OSRS was a great MMORPG

[ItsChon]

When I was young, I played Runescape quite a lot. I wasn't particularly good as I was below the age of ten when the game was actually popular/good, and since I was so young I was never able to experience the member side of things.

Fast forward to now and I have an OSRS account laying around that is around mid level, and I have started to hop into the game a bit again. After messing around for a bit, I've come to realize that it really is a great MMORPG. It has a ton of skills that are almost all relevant in some way or another to the game. Has a dedicated community with a complex PvP system, and a lot of late game content. It's also a rather nice looking game, with a consistent and coherent aesthetic that is very nostalgic.

The only two thing the game is really missing to tie everything together is some sort of large scale PvP mechanic that gives players things to fight over and incentives to keep coming back outside of the rush that comes with high stakes PvP, and some quests that chain together and form a coherent story line, that would give players a PvE incentive to grind for stats so they can actually complete the questline.

When I compare OS Runescape to the modern MMORPGs that are coming out now, it really shows just how ahead of the time the game was and still is. Modern MMORPGs are shit, glorified spreadsheet simulators where the only goal in the game is to watch the numbers on the screen go up, with a bunch of cosmetic fluff and bullshit thrown in there.

I really wish modern MMORPG designers would take a look at all the elements that made Runescape so great, and tie them together into a coherent experience now. Instead of focusing on pretty graphics and other extraneous bullshit, they should focus on creating a compelling series of mechanics which incentivize the player to keep coming back. It helps that Runescape is so afkable, so you can progress while doing literally anything else. It's just sad hopping onto OSRS and enjoying the game, but knowing its best years are behind it, and I missed out on it. Would be nice if another MMORPG could come out and recapture that magic.

 

[ItsChon]

Just to give this post an update, OSRS continues to be one of the most popular MMORPGs ever, and I would say the best MMORPG in the world. It is absolutely addicting, and more Codexers should play this game.

 

[Sweeper]

Managed to recover my old OSRS account that I put in 25 days worth of playtime into (don't ask), as with getting access to the political subforum of this Godless den of heathens, not entirely sure that's a good thing.

 

[Lemming42]

The soundtrack is extraordinary, I still sometimes shell out a month of membership to walk around and do shit.

 

[V17]

See, this seems like a good start for a flamewar. Only, I suspect that the people with most flame potential never actually played Runescape because they have standards.

Anyway, I used to play RS when I was about 13 years old. Mostly, I suppose, because I and my classmates weren't cool enough to play Ultima Online. The in-game community was retarded at the time (at least on free to play), but that's what you would expect when a game is full of kids. However since I'm not from an English speaking country, around here if you wanted to be okay at the game and have fun, you needed to understand English as a second language on some level, and for literal kids that is a decent gateway to keep out idiots. As a result the local community forums were decent and through them I met a friend who has now been my bandmate for years, been to his wedding, some of his good friends became my good friends etc. So the game did one really good thing.

A couple years ago I had terrible health problems that needed to be waited out, so I decided to try OSRS again, buy membership and explore all of those things that I wanted to explore as a kid, to keep my mind off my immediate situation.

I have to say, that is the one thing OSRS is actually really good at. It's a huge game, the amount of content really is unexpected, but the complexity of about 90% of that content is so low that a literal monkey could probably be trained to play it, which is helped by the engine that was outdated even when the game came out. Outside of end-game content it is truly braindead, you can play it with half your brain off while watching a TV show and forget about how your life sucks because you have enough stimulation to not think about other stuff and yet the interaction is trivial enough to do it even if you're half-vegetable.

And when you look through the community, many people actually are like that. There's a staggering number of literal no-lifers who spend thousands of hours in game, and when confronted actually even admit that they're not really having fun with the gameplay itself, they just enjoy watching the numbers go up (it's a meme in the community for a reason) and setting goals in-game and achieving them (because it's much more straightforward than achieving actual goals irl). Many are not like that, but the number of pathetic people who cannot even be arsed to play a game that requires effort and instead play this shit is higher than in any other game I've seen - but, disclaimer, I know fuck all about todays MMOs, microtransaction hell games designed for addiction etc.

The game does have some actual merit, for example it's full of lighthearted humor that can be rather charming and its quests are often decent (usually not more than that despite what the fans say). The graphics style is dictated by the (until relatively recently) very limited engine, which forced the devs to create a sort of coherent style, and that often led to them creating charming environments as well - though not always, because the they were unable to *really* stay consistent, mixing textureless low-poly with different styles and resolutions of textures, more and less detailed models etc. It works surprisingly often, but it's also a bit of a mess. The soundtrack is great... and the good parts are mostly written by a convicted pedo.

But, the thing is, I guess it's possible that todays MMOs are so fucking retarded that OSRS actually shines among them. I wouldn't know and I'm not interested in knowing. But when you compare the systems of OSRS to any singleplayer RPG that is actually good, it suddenly becomes so dumb and pedestrian you almost feel ashamed for playing it. And the fact that you can interact with other shameful retards from around the world is not good enough value on its own imo.

After 3 months of playing quite intensely I was fed up, cancelled my membership, uninstalled the game and never looked back. The idiotic "you never quit RS, you only have breaks" meme makes me cringe.

 

[Lemming42]

you can play it with half your brain off while watching a TV show and forget about how your life sucks because you have enough stimulation to not think about other stuff and yet the interaction is trivial enough to do it even if you're half-vegetable.

That was always the appeal, you can have it open in another window while you do other things, and keep checking back to move locations or talk with other skillers. The game basically exists to give you something to do when you have either nothing else to do or want something going on in the background, then the quests (which are mostly very good, occasionally brilliant) are a reward waiting for you when you hit the requisite skill levels.

It's not really meant to be a game you absolutely drill down on and sink hundreds of hours of intense focus into. It's there to provide a great audiovisual experience, an interesting setting, and trick your brain into thinking that you're "doing something" so that boredom and ennui don't set in where they otherwise would.

 

[Sweeper]

After 3 months of playing quite intensely I was fed up, cancelled my membership, uninstalled the game and never looked back.

I actually got into OSRS fairly late, 2018 I think? The thing that makes OSRS particularly insidious is that while the grind to 99 for a single skill is disgustingly long, that also represents the prestige, the allure, the illusion of your brain thinking "I've done something meaningful here." You haven't, it's a far greater waste of time than the average vidya.
OSRS is the best MMORPG ever created, and no one should ever play it (ideally).

 

[Sweeper]

Jesus Christ the bonds are at 12 mil, I knew I should have bought them back when I had the chance
>The price is really high right now, I'm sure it'll drop after the league
Fucking moron.

 

[V17]

trick your brain into thinking that you're "doing something" so that boredom and ennui don't set in where they otherwise would.

This is my problem with it, because yes, it definitely does that and I believe that is a pretty bad thing.

In a world of overstimulation, endless stream of content both valuable and worthless etc., I think it's more important than ever to be able to regularly focus fully on something, and also to do nothing and let yourself be bored, let your brain exist without explicit external stimuli. If you can do those things easily (because outside of RS you lead a healthy life), playing is surely not a problem, but I tend to mildly struggle with those things, so I try to avoid this half-assed "feels like doing something" entertainment. To me playing RS is not far off from endlessly scrolling social media.

It is an endless source of funny dumb memes though, and some of them really high effort. This is brilliant for example, a dude makes covers of hit songs using the OSRS soundfont, but he actually understands music enough to not just switch the sounds but change up the arrangements to fit the style as well:

 

[Lemming42]

Jesus Christ the bonds are at 12 mil, I knew I should have bought them back when I had the chance
>The price is really high right now, I'm sure it'll drop after the league
Fucking moron.

It's worth fishing out like £5 or whatever to get 12m in-game. I know it's pay-to-win shit that everyone hates but every time I start a new account nowadays I buy one bond along with the membership to have a shitton of money to start with. 12m is enough to get yourself up to the skill reqs for every quest.

In a world of overstimulation, endless stream of content both valuable and worthless etc., I think it's more important than ever to be able to regularly focus fully on something, and also to do nothing and let yourself be bored, let your brain exist without explicit external stimuli. If you can do those things easily (because outside of RS you lead a healthy life), playing is surely not a problem, but I tend to mildly struggle with those things, so I try to avoid this half-assed "feels like doing something" entertainment. To me playing RS is not far off from endlessly scrolling social media.

I agree but RS is, I think, one of the better ways to waste time - if anything, it's probably got some value as a tool to help people who are already overstimulated. It's something that can be reliably done in the background, so your brain still gets the "we're doing something, hooray" fix, but it's unintrusive enough that you don't end up overwhelmed with information like you would if you were browsing social media, and you can be doing something semi-worthwhile while OSRS runs in the background (learn a language or learn how to cook or w/e). Plus, there is the option to fully focus on the game, which always evokes some great moods thanks to the music and visuals.

It sparks the imagination too, I get the same feeling playing RS that I get looking at Magic The Gathering art, where you can just spend an hour or so dreaming up all kinds of fantasy worlds and people.

 

[ItsChon]

Outside of end-game content it is truly braindead,

I'm pretty sure what we call endgame content is very different. There are tons of bosses and a few mobs that require skill to do and are quite engaging/fun. OSRS at its core is a rhythim game with elements akin to what you'd see in something like OSU or in Kovaaks/AimLabs. Shit, several skilling methods have elements to this too.

You clearly never got to midgame bossing which is where you realize that there actually is a real game with a fair bit of complexity and skill, despite the fact that such a thing seems impossible for the first tens of hours that you sink into it.

 

[Beans00]

The only reason to play runescape was for pvp. Anything else was just for autistic people, who the fuck plays that game to grind bosses? Or fletch? lmao

Back in 2011-2012 I used to make thousands of dollars a month ddosing people at the duel arena. I practically put a down payment on my house using money from runescape duel arena.
Other good memories include when my clan ended up with access to another clans forum database, dehashing passwords for billions.
Of course I was also ddosed myself for several losses at the duel arena, but overall I came out ahead .

ItsChon do another godwars run autist, you seem like the type of retard to have an ironman account.

 

[V17]

Outside of end-game content it is truly braindead,

I'm pretty sure what we call endgame content is very different. There are tons of bosses and a few mobs that require skill to do and are quite engaging/fun. OSRS at its core is a rhythim game with elements akin to what you'd see in something like OSU or in Kovaaks/AimLabs. Shit, several skilling methods have elements to this too.

You clearly never got to midgame bossing which is where you realize that there actually is a real game with a fair bit of complexity and skill, despite the fact that such a thing seems impossible for the first tens of hours that you sink into it.

Sure, I'll give you that, bosses with special mechanics start around the midgame, though getting there as a new player without constantly looking through the wiki to optimize the grind takes longer than it takes to get to the endgame in many other games. I do know what they're like.

I don't think it changes much, because the issue is that firstly midgame is the time when skilling becomes insufferably boring and literally turns to "click a tree for ten hours so that you can go click a different colored tree for even longer" (and minigames or techniques based on engine glitches usually aren't much better) and secondly the engine sucks. Games like OSU are based on engines that are responsive and actually tailored for that kind of gameplay. Now to be fair I never had any enjoyment from that kind of games (as opposed to DDR or Rocksmith), but still I don't understand how someone who played them could think that the rhythm elements in RS are good. Plus "OSRS at its core is a rhythm game" is a wild statement considering that these things make up probably about 10% of all game content unless you say something like "well you can prayer flick anywhere, so technically it's 100% of the game".

 

[ItsChon]

I don't think it changes much, because the issue is that firstly midgame is the time when skilling becomes insufferably boring and literally turns to "click a tree for ten hours so that you can go click a different colored tree for even longer" (and minigames or techniques based on engine glitches usually aren't much better)

Eh. Part of what makes OSRS great is the fact you need to invest time doing things that aren't extremely exciting so that you can reap the rewards. This would normally be miserable but since so many skills are "afkable" it's easy to just have OSRS open in a tiny window on your second monitor while you work or surf the 'dex, or are watching something. I found myself doing passive grinds on OSRS a ton while I was just watching a video or listening to an audiobook. The alternative would be me doing the same activity without OSRS in the background, and I found that having OSRS open to passively work on while doing said activities actually enhanced the experience, as without it, I would start to feel restless sitting and just listening/watching.

secondly the engine sucks. Games like OSU are based on engines that are responsive and actually tailored for that kind of gameplay. Now to be fair I never had any enjoyment from that kind of games (as opposed to DDR or Rocksmith), but still I don't understand how someone who played them could think that the rhythm elements in RS are good.

Not sure how I'm supposed to answer "it sucks". The game runs on a tick system that is consistent outside of lag, and with the sheer amount of worlds it's easy to find one with good ping. Yeah sometimes there are server problems but every MMO faces such problems. What part of the OSRS engine hampers rhythm based gameplay?

lus "OSRS at its core is a rhythm game" is a wild statement considering that these things make up probably about 10% of all game content unless you say something like "well you can prayer flick anywhere, so technically it's 100% of the game".

It's an extremely common phrase often repeated by high level players. End game OSRS is bossing/pvp, and that is entirely rhythm based. The longest grinds in the game (outside of clues which is its own thing) are bosses and raids, hence the rhythm game moniker. Maxing skills, especially doing the more efficient methods, pales in comparison, and since many people do them while simultaneously doing other tasks, one can compartmentalize playing the game and grinding skills into their own categories.

 

[V17]

Part of what makes OSRS great is the fact you need to invest time doing things that aren't extremely exciting so that you can reap the rewards. This would normally be miserable but since so many skills are "afkable" it's easy to just have OSRS open in a tiny window on your second monitor while you work or surf the 'dex, or are watching something.

Yeah, I personally just don't see the appeal of that. Firstly I prefer games interesting enough that they require your engagement and you want to be engaged by them. And secondly like I said somewhere above, this just feels like a zombie half-assing two things at once. I can sort of agree with what Lemming42 says above about it being the lesser evil in some situations, but that's it. Requiring constant mindless stimulation in order to enjoy stuff is not a good thing.

Not sure how I'm supposed to answer "it sucks". The game runs on a tick system that is consistent outside of lag, and with the sheer amount of worlds it's easy to find one with good ping. Yeah sometimes there are server problems but every MMO faces such problems. What part of the OSRS engine hampers rhythm based gameplay?

I don't understand how someone can think that an engine that runs at 0,6 second ticks can be good for rhythm gameplay, where precision and speed is normally a goal. It "works" in that you can learn it and obviously people enjoy it, but compared to actual rhythm games it feels sluggish and lacks feedback. I don't think many people would care about it if you divorced it from the grinding MMORPG aspects that make it addictive for many and just made an arcade game with the rhythm games alone.

It's an extremely common phrase often repeated by high level players.

Which says a lot about the community.

 

[ItsChon]

Yeah, I personally just don't see the appeal of that. Firstly I prefer games interesting enough that they require your engagement and you want to be engaged by them.

Sometimes you just don't feel like playing a game. OSRS is nice because even when you don't feel like playing a game you feel like playing the "non-game" aspects of OSRS while doing other things. It's a double dopamine hit.

Requiring constant mindless stimulation in order to enjoy stuff is not a good thing.

You don't engage in stimulation to grind skills, you grind skills while engaging in stimulation, which is something that enhances the main activity that you're doing for a lot of people.

I don't understand how someone can think that an engine that runs at 0,6 second ticks can be good for rhythm gameplay, where precision and speed is normally a goal. It "works" in that you can learn it and obviously people enjoy it, but compared to actual rhythm games it feels sluggish and lacks feedback. I don't think many people would care about it if you divorced it from the grinding MMORPG aspects that make it addictive for many and just made an arcade game with the rhythm games alone.

Yeah no shit. Very few people don't play Kovaaks or AimLabs for the sole sake of playing said games, but they do enjoy shooters. Now obviously you have things like game sense and a player versus player aspect as well as other mechanics that differentiate actual shooters from aim trainers, but the same can be said of OSRS with things such as inventory management, game understanding, movement, and of course PvP has its own rules and gameplay.

I don't understand how someone can think that an engine that runs at 0,6 second ticks can be good for rhythm gameplay, where precision and speed is normally a goal. It "works" in that you can learn it and obviously people enjoy it, but compared to actual rhythm games it feels sluggish and lacks feedback. I don't think many people would care about it if you divorced it from the grinding MMORPG aspects that make it addictive for many and just made an arcade game with the rhythm games alone.

You say that an engine running on 0.6 second ticks feels sluggish and lacks feedback, and many others including myself disagree. When it comes to something having a satisfying rhythm, it's going to come down to personal preference in a way more subjective than a lot of other things. Something like OSU is too fast paced in my opinion, and I like the slightly slowed down pace in OSRS which allows you to really flow, with moments where intense speed and clicking is required too.

 

[Beans00]

You don't engage in stimulation to grind skills, you grind skills while engaging in stimulation, which is something that enhances the main activity that you're doing for a lot of people.

Runescape is meant to be grinded while afk. Almost every skill in the game is completely afkable, except a few like firemaking, thieving, prayer, hunting, magic if you alch, probably a few more I'm for getting.
Do people actually stand there... and fish? I maxed half my stats while doing homework in highschool. I took those maxed stats to magebank to drop people for sets of ahrims(rsgp was 4-8$/mill back in 06/07) so I made bank.
I'm actually picturing you right now, cutting magic logs like a zombie 'wow look at all the xp im getting her hour!'.
Runescape was popular because it was simple, easy, anyone can run it and the game had a certain charm to it.

My biggest networth in RS was around 15B, thats Billions with a B. I sold that for roughly 12 grand back in summer 2011. Then made even more. What was your net worth on RS? Lol.

Runescape had 1 million subscribers in 2007, and hit a new peak of 1.1 million in 2019. Its success has more to do with all other mmos destroying themselves, then anything jagex did right. I never played WoW, but I had loads of friends in my rs pvp clan who only continued to play RS because wow was apparently ruined with cataclysm.

My opinion, as someone who played pretty regularly from 2003 until 2007, then played for pvp/staking probably until 2012-13. Jagex is an extremely incompetent company, and the game is probably a third as popular as it should have been.