Off the Shelf Media

Old School RuneScape, developed and published by Jagex, is a remake of the original massive multiplayer online game (MMO) launched in 2001 that took the world by storm. It’s a bit complicated, but basically, the original MMO kept evolving into what is now known as RuneScape 3. Over time, there was enough demand for the old iteration of the game that they created its own version in 2013. This is by far the more popular of the two, and is the one gaining popularity recently. 

Old School RuneScape (OSRS) has had a pretty consistent player base for years since they revived it. It usually hovers between 50-100K active players, but a recent influx has seen that grow well over 200K.

One of the major reasons for this player surge is people leaving other MMO communities such as World of Warcraft, and bringing their fan bases with them. Some of the biggest (Guzu, Savix, Sodapoppin to name a few) have been streaming for dozens of hours a week and clearly have become hooked on the game. 

On this timing, the developers also just released the last major update of the new region of Varlamore adding in a lot of end game content and bosses alongside cool new regions and lower level activities for newer players. It really is a perfect storm that is driving people into the world of Gielinor, and in many ways the game devs deserve the praise and player base they have put together. 

What separates OSRS from other MMOs?

The key point that I see people discussing is that the game is exactly what you make of it and does not make players feel like they are missing out if they take a break from playing. For example, in games like World of Warcraft, you could grind for weeks and months to get a piece of armor or weapon; just to have it be deemed obsolete when a new expansion drops. In RuneScape, the balancing is great and while there are certainly always better items, unique monster drops and rewards don’t feel as worthless as they do in other games. 

OSRS also does not have a linear story or an exact order of quests to do to beat the game. Questing in this game is also not your standard MMO recipe of “Fetch me 5 of these, kill 5 goblins, etc.”. Each quest feels unique and full of character, and there’s a sense of accomplishment in completing them, especially the hardest ones in the game. Some require nothing and can be done at any times, while others require you to have leveled up key skills in order to complete them.

This is where I think OSRS is unlike any other game – you can set whatever goal you want from the game and they all are fun. You can focus in on completing all the quests to acquire the illustrious quest cape, and focus all the grinds of leveling up skills to fit this goal. Others focus in on other parts of the game like Player vs Player combat and completely ignore quests and leveling up non-combat skills. There are even players who create masochistic character restrictions to add extra layers of difficulty to the game, and there are dozens of successful series on YouTube such as Settled’s series Swampletics, which has amassed over 6 million views. He set the goal of beating one of the games hardest raids without leaving one zone of the game or being able to use a bank or trade with any other players, a truly insane task that gained him a massive following on YouTube. 

Worth the investment?

While this MMO is hitting its peak, you can’t ignore the potential turn offs for new players. Some of the leveling is a grind, and if that’s not your type of game, this one is not for you. Each skill goes from level 1 to 99, and while you may feel accomplishment hitting level 50 in a skill, you are far from halfway to max level. In fact, the amount of experience needed to get halfway to level 99 is gained at level 92, as its exponential, so reaching the higher level content is a significant time investment.

Players will argue that many ways to level are “AFK” or away from keyboard, meaning you can put it on your second monitor while watching a movie and only have to click every 5-10 minutes. With the introduction of mobile as well, you can grind out skills on the go, which can help, but again, it’s a massive time investment to reach the mid-game let alone the end game. 

The other major issue that this game faces is botting and real world trading. The game offers a “Bond,” which can be bought with in game money and is equivalent to 14 days of membership. While the game is free to play, there are many skills quests and activities locked behind their monthly membership or accessed with these Bonds. The issue is that since these Bonds are effectively tied to a real world monetary value, there is a significant number of bad actors using macros and bots to generate in game gold to be turned into real world money. The moderators do try to combat this, but it’s a never ending fight where malicious actors are skirting the rules and have become frustrating to deal with. 

While botting is not unique to OSRS, it can be extremely frustrating for players to deal with. They can completely take over areas of the game you want to use or interact with, and it can impact the price of items selling on the in-game market called the Grand Exchange. You may have received a drop from a monster and are excited to sell it to another player for gold, only to find out that bots have been farming it for weeks and the prices has dropped 80%.

The best advice I would have to avoid this is to play the game as an “Ironman,” which means you can’t trade with other players. It makes the game significantly harder, as you need to get all the resources for quests and objectives yourself, but it essentially makes the game Single-Player in a lot of ways and prevents you from seeing the impact of these bots. 

Parting words

Even with the flaws of this game, its something I have been coming back to since its release in the early 2000’s. There is something so satisfying about grinding out for that next level in a skill, and the loop of gameplay will keep you locked in for hours.

I’m excited to see the amount of new players and really I only covered about 5% of what is in this game because it is truly massive. There have been so many updates over the years that you could spend months trying out all of the different minigames, quests, and combat bosses and still barely have scratched the surface.

All in all, the world of MMO’s has been littered with microtransactions, content that is deemed worthless weeks later, and toxic communities for far too long. OSRS is the antidote to that poisonous world of gaming, and I would strongly encourage anyone to give the free version a try and see if you catch the bug that’s taking the gaming world by storm.