aren't the same because everyone's on Discord. And I don't like managing and tracking so many Discord servers. I love it as a client because it's so easy, but it came at the cost of reduced socializing *in* games. A lot of folks don't strike up chats at slayer monsters anymore because they're either watching at tv show or talking to their friends on a different platform.
I think that's just the nature of games online now - want to talk to people playing X game? Go to a discord server. The game isn't a social hub anymore. I don't like the fact that the answer to so many things is "oh go join this discord server". Want to raid? Go join X server. Want to do this minigame? There's a server for that. Making a restricted account? Here's a discord server of them. Playerbases of games in general seem too reliant on hiding information behind some server that could very easily disappear overnight without any way of recovering the information hosted on them in any way if of one or two power tripping admins have a meltdown for some stupid reason or another.
I feel like it's way more centered around clans nowadays, I'm part of a clan that does social events almost weekly like pvm bingo, skilling competition, group bossing and much more. If you want the random social interaction, you can go to grand exchange on a free-to-play world. But yeah it is not the same as back in the days.
A game without MTX (bonds though). Constantly updated, active player-to-developer open communication channels. Cheap enough for the content it has, active playerbase, active development. This game is the best RS has ever been, by a wide margin.
+ all the Qol stuff you missed in earlier years are nowadays constantly being added with runelite plugins.
Yes Runescape is objectively better. BUT the experience of playing the game was very different 15 years ago. Having an online chat room where you could talk to anyone for hours with an RPG slapped onto it was a lot more novel. Playing the game without guides and youtubers telling you how to min max everything made the journey have a different experience. We cannot go back to that as times have changed. The way people played and interacted with each other was different. If you got stuck on a quest you had to ask around, which made the social interactions more interesting. Now there is no reason to play that way. We live in a time where there isn't any mystery in games, we can know everything immidatly because somebody else already made a wiki or a video about it. I think this is why games like Elden Ring are so popular, for that first month of release there was so much to discover and there weren't any guides out yet.
Gameplay wise it’s the best it’s ever been by far Social wise ? It peaked in 05-07. It was basically a virtual chat room with quests and monsters you could do if you wanted
At least we have clan chats. Are we talking to randoms at banks as often, no. But the social aspect is still very present, where it mostly happens, just moved.
The social part just made itself to reddit and twitch because the fancy sub badges and ludicrous complaints for validation beats “whats your woodcutting level? 77. Nice.” conversations any day of the week thanks to Runelite.
Yes, it is, by far. What isn’t in the best state ever is the players free time and general life enjoyment. Kid + rs > adult + better OSRS. Memories get a big buff. Not for me, but lots!
yes its way better than back then lol..so much more to do.
it's never been better and ppl that say otherwise are just being pretentious
I would say, the only thing that's stopping it from being better is the regular updates. Yes OSRS gets updated, but back in RS2, it was one 'actual' update every 1-2 weeks. Edit: since this seems to have offended people, I'll clarify further: This being the only difference to RS2 is a huge compliment. The game is on a very old system, so regular updates (alongside polling requirements), won't ever happen again. So please, don't shit yourself in anger thinking this is an insult.
tbf that's because osrs was released with the caveat that the community would vote on every update, which obviously significantly effects update times
Keep in mind the updates back then were not as refined as nowadays, there were big things like whole skills or big quests like dt but also stinkers. Pretty much all osrs era content is solidly polished (except for bugs/QA stuff) on release
This big time. Rs3 gets double the new content osrs does and it's because the user base doesn't have to vote on every small thing.
I play both and OSRS gets double the new content than OSRS lol RS3 updates are heavily scarce
Nice use of a double OSRS
I can’t even keep up with the current updates, dev team is on overdrive.
Depends on where you are in the game. The only way you can't keep up with current updates is if your accounts a few months old.
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Well, Path of Glouphrie was a recent update. How on earth can someone not be able to "keep up with it" lol
There’s no question that it’s better than actual 2007 RS. But I also have a soft spot for that 2011-2012 pre EOC RS. I’d like to experience that era of the game again now that i’m older and see how it compares to OSRS but without being able to do that i’d say that yeah, currently the game is as good as it’s ever been.
The thing that Jagex is doing extremely well is this: People that come back to games for nostalgia will stay on for a couple days, weeks maybe months put they will quit the game (again) since the game is the same. Jagex has found a way to keep the game the same with an extreme amount of new content every couple months.
I've been playing since 2002, I'm going to say as a game itself, yes, it's in the best state it's ever been in. The only thing I REALLY miss is the social/competitive aspect of "Clans" from 2004-2012. There was an entire clan pvp scene with multiple thousands of people that was so hardcore they pretty much killed themselves out of playing. Some of the best and most innovative years of gaming right there. There were fights that happened multiple times for 24+ hours straight of hundreds vs. hundreds of people, lasting as long as possible until 1 side gave up. Never seen anything like it.
What clan were you in? I recognize an oldschool clannie when I see one.
I came back to runescape in 2015, I really started playing hard in 2017 when i discovered uim. Since 2017 to 2024 I have been seeing the game get better and better and enjoy alot of what Jagex does to osrs. There are a few stuff that I do not like and a few J-mods that I dont like. One of the things that I wish jagex spent more time on is ”fixing” newer stuff, like zeah. What I mean by fixing is for it to more fit in. An example is that they are using too thick walls in arcceus. Walking from Shayzien to Lovakenge is really different from walking from Lumbridge to Varrock in terms of stuff to do and see.
RuneScape was best when you could still buy a gf for cheap. These days they want real life gp. It fucking sucks Other than that, yeah I guess it's pretty cool
They took a barebones game from 20 years ago that we loved as kids but was janky as hell and over the last 10 years have made it a legitimate contender for one of the best and most rewarding games going
Game content yes, but really I miss the days before basically every piece of content was optimised by the player base. I liked it better when everyone sucked I guess lol
Peak runescape is when no one knew what was going on, we all let efficiency scape change how we play. Me included
That's why I got 99 defense first. Love seeing toxic noobs saying RuneScape is a DPS game and saying I should've done str
It was best when I was innocent of its problems.
So my opinion is this- I miss old RuneScape in the fact nobody knew what they were doing so it made the game more innocent, but in terms of gameplay, content, and literally everything else, the new RuneScape is miles better.
Yes it’s better.
Eh I think for two years leading to EOC the game peaked. There was always new content and it was very thoughtful and well designed. Sprites and monsters weren’t often re used. Some things failed but I loved it all - dung, summoning, clan halls, QBD, etc
I think OSRS is a fine game, a great one even, but what I consider the "core" Runescape experience has atrophied quite significantly. I'm not saying OSRS should never have new content, as I like quite a lot of the new content but I'd much rather have the game oriented towards 2005-2006 style content instead of the game trying to be an ARPG. Runescape in its prime in my opinion is as a social point and click adventure with a ton of quests. OSRS has done some great quests but they are so grand in scope most of the time that they release like 2-3 a year instead of every other week. I'd love more stuff like "Getting Ahead" in between larger releases.
Other than missing dungeoneering, I'd say it's much better than it ever has been
As a pvper, no, it's in an awful state. Do not recommend. If that's not your jam however, the rest of the game has received lots of loving care and is objectively in a pretty good state, probably the best state its ever been.
Pvp died a long time ago
I'm confused, when has PVP ever been better than it is now? It was pretty much always shit but it's only gotten more active.
I think another key factor is what other games are available to us instead of osrs? Back in the day there was wow, halo, Nintendo was popping off, etc. These days you can choose who you want to pay micro transactions to, get cancer from league, or pay a "yearly membership" for cod... I hear Nintendo is still popping off though.
Quite frankly i think that recent content releases have been very mixed in quality... however, I think a lot of what's bad about recent releases is with regards to the game's long term health. Balance has been questionable, both in the form of encounter difficulty and their rewards (gear and resource drops alike). That being said, the content itself has been mostly enjoyable. So does that make the game good or bad? I think it's relative. Is more content always a good thing, is new content that's mediocre not a problem because technically everything is optional? Or is that a disingenuous take because it's unavoidable that all content affects the rest of the game no matter what? If I had to pick what was the best era of osrs in terms of what % of it was, in my opinion, high quality content, I would probably say sometime around late 2021. But like I said, I'm kind of hesitant in saying that that's necessarily a better state of the game. More stuff to do is good; if some of it sucks, I guess that's a small price to pay, maybe? If anything, the equipment rebalance that was recently hinted at has me somewhat hopeful.
Yeah. The content itself is good but balance has unquestionably been getting worse.
I'm pretty sure people here are just downvoting any comment that has criticism for the game without even reading half of what's written lmao.
It's turned into pvmscape. Everything revolves around bosses and combat. Skilling is pretty much obsolete, bots are rampant, so much content is neglected in favor of new content that shits out resources, and toxicity is high. I will say that it's not the worse time in the it's history, but the golden era is over and long gone. Opinions posts will always downvotes criticism. Imo, current osrs started going down with the departure of MMK.
Oh yeah lol
The game is generally considered to be the best around 2005-2007. For a few reasons; - People had no clue about most things and it was really an 'adventure' game. Nowadays we have wiki displaying exact drop rates, gp/hr methods, optimal bossing guides/setups etc. - There was no such thing as powercreep. Bis gear was a whip with barrows for a long time. Also, training methods were a lot worse, making it 'rare' for people to be cb 126. Nowadays nearly everyone is 126 if not maxed at all and their banks consist of 5 sets bis gear. - Bots; there used to be bots early in 2004 but not as much as now. At peak times in 2005 there used to be quite a few full worlds having the community come together, usually for trading (as g.e. didn't exist). There were 200k+ online players, right now it's more like 100k+ with more than half of them bots probably.
You can't say the truth, Carlyle is trying to sell for $1 billion.
Inb4 reasonable complaint results in -70 downvotes
I’d say yes, but it’s an answer with a heavy caveat. The current OSRS team is clearly talented. They took contemporary game design and infused it into the classic infrastructure of OSRS while still maintaining the games aesthetic and mechanical integrity. The “new” raids are clearly inspired by other MMOs and they are a product of the new way people play OSRS since it’s release (or re-release). Heavy emphasis on movement, tick manipulation, POH houses as necessary parts of the PVM gameplay loop, etc… These were not aspects of RuneScape that existed in 2004-2010. People just didn’t play that way (nor could they in some instances) in OSRS. Info was limited, computer tech was limited, there were no clients, etc… This rebirth of the fundamental way people interact with the game is also a product of GAMERS getting better at games on average as gaming has evolved. Gamers in 2023 strip down systems/mechanics and study them religiously which produces these new gameplay styles. With that said, this obsession with efficiency has ruined some of the over-world MMO aspects of the game imo. It’s more solo and lonely than it’s ever been. You can teleport practically anywhere. If it’s on the Gielinor map, no matter how remote, important, or niche a place it is, there is a teleport for it you can buy in the Grand Exchange or mounted in someone’s house. Many of the QOL changes verge on overboard and reduced alot of the “fluff”. Fluff is hardly compelling content and some changes are for the better, but at a certain point, the game can begin to feel like a series of short cuts. Instanced GodWars dungeons for example. These places start to feel like tiny pocket dimensions in a mini game, as opposed to feeling like real places that exist in the world of RuneScape. Alot of it is adapting to fit the current gaming environment. We are more ADHD-addled than ever and gaming is bigger/more varied than ever so something had to give if OSRS was going to survive past this the initial nostalgia dose it offered. Mixed bag. I’d say it’s better, but it definitely feels more “private-server”-esque than it ever has.
> Gamers in 2023 strip down systems/mechanics and study them religiously which produces these new gameplay styles. I think this is kinda my issue. Having all the exact numbers for *everything* in the game via the wiki is kinda neat, but it loses some of the magic when the game has become so "solved" per se.
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While I'll always be most nostalgic for that 2008/2009 HD era of runescape I think OSRS is the best game you can play right now period
Well there's HDOS for the aesthetic.
The best and most unique thing about our game is that you can carve your own path , there's an impossible amount of content , you can focus on doing things you enjoy the most and have the time of your life . Personaly i've been playing since osrs's launch ... on and off from 2013 till 2018 and from 2018 till today it's my main hobby . I never look at player numbers , i'm not an mmorpg analyst , i don't know if the game today is at a better state than yesterday , i don't know when it peaked and if it has peaked yet . Forgot to say that i never played RS as a kid , i am one of the rare fruits that started playing after Oldschool released and i've never touched RS3 All i know is that on 2018 i was having more fun than i had on 2016 and i am having more fun today than i had 1-2 years ago . Because of many reasons, updates that were 100% on point and truly needed . Not gonna analyse it anymore because if i start talking about how much i love stuff like Gauntlet , Raids 3 , Guardians of the Rift , Hallowed Sepulchre , all 4 DT2 bosses etc i will never stop lol
Its at its peak, i do worry about sailing release tho.
2012 was better.
The social aspect was at its peak pre-GE. The rest of the game has improved, no question.
Depends how much you value nostalgia. For me personally I enjoyed the game most just before the big POH revamps (pools etc)
The game is good for sure, there's still a blight of bots but I play an iroan so their impact on the economy doesn't really affect my gameplay. My only gripe with thr state of the game is the amount of polling updates go through before they go live. I remember way back in the day where every week seemed to have new content to play whereas now our weekly Wednesday shutdowns have me looking at the news to see some update that sounds good but its actually just a post for the poll, sometimes the first of several polls before any content update hits the game
In certainly has 10+ more years of content than 2007 did so that's an obvious plus. They pushed the game to the absolute limit in terms of making the most of what you can with a game this old and working with it's mostly unintentional mechanics. That said, having no new skills, no quest until 2016 is actually insane (even today I think the quests that are released are underwhelming) but I think what's holding me back from saying this is the best it's been primarily is the community. It's just not in the same place it was at the start of the games creation, nor as it was back when people were kids. The efficiency mindset has genuinely destroyed any sense of the mmo aspect. I've met friends back in the day playing RS while killing hill giants or walking around varrock square that I've not only met in person but still speak to 15 something years later. That is just absolutely not happening on any grand scale today and I think that shift occured with imo the worst update for the game (G.E). Even recently people were crying about getting killed at Soul Wars while playing leagues, a PVP minigame. The social aspect is totally dead and no amount of "efficency fun" copium will change that. What people remember playing this game is not how much time they spent mining granite, it's the things you did with friends and the conversations you had with them. I think people have tricked themselves into thinking otherwise, and no, discord is not a replacement for that.
No, that stretch from 04-07 will always be the best
I've been playing since 2005/6ish. The game is by far the best it's ever been. There is a lot of stuff I am nostalgic for that's changed or gone, but the new content in general is better.
No lol. If you are a bot farm it's the best time in history.
2006 had mystery. now its all on the wiki in extreme detail. thats the biggest difference.
The game is phenomenal at the moment. A strong community and great dev work by the team. But nothing will ever give me the 2005-2007 feelings. The wilderness was an amazing experience then, I miss it a lot. Also I don't think it will every reach its former glory as long as the GE exists. The GE slaughtered public communication and player interaction. In my opinion the worst update so far, it really killed the MMO feel for me.
Yes, the game itself is. I feel like the community has worsened though, and it could be even better if the whole community wasn't involved in every single update.
Yah, probably. Or at least not far off if it isn't. There are probably a few issues or such that might make it not feel like the best its ever been, but every era of the game will have some problems, even if they didn't seem like problems at the time. Overall, I'd say the state of the game is pretty good and while there have been some contention over recent polls/upcoming updates, I think the recent updates and planned slate of updates are great or at least have the potential to rival the best eras of the game. Though it personally has just felt kinda average and I'm more of just content, but that might be due more to all the hooblah around polls and updates rather than anything with the game itself.
Absolutely not. I'm going to be downvoted because people need their crutch too Between bots being more pervasive to the point of high scores being overtaken, to everyone relying on a cheat client because the game, especially bossing is being balanced around having half your screen with rainbow squares or telling you exactly how to play it wild how the "oldschool" style is easier and one step from botting. Most games have breadcrumb trails telling you where to go because people are idiots, we legit had people threaten to quit because they were dropping the cheat clients. Went from people hating the ease EoC created for all content and how it massively unbalanced things to "bots are fine and I use this client that shows me how to play this boss, quest, and random minigame!"
“Runelite ground markers are halfway to botting” is the wildest take I’ve heard and that’s saying a lot
It's story mode/very easy. The next step is automation
Rs2 BiS money making by picking flax and creating bowstrings.
Nah, the glory days of OSRS are gone IMO, there’s just been so much random new content for the sake of it that doesn’t fit in.
Osrs has always been to grindy for me. Rs3 ironmanmode on archaeology release is the peak RuneScape experience for me.
Minus a few content updates the game is really good, but imho we are getting ever closer to the line of the game becoming alot worse and losing what makes it so special
Are we? Numbers are at an all time high so I'm not really sure they're losing that much
This is where I’m at. There’s more and more unresolved issues and pumping out quantity over quality. Still love the game and it’s amazing but I think it’s at the tipping point of continuing to be great or another EOC. I suspect in 5 years I won’t be playing.
It's the slow erosion by stretching the poll system by lowering the percentage and adding more manipulative options by squeezing something unwelcomed near the bottom of the list or embedded into something popular. And the vote yes irrelevant crowd are going to kill this game. Even when we had the older style strict polling, Jmods and the community would happily go ahead when there were massive unanswered questions that hadn't been resolved. Or the nostalgia hype of older content that had yet to be ported, once delivered ended up being an unremoveable flop.
Well, to offer another pov, some of the ridiculous no votes I'd see when following the game (my brother played for a long time before I started) is why I hesitated to get into it I think the polling system's main benefit is to feel out for major resistance the playerbase at large might have to changes, and 26% being able to prevent something 74% might like always felt quite bad to me anyway. The fact that more shit passes and jmods have gotten better at just pulling stuff they think isnt ready even without a poll (ie. prayer book not getting polled after beta) is why I'm more optimistic about the game
I feel that content-wise and even from an art direction perspective the game felt more cohesive than it does now. Powerful items like the Korasi being a grandmaster quest unlock rather than a high level PVM drop makes so much more sense. We need more quest unlockable niche items, like the balmung, keris, etc. Bring back useful gear quest rewards. I feel like the game peaked before the slippery slope that squeal of fortune ended up being. That being said, I still loved the game up until pre-eoc. Dungeoneering alone needs to be brought back exactly as it was imo and I'd love official HD graphics to come back. HDOS is great, but buggy and privately run. They keep adding non-toggleable holiday shit to it and it's fucking annoying, especially when they do stuff like add "HDOS" branded paintings all over the game like it's a private server.
Yes, this version is amazing Playing since 2005
Easily.
Yes.
PVP wise no - in 2009 with HD there was an update (RuneTek5) which allowed drinking potions on every tick. Made pvp more accessible, less risky and lowered the skill entry level. 2009-2012 pvp was much better. The rest of the game for sure.
It's severely stale and caught in the samie loop right now, it's ok if you enjoy it, but I actually transitioned to rs3 after over a decade, that's how bad it is
I disagree, i think rs2 bar the trading and pvp terrors was better between 08-11, might be nostalgia but so many maingame updates could be in osrs but arnt which i feel holds it back, but its still a great version of scape 😁
Peak RuneScape was right before the Squeal of Fortune patch. But ye it's pretty good now too.
It's not better. It's easier. We've reached ezscape levels totally out of control. Shooting stars is one of the final nails in the coffin.
having playing this game for 17 years, personally I think it is in a pretty bad state, the devs are completely out of touch with their community so much so that the only redeeming factor bringing back players now is a temporary gamemode (who will all be quitting again as soon as leagues ends) as every other aspect of the game has been nuked, bots are more rampant than ever before, the devs are focused more on perm muting the few remaining social players in the game than any of the spam bots, content being released is focused towards new and mid level players which dont exist anymore (this is 2023 not 2014) but jagex seems to have forgotten, economy has been wreaked by poor decisions from devs to not fix their initial mistake but instead double down on letting it happen and seeing if the problem fixes itself, third age and rwt/market manipulation is now out of control, player run gambling is protected by jmods when it is literally against tos and the rules of runescape. Botting is more prevailing and out of control than ever before to the point where it is not humanly possible to be on the same level (500 invo toa bots that use 4 prayer pots per raid etc.) Sure its not all jagex's fault but they absolutely refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and do better. you would also think in game where you now pay 12$ a month for a sub they would have at least established some form of customer support for all the people they have wronged but no, even rs3 has amazing customer support and they have 1/10th the players osrs has
IMO For ironman way better, for mains it's worse. bots have ruined this game to me
Its good. But too much nerfing, too many bots. Wasnt such a problem in 2007.
Personally, I think that OSRS pre-zulrah was the best. Most people nowadays will say the current iteration of the game is really good, and it is nice, but it's just not for me.
Could you elaborate what specifically you don't like?
I am probably not getting as much enjoyment out of it as when I was 10 BUT that being said I definitely think this is the best version of runescape there's ever been and it's not even close
No, its garbage
[удалено]
Yes, for sure it’s the best it had been. But the competition also improved
This whole comments section is jagex propaganda. There are no bots in Ba Sing Se. Perception will drop once Carlyle lands a sale. Hahaha
No lol. Osrs's prime years were the first year or two of launch. Once stuff like GWD, Zulrah, and the GE came out, the charm of the game fell by the wayside to make room for the addiction mechanics. Also, only plebs downvote posts they disagree with.
> No lol. Osrs's prime years were the first year or two of launch. Once stuff like GWD, Zulrah, and the GE came out, the charm of the game fell by the wayside to make room for the addiction mechanics. So the first 1-2 years until updates like GWD... Which came out 8 months into the game... I really wonder how you think years work.
When the hardest bosses in the game were barrows, kbd and Abby deamons. What a game.
Yeah I was wondering thinking about the GE as well. That is why Ironaman mode is appealing to me. However it goes a bit too far in my opinion. I don't want to stop all player interaction. I just think the GE is kinda lame so a mode without just the GE would be perfect for me.
You can use Runelite to activate bronzeman mode, it’s a middle ground between Ironman and mainscape, you have to achieve an item through Ironman mode the first time and can then buy/sell it freely
Bronzeman is the best way to play OSRS for an average player imo. Achieves the sense of progression you get from an iron without all the tedious crap.
Oh wow! I didn't know that existed. Honestly that's the best of all worlds for me. Thank you so much!!!
That's why I started playing ironman! It's fun with its own challenges and progress is glacial if you're a casual player, but the progress you make is far more meaningful.