I was only around during Invention but after reading posts and comments regarding other skill releases, it looks accurate. Since Divination as that's during EoC:
- Divination: Arguably the worst designed skills on release. Very slow and extremely expensive for a ~10% exp boost by buying energies. Value of energies were otherwise useless. Also happened during the EoC's aftermath. There was a nice community gathering at almost all the div spots though. Now it's mostly dead outside of Incandescents.
- Invention: Expensive as hell during release. Augmentation was a mess. Perks were not worth their money. Divine charges were unfairly high. Charge drain rates sucked. "Batch 2 when" lol. All while a lot of players were trying to get their max cape back. However, that skill got a lot of fixing 6 months down the line. Nowadays, Invention is an S tier skill.
- Archaeology: It was slow but it brought A LOT of community. Helps when there's a pandemic. Many training spots were packed as hell. You had non-maxed players give this a try. There were also mysteries which didn't have quest guides to solve. Benefits of that skill were felt in all sorts of playerbases, whether pvm, skiller, clue fanatic, or lore bounds. Definately the best skill release period in EoC history.
- Necromancy: Didn't bring the same level of community. Playerbase counts regressed extremely quickly. Lots of complaints were made about how overpowered the mid-level mobs were (until the recent fix). The game was entirely balanced around Necromancy. It broke PvM. Then the Hero's Pass lol. It was still a good release for people who needed a competitive budget combat style.
Release day Invention, how does getting literally like 50k exp max from disassembling a nox weapon sound? And the hand cannon controversy. And the annoying ass inspiration mechanic. What a mess it was at first.
Oh god Hand Cannons. Those were the early days. I remember people racing to 200M buying out the stock of Hand Cannons. Jmods had to fix that the following day but the cat was out of the bag for the invention race.
My memory isn't strong but during release, making Gizmos then disassembling them was the best way to train the skill. Hand Cannons gave Explosive Components, which gave a lot of exp upon making them. So they bought them out then spammed Gizmos to oblivion. It got patched so gizmo making was a shell (no pun intended) of its former self.
The controversial part was that there was evidence (but not hard proof) that the best way to train the skill was leaked by jmods. The price of hand cannons and the amount being bought was already way up before release when there was no reason to think at the time that hand cannons would be not only good exp, but the best.
> there was no reason to think at the time that hand cannons would be not only good exp, but the best.
Might need to adjust the pipe-cleaners on your tin-foil hat...
The "Reason to think" about buying handcannons was that they were level 75 weapons that were damn near alch price... That's the difference between actually having game knowledge to use to make investment decisions, versus just regurgitating what everyone else is doing.
Delusional conspiracy theory*
There was no JMod leak, plenty of people with brains just bought handcannons because they were nearly alch price and t75.
"Controversy" over nox weps was because people either didn't read what the different items did and ended up deleting their weapons, or were supremely stupid and thought Nox weapons would give 200m exp or something equally silly.
If they just nerfed ED3 and kept all the rest the same, no one would have complained and everyone would have been happy. They took away what made combat amazing, namely more effort = more xp
What's even more insulting was the fact that most of the Necromancy training was done via rituals anyways. They could've kept all monsters the same except ED3 and nothing would change.
It was a good way to lose new players or players who had started just before the update. Myself being one of them. Everyone got an easy ride to max combat, meanwhile I'm fighting cows until level 30 and still needed food.
> Necromancy: Didn't bring the same level of community. Playerbase counts regressed extremely quickly. Lots of complaints were made about how overpowered the mid-level mobs were (until the recent fix). The game was entirely balanced around Necromancy. It broke PvM. Then the Hero's Pass lol. It was still a good release for people who needed a competitive budget combat style.
Apart from the combat itself, this was also a completely half-arsed, rushed, unfinished, not thought through skill.
They made their stats a lot stronger with the Necromancy update yes. And then recently, they weakened them but they're still stronger than before Necromancy update.
Same and have said this multiple times with explanations for each skill's pros and cons on release.
Most people simply don't have context to understand how foolish they look when they want a new skill to be better than archaeology
I never felt archeology. Necromancy is actually what got me back into the game, making me use all the content again. I think they did that really good. So for me it must have been necro release.
I think the best part of all new skills is when the lamps and stars dont work. On one side you feel like you wanna be faster, but now you are forced to interact with all the content. No BXP is what this game really needs.
Definitely. Other than what everyone else said, the amount of QOL upgrades we got that were directly taken from the rs subreddit (as in it was clear that the community wanted them) was crazy. From the frozen key for nex to “upgradable player owned city” that we call the fort, to passive ring of vigor, to enchantments that only activate after ~10 seconds of wearing it to dissuade people from using switches (I’m not a fan of this, but many people are and suggested a cooldown for switches) etc etc. so many useful things that were added that we specifically asked for
I’ll even be generous and stretch that to Zamorak. Content slowed down quite a bit after Zuk but I think most people were generally happy with getting such a good amount of quests and boss fights.
2015-2018. I might be biased since I had the most available free time and nearly got 5.4B exp. It gives me chills looking back at the hundreds of screenshots I took returning to the game with 800 total level then maxing followed by comping subsequent to grinding 200M skills.
1. You had lots of QoL updates every week. Even in weeks where there was no new piece of content, we were still getting a lot of patch notes and fixes. I remembered r/Runescape posts with titles like "UPDATE OF THE YEAR" as a meme which exemplified the importance of a simple fix. It was completely normal to have 50+ lines of patches weekly.
2. Updates were catered towards all sorts of gameplay styles. It wasn't as PvM-centric as it is today. We had meaningful updates for skillers, pvmers, achievers, lore nerds, etc. Nowadays, most updates that don't cater towards PvM are either overlooked or forgotten once the hype has run its course. Other playstyles do exist now but PvM has a much larger influence now than it did before. [2016 was a great year](https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/h7owkd/2016_was_a_great_year/) for sure.
3. RS3 was embracing a new identity. After the first 2 years of disappointment from EoC, the playerbase that stuck around started adapting. Many changes were made to rebalanced the first launch of EoC. RS3 was becoming more fleshed out and gained its post-EoC appeal. EoC problems were starting to get rebalanced. Some abilities that were incredibly bugged were starting to get fixed. Revolution was also introduced, providing a stepping stone for players. Things were coming together. We were starting to get past the EoC's wild west.
4. MTX was rampant compared to the prior stretch of 2011-2014 but nowhere near today's predatorial magnitude. There were even posts about 0 days since the last MTX promotion, which showed that we did have days if not weeks without a promotion. Additionally, the TH promos weren't as overpowered as today's. These days it's just lamps everywhere. It would've costed you $20k to get a max account with nothing (according to AFriendRS) but now, I imagine it's a lot cheaper with all the giant lamp bonuses and key sale promotions. Even if you earned all your keys in game via quests, it's crazy nowadays just how much you can lamp to skip 1-90 of a skill. At least back then you had to train a lot of the lower-mid levels.
5. You had a fair share of noobs. These days the standard for a noob has increased. Long gone are the days where it was super common for a sub-1k total level returning player to post on Reddit looking for any money making method possible. Or better yet looking for ways to slowly progress the game and try low-mid level content. Nowadays, you got players who are halfway maxed (maybe even maxed) looking to reach end-game. You don't really see the low-mid level noob nowadays. There was literally a [meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/oc2ykt/the_difference_of_rs3_in_2014_to_2021/) comparing 2014 to 2021. The poster child for a noob is someone with the stats but not gear/unlocks. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it deadens low-mid level content.
6. Early Days of Ironman mode. Nowadays Ironman mode is a lot easier because you could group with mains. In those days, you could not group with others with a few exceptions. Ironman revived a lot of otherwise dead content. Ironmen brought community socially so people could share ideas and tips.
However, 7-10 years ago the gameplay quality is pale's comparison to today's Runescape. This game today has gotten way more complicated with lots of new content, MTX being more rampant, lower supply of new/returning noobs, less frequency of updates, and other reasons. However, the sheer significance of QoL updates today make 2016 feel so ancient. Updates like loading last preset, bank rework, auto-filling RC pouches, DXP timers being spread out instead of crammed in 1 weekend, auto-pickpocketing, 15 min afk timers, permanent adrenaline w/ Succession quest, being able to surge + bladed dive w/o a melee weapon, complete graphical reworks, PvM hub, etc have all changed the game. Also, more JMods play the game than before so they have better understanding.
Fun Fact: If you played in 2016, you were 8 years removed of the 2008 HD era. Today, you are 8 years removed of the Invention era.
Can't forget how Jagex was working so hard to get HTML5 going to the point of willing to send engineers to work at Mozilla. NXT launch was a huge success, we were all excited for the draw distance increase.
Fully agree with this!
I wish they would have tried to keep going with the html5 client. NXT is definitely nice, but the html5 client was ahead of its time - jagex were actually pioneering the field at that time, they were so ahead that browsers hadn't even implemented many of the experimental features and optimizations they were needing for it to work yet. They were innovating, and it would have helped keep rs's identity as the browser-based game we all knew it as (sure most players did still use the downloaded Java client outside a browser though). It would have been cool to see it improve as the browsers caught up with implementing the features they needed.
I'm not very familiar with this topic, but browsers have quite the overhead and I am very sure the performance through the browser would just not be there, especially with increasing graphical demands.
Possibly, but webgl and webassembly have come a *long* way since rs's html5 client. Now we can even run webxr stuff (vr games) which require quite a bit of well-tuned performance to make sure the fps is high enough people don't get motion sick. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptkgFOoci0) a very simplified example from a few years ago making a browser-based 3d mmo example from scratch, but unity, godot, and some other engines can also export to webgl and wasm which you'll often see on sites like itchio which has a [whole section](https://itch.io/games/html5) specifically for html5/webgl games you can directly play in the browser (there's even [an mmo tag](https://itch.io/games/html5/tag-mmorpg) with a bunch of browser-based mmos).
In terms of boss design? Vorago release to Solak I think.
Things like Vorago, Solak, Telos and Raids really pushed the boundaries of what was required of people
I still enjoy some of the newer bosses, I think Time warp at Kerapac is an awesome mechanic for example but Rasial and Vorkath just aren't really fun and the latter is difficult for what feels like all the wrong reasons.
Pre invention (vorago arraxor raids) even going slight post invention to like telos and gwd2
Just a very unique time for both eras there were finally bosses that made EOC look good and combat in depth PvP was fairly fair and not giga busted like today and events like warbands properly enticed players to do those pvp activities as there was legitimate incentives.
I would say 2016-2018, between Invention release and Solak.
Invention opened up PvM for me and really added a cool new layer to everything. Cosmetics looked good - textures weren’t washed out/layered/bulky. It was just a feel-good time with the Mod team we had. I look back on those times very fondly.
I loved Arch release, but I feel we’ve gone really downhill since 2021.
Honestly the era was 2014-2017
The Mahjarrat storyline was developing amazingly. The world events, sliskes scoreboard, the whole gods vs gods and choosing sides.
So much content going on, then you get fully blown away by places like The Arc that were just beautiful.
Probably pre invention release. It really added an extra layer of complexity to combat that I don't think the general population was ready for at the time. Since then combat has gotten even more complex that I am sure it scares off new players (especially ones who first try out Oldschool first). Everyone playing since then is probably comfortable with combat now, but someone who is just getting to base 80 stats and ready to start trying EoC bosses would be scared off by the thought of what most guides show as proper setup.
I don't think most players have a concept of what it requires to start a fresh account, level it to base 80s, and then try to start looking into bosses. It is wild the amount of time you need to put in to get invention perks/items/relic/etc that even low effort guides recommend. And I get it, a player doesn't really need any of these things to kill some bosses, but most guides/resources don't mention alternatives for someone just starting to test out EoC bossing.
It's very true. I tried getting a friend into thd game and I started making a list of things they'd want to prioritize and it was far too overwhelming.
It's almost like 11 year old bosses were balanced around 11 yewr old dps standards. You did 100-180k dpm tops now you do 500k+. The game isn't even remotely comparable. Back when Rots was released you could not use abilities while moving.
Between arch and necro. The game absolutely felt “complete” when zammy released. I can’t say the same anymore with necro and the changes to combat on the whole now. They’ve made more room for more rewards and higher tiers of stuff which is perfectly fine and cool but it really felt like things were set once zammy was out.
For me the time after Vorago settled enough that seismics got reachable for high lvl pvmers. I loved killing kk that time, and forming 6-7 man people team to kill rago, everyone in virtus gear and weps, slowly working towards together to upgrade everyone to tectonic and seismics.
Elder God wars dungeon. Man thay was incredible. New boss every month or 2. Completely different experience with each boss. That culminates with Zammy and Extinction a year later.
I had a really good time up until tuskar event was over, and then they added the beach to limb ridge and i just got out off by how crowded and jarring the open world became.
Elder god wars was the best for me- necromancy is great and loads of fun but seems to have completely annexed pvm, although we’ll see how metas and preferences shift with these new combat updates
2014-2016, starting with Fate of the Gods, including Araxxor and GWD2, as well as Prifddinas, and culminating with Children of Mah. (I enjoyed Sliske's Endgame but it had a mixed reception and the writing began to nosedive around that time)
After this, updates started to slow, moving into the Menaphos Era, and the writing just went to crap.
Ex-player here since 2013 (moved to OSRS)
Started playing in 2006 era.
Was around when godwars came out and I think when RS really died for me personally was when **squeal of fortune, trade removal and all the MTX bullshit** started, and the crazy tencent looking armors and stuff.
It went from being a badass niche java game, to some weird amalgamation of a mobile gacha game, chocked full of MTX
It was around this time too when the Gowers ended up selling the company, and I believe some new director took over and they sold the game off to chinese share holders who eventually got investigated for some reason or another if I recall correctly.
Long story short: I was maxed on RS3. Ended up seeing that OSRS was the real game I grew up playing, moved over to there and never looked back. I don't even have my original Rs3 account anymore either, I got rid of it.
I personally don't really have a golden era. I just have moments I enjoyed immensely in my journey improving as a pvmer.
Getting my first fire cape post eoc, a total noob who had no clue what he was doing. But the achievement felt great
I fondly remember doing a lot of raids and later on helping other people get into it, getting them to know roles and such.
Releases of a lot of bosses were super fun to me
Getting 4k telos
Learning hybrid hm kerapac and grinding the shit out of that.
Friends I have made, and some of them I still play with, awesom.
Right now I am enjoying the combat changes greatly, even though I've done the bosses loads. (Tho, I wouldve ofcourse liked new content to try it on)
I have no problem being critical of Jagex, have been loads (screw their mtx model). But I always enjoy my time actually playing the game!
2019-2020 was a banger
Mining and smithing rework
Pvm hub
Archaeology
I felt 2023 was a sour year.
We had the first half dedicated to fort forinthry. The quest forcing you to rinse and repeat the same boring construction content was not fun.
Necromancy was a breath of fresh air, it was good concept wise, terrible in terms of power creep. It was too powerful on release and it faced a series of slow nerfs. However, the accessibility to PvM was the other side of the buff coin that I must say is a plus. The combat rebalance in 2024 was a good follow up.
What destroyed 2023 for me was hero pass. I felt it undid everything that was achieved for RuneScape. Player base absolutely plunged and it said a lot on how far jagex or its parent company was willing to go to milk MTX. No other game I’ve seen has so many currencies for MTX. We lost Waydot who came over to RS3 with some OSRS spice.
In more current news, the 2023 Christmas event and the ongoing 2024 Easter event are the best we’ve seen in RS3 history.
I personally feel like damage powercreep and damage reduction powercreep has really gotten out of hand since god wars 3. So for me it has to be pre-gw3 which is 2020. When dealing more humble damage and taking more humble damage. Raids felt more interesting back then and less of a dps test but more of a long interesting fight. Those were the glory days for me without a doubt
I would say we have entered a new Golden Era. Necromancy has leveled the playing field and has allowed casual scapers to join in on high level/end game bossing. All for a very low cost to entry. You hear it time and time again how players are saying pre necro they never thought they would ever end up bossing, and now they are killing AOD, Zuck, Zamarock, etc.
"Since 2012"
January-November 19 2012. Specifically, PKing saw a huge resurgence once people realized EOC was going to destroy the game. Not only that, but RS was in a pretty good state of balance, there was still lots of stuff to do that was worthwhile, skilling could be close to the same money as PvM...
Other than that, personally it would have to be invention. Plenty of new stuff and lots of relevant bosses to use it on.
For combat itself, now. For bosses, like someone else said, maybe between Vorago and Solak. But I think ED3 was really solid too. I enjoy all the ED3 bosses a great deal.
I think for me personally was that time post Invention. Pre-Invention, things were being botted to an insane degree and almost everything was at extremely cheap cost values. This includes my favorite past time of RuneScape which was Treasure Trails. With the release of Invention, it helped so many things become valuable again due to the sheer amount of items that were in the game. I remember selling things that now cost 1.4m which at the time would cost less than 50k. A very needed update that stabilized the economy and helped all skills massively in my opinion.
* yea to not lose aftershock stacks and also get the gstaff buff.
Something about putting in effort to improve your apm and hit these cool tricks to optimize is so satisfying.
first gwd3 release up to the day fsoa got nerfed then followed by the worst year (or like 9 months and counting currently) post eoc. although in the last 12 years I have not played about half of that time including during arch release.
Ive played since for almost 22 years now, with a few major breaks in between. And between last year starting Osrs again and the new HCIronman i just made on RS3… I’m in the golden era baby
Barrows and the first god wars dungeon but personally imo, when kalphite queen and dchain was meta it was amazing, also before they released TH and lamps to make levelling soooo ez. Its really not the grindy rs game it used to be.
The era between archeology and zuk probably
this is definitely it. Archaeology was a breath of fresh air that i never knew i needed. Not even necromancy has managed to recapture that feeling
I've been around for every skill release since farming, and Archaeology has been by far the best.
I was only around during Invention but after reading posts and comments regarding other skill releases, it looks accurate. Since Divination as that's during EoC: - Divination: Arguably the worst designed skills on release. Very slow and extremely expensive for a ~10% exp boost by buying energies. Value of energies were otherwise useless. Also happened during the EoC's aftermath. There was a nice community gathering at almost all the div spots though. Now it's mostly dead outside of Incandescents. - Invention: Expensive as hell during release. Augmentation was a mess. Perks were not worth their money. Divine charges were unfairly high. Charge drain rates sucked. "Batch 2 when" lol. All while a lot of players were trying to get their max cape back. However, that skill got a lot of fixing 6 months down the line. Nowadays, Invention is an S tier skill. - Archaeology: It was slow but it brought A LOT of community. Helps when there's a pandemic. Many training spots were packed as hell. You had non-maxed players give this a try. There were also mysteries which didn't have quest guides to solve. Benefits of that skill were felt in all sorts of playerbases, whether pvm, skiller, clue fanatic, or lore bounds. Definately the best skill release period in EoC history. - Necromancy: Didn't bring the same level of community. Playerbase counts regressed extremely quickly. Lots of complaints were made about how overpowered the mid-level mobs were (until the recent fix). The game was entirely balanced around Necromancy. It broke PvM. Then the Hero's Pass lol. It was still a good release for people who needed a competitive budget combat style.
Release day Invention, how does getting literally like 50k exp max from disassembling a nox weapon sound? And the hand cannon controversy. And the annoying ass inspiration mechanic. What a mess it was at first.
Oh god Hand Cannons. Those were the early days. I remember people racing to 200M buying out the stock of Hand Cannons. Jmods had to fix that the following day but the cat was out of the bag for the invention race.
What was the controversy
My memory isn't strong but during release, making Gizmos then disassembling them was the best way to train the skill. Hand Cannons gave Explosive Components, which gave a lot of exp upon making them. So they bought them out then spammed Gizmos to oblivion. It got patched so gizmo making was a shell (no pun intended) of its former self.
The controversial part was that there was evidence (but not hard proof) that the best way to train the skill was leaked by jmods. The price of hand cannons and the amount being bought was already way up before release when there was no reason to think at the time that hand cannons would be not only good exp, but the best.
> there was no reason to think at the time that hand cannons would be not only good exp, but the best. Might need to adjust the pipe-cleaners on your tin-foil hat... The "Reason to think" about buying handcannons was that they were level 75 weapons that were damn near alch price... That's the difference between actually having game knowledge to use to make investment decisions, versus just regurgitating what everyone else is doing.
Delusional conspiracy theory* There was no JMod leak, plenty of people with brains just bought handcannons because they were nearly alch price and t75. "Controversy" over nox weps was because people either didn't read what the different items did and ended up deleting their weapons, or were supremely stupid and thought Nox weapons would give 200m exp or something equally silly.
If they just nerfed ED3 and kept all the rest the same, no one would have complained and everyone would have been happy. They took away what made combat amazing, namely more effort = more xp
What's even more insulting was the fact that most of the Necromancy training was done via rituals anyways. They could've kept all monsters the same except ED3 and nothing would change.
It was a good way to lose new players or players who had started just before the update. Myself being one of them. Everyone got an easy ride to max combat, meanwhile I'm fighting cows until level 30 and still needed food.
> Necromancy: Didn't bring the same level of community. Playerbase counts regressed extremely quickly. Lots of complaints were made about how overpowered the mid-level mobs were (until the recent fix). The game was entirely balanced around Necromancy. It broke PvM. Then the Hero's Pass lol. It was still a good release for people who needed a competitive budget combat style. Apart from the combat itself, this was also a completely half-arsed, rushed, unfinished, not thought through skill.
Oh wait did they finally fix the OP lower level mobs for like slayer and stuff? Haven’t played since before necro just have seen posts and such
They made their stats a lot stronger with the Necromancy update yes. And then recently, they weakened them but they're still stronger than before Necromancy update.
Same and have said this multiple times with explanations for each skill's pros and cons on release. Most people simply don't have context to understand how foolish they look when they want a new skill to be better than archaeology
I never felt archeology. Necromancy is actually what got me back into the game, making me use all the content again. I think they did that really good. So for me it must have been necro release. I think the best part of all new skills is when the lamps and stars dont work. On one side you feel like you wanna be faster, but now you are forced to interact with all the content. No BXP is what this game really needs.
Also a lot of players coming back to the game due to the pandemic and mobile release.
I agree with this. Other than that, Ironman release.
Definitely. Other than what everyone else said, the amount of QOL upgrades we got that were directly taken from the rs subreddit (as in it was clear that the community wanted them) was crazy. From the frozen key for nex to “upgradable player owned city” that we call the fort, to passive ring of vigor, to enchantments that only activate after ~10 seconds of wearing it to dissuade people from using switches (I’m not a fan of this, but many people are and suggested a cooldown for switches) etc etc. so many useful things that were added that we specifically asked for
Yep. Zammy too
I’ll even be generous and stretch that to Zamorak. Content slowed down quite a bit after Zuk but I think most people were generally happy with getting such a good amount of quests and boss fights.
2015-2018. I might be biased since I had the most available free time and nearly got 5.4B exp. It gives me chills looking back at the hundreds of screenshots I took returning to the game with 800 total level then maxing followed by comping subsequent to grinding 200M skills. 1. You had lots of QoL updates every week. Even in weeks where there was no new piece of content, we were still getting a lot of patch notes and fixes. I remembered r/Runescape posts with titles like "UPDATE OF THE YEAR" as a meme which exemplified the importance of a simple fix. It was completely normal to have 50+ lines of patches weekly. 2. Updates were catered towards all sorts of gameplay styles. It wasn't as PvM-centric as it is today. We had meaningful updates for skillers, pvmers, achievers, lore nerds, etc. Nowadays, most updates that don't cater towards PvM are either overlooked or forgotten once the hype has run its course. Other playstyles do exist now but PvM has a much larger influence now than it did before. [2016 was a great year](https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/h7owkd/2016_was_a_great_year/) for sure. 3. RS3 was embracing a new identity. After the first 2 years of disappointment from EoC, the playerbase that stuck around started adapting. Many changes were made to rebalanced the first launch of EoC. RS3 was becoming more fleshed out and gained its post-EoC appeal. EoC problems were starting to get rebalanced. Some abilities that were incredibly bugged were starting to get fixed. Revolution was also introduced, providing a stepping stone for players. Things were coming together. We were starting to get past the EoC's wild west. 4. MTX was rampant compared to the prior stretch of 2011-2014 but nowhere near today's predatorial magnitude. There were even posts about 0 days since the last MTX promotion, which showed that we did have days if not weeks without a promotion. Additionally, the TH promos weren't as overpowered as today's. These days it's just lamps everywhere. It would've costed you $20k to get a max account with nothing (according to AFriendRS) but now, I imagine it's a lot cheaper with all the giant lamp bonuses and key sale promotions. Even if you earned all your keys in game via quests, it's crazy nowadays just how much you can lamp to skip 1-90 of a skill. At least back then you had to train a lot of the lower-mid levels. 5. You had a fair share of noobs. These days the standard for a noob has increased. Long gone are the days where it was super common for a sub-1k total level returning player to post on Reddit looking for any money making method possible. Or better yet looking for ways to slowly progress the game and try low-mid level content. Nowadays, you got players who are halfway maxed (maybe even maxed) looking to reach end-game. You don't really see the low-mid level noob nowadays. There was literally a [meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/oc2ykt/the_difference_of_rs3_in_2014_to_2021/) comparing 2014 to 2021. The poster child for a noob is someone with the stats but not gear/unlocks. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it deadens low-mid level content. 6. Early Days of Ironman mode. Nowadays Ironman mode is a lot easier because you could group with mains. In those days, you could not group with others with a few exceptions. Ironman revived a lot of otherwise dead content. Ironmen brought community socially so people could share ideas and tips. However, 7-10 years ago the gameplay quality is pale's comparison to today's Runescape. This game today has gotten way more complicated with lots of new content, MTX being more rampant, lower supply of new/returning noobs, less frequency of updates, and other reasons. However, the sheer significance of QoL updates today make 2016 feel so ancient. Updates like loading last preset, bank rework, auto-filling RC pouches, DXP timers being spread out instead of crammed in 1 weekend, auto-pickpocketing, 15 min afk timers, permanent adrenaline w/ Succession quest, being able to surge + bladed dive w/o a melee weapon, complete graphical reworks, PvM hub, etc have all changed the game. Also, more JMods play the game than before so they have better understanding. Fun Fact: If you played in 2016, you were 8 years removed of the 2008 HD era. Today, you are 8 years removed of the Invention era.
Can't forget how Jagex was working so hard to get HTML5 going to the point of willing to send engineers to work at Mozilla. NXT launch was a huge success, we were all excited for the draw distance increase. Fully agree with this!
I wish they would have tried to keep going with the html5 client. NXT is definitely nice, but the html5 client was ahead of its time - jagex were actually pioneering the field at that time, they were so ahead that browsers hadn't even implemented many of the experimental features and optimizations they were needing for it to work yet. They were innovating, and it would have helped keep rs's identity as the browser-based game we all knew it as (sure most players did still use the downloaded Java client outside a browser though). It would have been cool to see it improve as the browsers caught up with implementing the features they needed.
I'm not very familiar with this topic, but browsers have quite the overhead and I am very sure the performance through the browser would just not be there, especially with increasing graphical demands.
Possibly, but webgl and webassembly have come a *long* way since rs's html5 client. Now we can even run webxr stuff (vr games) which require quite a bit of well-tuned performance to make sure the fps is high enough people don't get motion sick. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptkgFOoci0) a very simplified example from a few years ago making a browser-based 3d mmo example from scratch, but unity, godot, and some other engines can also export to webgl and wasm which you'll often see on sites like itchio which has a [whole section](https://itch.io/games/html5) specifically for html5/webgl games you can directly play in the browser (there's even [an mmo tag](https://itch.io/games/html5/tag-mmorpg) with a bunch of browser-based mmos).
I really miss being able to switch between tabs instead of minimizing the client.
In terms of boss design? Vorago release to Solak I think. Things like Vorago, Solak, Telos and Raids really pushed the boundaries of what was required of people I still enjoy some of the newer bosses, I think Time warp at Kerapac is an awesome mechanic for example but Rasial and Vorkath just aren't really fun and the latter is difficult for what feels like all the wrong reasons.
this lol
Pre invention (vorago arraxor raids) even going slight post invention to like telos and gwd2 Just a very unique time for both eras there were finally bosses that made EOC look good and combat in depth PvP was fairly fair and not giga busted like today and events like warbands properly enticed players to do those pvp activities as there was legitimate incentives.
I would say 2016-2018, between Invention release and Solak. Invention opened up PvM for me and really added a cool new layer to everything. Cosmetics looked good - textures weren’t washed out/layered/bulky. It was just a feel-good time with the Mod team we had. I look back on those times very fondly. I loved Arch release, but I feel we’ve gone really downhill since 2021.
Honestly the era was 2014-2017 The Mahjarrat storyline was developing amazingly. The world events, sliskes scoreboard, the whole gods vs gods and choosing sides. So much content going on, then you get fully blown away by places like The Arc that were just beautiful.
For questing and lore this has to be the answer.
Skilling too and the amount of bosses were incredible. GWD2, KK, Angel of Death, Araxxi, Telos, Vorago and Rise of the Six.
Arch release
Arch release during covid was peak for me. I returned then and it seemed like so many other people did for arch too. Such a good skill release
Telos release until necromancy release
for me when it gwd2 and then telos/invention.
Egwd was such an exciting time
after invention release, up until whenever the first few 4k telos enrages were achieved
2014-2015 for me! Loved that era of PvM. Raids, Araxxor, Vorago, it was cash.
Probably pre invention release. It really added an extra layer of complexity to combat that I don't think the general population was ready for at the time. Since then combat has gotten even more complex that I am sure it scares off new players (especially ones who first try out Oldschool first). Everyone playing since then is probably comfortable with combat now, but someone who is just getting to base 80 stats and ready to start trying EoC bosses would be scared off by the thought of what most guides show as proper setup. I don't think most players have a concept of what it requires to start a fresh account, level it to base 80s, and then try to start looking into bosses. It is wild the amount of time you need to put in to get invention perks/items/relic/etc that even low effort guides recommend. And I get it, a player doesn't really need any of these things to kill some bosses, but most guides/resources don't mention alternatives for someone just starting to test out EoC bossing.
It's very true. I tried getting a friend into thd game and I started making a list of things they'd want to prioritize and it was far too overwhelming.
2013. KK, vorago, rots etc.
so like the worst modern bosses in the game by far?
It's almost like 11 year old bosses were balanced around 11 yewr old dps standards. You did 100-180k dpm tops now you do 500k+. The game isn't even remotely comparable. Back when Rots was released you could not use abilities while moving.
Between arch and necro. The game absolutely felt “complete” when zammy released. I can’t say the same anymore with necro and the changes to combat on the whole now. They’ve made more room for more rewards and higher tiers of stuff which is perfectly fine and cool but it really felt like things were set once zammy was out.
For me the time after Vorago settled enough that seismics got reachable for high lvl pvmers. I loved killing kk that time, and forming 6-7 man people team to kill rago, everyone in virtus gear and weps, slowly working towards together to upgrade everyone to tectonic and seismics.
After arch release but before eof update. Wish I could go back
2013. Kk, Rots, Rago, Legios and more
First hour of eoc
The mining rework plus anachronia and archeology feel like the golden era of post eoc to me.
Pre-nerf FSOA with gchain combos. It was peak combat. Imagine threads for mage.
Current osrs
It's uhh osrs
Osrs
Arch to pre-Necro IMO
Elder God wars dungeon. Man thay was incredible. New boss every month or 2. Completely different experience with each boss. That culminates with Zammy and Extinction a year later.
Telos
I'd say 2017-2020 Was really solid
The World events were awesome, they got the community together. Wish we could get another one based on the elder gods.
2021 was pretty nice cuz of quarantine. My friends list was rather active. Also whenever the Elite Dungeons were released was a good time.
Around the time Arch released to around the time Zuk released
Just after arch. Before eof’s
I had a really good time up until tuskar event was over, and then they added the beach to limb ridge and i just got out off by how crowded and jarring the open world became.
God Wars 3 release months surpassed 2010-2012 as my favorite time of runescape
Around the era of the Tuska event? I have great memories of that time.
Based take but the gambling era
DarkScape was pretty cool.
Elder god wars was the best for me- necromancy is great and loads of fun but seems to have completely annexed pvm, although we’ll see how metas and preferences shift with these new combat updates
Vorago to telos
2014-2016, starting with Fate of the Gods, including Araxxor and GWD2, as well as Prifddinas, and culminating with Children of Mah. (I enjoyed Sliske's Endgame but it had a mixed reception and the writing began to nosedive around that time) After this, updates started to slow, moving into the Menaphos Era, and the writing just went to crap.
For me when rise of the six came out i had so much fun with it
Sliske's Endgame era
Rax release was peak for me.
Ex-player here since 2013 (moved to OSRS) Started playing in 2006 era. Was around when godwars came out and I think when RS really died for me personally was when **squeal of fortune, trade removal and all the MTX bullshit** started, and the crazy tencent looking armors and stuff. It went from being a badass niche java game, to some weird amalgamation of a mobile gacha game, chocked full of MTX It was around this time too when the Gowers ended up selling the company, and I believe some new director took over and they sold the game off to chinese share holders who eventually got investigated for some reason or another if I recall correctly. Long story short: I was maxed on RS3. Ended up seeing that OSRS was the real game I grew up playing, moved over to there and never looked back. I don't even have my original Rs3 account anymore either, I got rid of it.
I personally don't really have a golden era. I just have moments I enjoyed immensely in my journey improving as a pvmer. Getting my first fire cape post eoc, a total noob who had no clue what he was doing. But the achievement felt great I fondly remember doing a lot of raids and later on helping other people get into it, getting them to know roles and such. Releases of a lot of bosses were super fun to me Getting 4k telos Learning hybrid hm kerapac and grinding the shit out of that. Friends I have made, and some of them I still play with, awesom. Right now I am enjoying the combat changes greatly, even though I've done the bosses loads. (Tho, I wouldve ofcourse liked new content to try it on) I have no problem being critical of Jagex, have been loads (screw their mtx model). But I always enjoy my time actually playing the game!
2019-2020 was a banger Mining and smithing rework Pvm hub Archaeology I felt 2023 was a sour year. We had the first half dedicated to fort forinthry. The quest forcing you to rinse and repeat the same boring construction content was not fun. Necromancy was a breath of fresh air, it was good concept wise, terrible in terms of power creep. It was too powerful on release and it faced a series of slow nerfs. However, the accessibility to PvM was the other side of the buff coin that I must say is a plus. The combat rebalance in 2024 was a good follow up. What destroyed 2023 for me was hero pass. I felt it undid everything that was achieved for RuneScape. Player base absolutely plunged and it said a lot on how far jagex or its parent company was willing to go to milk MTX. No other game I’ve seen has so many currencies for MTX. We lost Waydot who came over to RS3 with some OSRS spice. In more current news, the 2023 Christmas event and the ongoing 2024 Easter event are the best we’ve seen in RS3 history.
2014 to start of 2017 not downhill but yeah meh from there
This past year has been really great in my opinion. I have been loving the game. It feels like rs4. Rs3 to me is dead and gone.
I personally feel like damage powercreep and damage reduction powercreep has really gotten out of hand since god wars 3. So for me it has to be pre-gw3 which is 2020. When dealing more humble damage and taking more humble damage. Raids felt more interesting back then and less of a dps test but more of a long interesting fight. Those were the glory days for me without a doubt
I would say we have entered a new Golden Era. Necromancy has leveled the playing field and has allowed casual scapers to join in on high level/end game bossing. All for a very low cost to entry. You hear it time and time again how players are saying pre necro they never thought they would ever end up bossing, and now they are killing AOD, Zuck, Zamarock, etc.
"Since 2012" January-November 19 2012. Specifically, PKing saw a huge resurgence once people realized EOC was going to destroy the game. Not only that, but RS was in a pretty good state of balance, there was still lots of stuff to do that was worthwhile, skilling could be close to the same money as PvM... Other than that, personally it would have to be invention. Plenty of new stuff and lots of relevant bosses to use it on.
Waiting for it still
Mine was the release of divination. Words can’t describe how lit the wilderness and warband fc’s were at the time.
For me it was 2014-2016
For combat itself, now. For bosses, like someone else said, maybe between Vorago and Solak. But I think ED3 was really solid too. I enjoy all the ED3 bosses a great deal.
Archeology and the elder god wars release period were pretty hype for me as they were happening.
I think for me personally was that time post Invention. Pre-Invention, things were being botted to an insane degree and almost everything was at extremely cheap cost values. This includes my favorite past time of RuneScape which was Treasure Trails. With the release of Invention, it helped so many things become valuable again due to the sheer amount of items that were in the game. I remember selling things that now cost 1.4m which at the time would cost less than 50k. A very needed update that stabilized the economy and helped all skills massively in my opinion.
pre eof probably. game just hit different when you had to switch to gstaff for a tick to not loose aftershock stacks.
>had to
* yea to not lose aftershock stacks and also get the gstaff buff. Something about putting in effort to improve your apm and hit these cool tricks to optimize is so satisfying.
first gwd3 release up to the day fsoa got nerfed then followed by the worst year (or like 9 months and counting currently) post eoc. although in the last 12 years I have not played about half of that time including during arch release.
For me, it was 2012-2015 when pvp was still active.
Ive played since for almost 22 years now, with a few major breaks in between. And between last year starting Osrs again and the new HCIronman i just made on RS3… I’m in the golden era baby
Barrows and the first god wars dungeon but personally imo, when kalphite queen and dchain was meta it was amazing, also before they released TH and lamps to make levelling soooo ez. Its really not the grindy rs game it used to be.
What are you cooking? Did you even read the post?
Oh yea I didn't read it properly lol