THE MOST UNIQUE MMORPG OUT THERE, A PROVEN LIVING LEGEND OF THE GENRE! 10/10

This really was the Minecraft of our generation. (i am 25)
I played this game every day, for hours and hours between 2008 & 2013, have over 4000 hours put into it before it came to steam.
I have so many memories from playing this, it really did change my life forever.
I made friends, i lost friends, i learned English, i learned lots of relevant life skills and self-awareness in this game...
Been playing both versions a bit since the entire covid situation quite a bit (although not nearly as much as back in the days).
The short version is: this is still a 1 of a kind game that has no true rival.
Its has been 1 of the top 5 most popular mmorpg's for nearly 16 years straight,
at this point the formula of runescape has proven itself as timeless and a true legend of the genre.
Its not for everyone that’s for sure, but if it is for you... oh boy are you in for a real journey!
So its a really addicting game that has practically no ending...
What could possibly go wrong? ;)
If you are an old player that is only rediscovering this now: be aware that your skills, items, completed quests etc... are in the normal runescape not oldschool.
This is a spin-off to the original game that came out in 2013 but was based on the game as it was in 2007, so it was impossible for Jagex to copy over the accounts to this game fairly, because too many items & skills existed already in the main game that didn’t in 2007.
Its far less big of a deal that you probably think though…
Everybody started over in 2013 when oldschool came out, and you will build up your account far more efficiently now as an adult then you did as a 13 year old back in 2007.
And it really is so much fun and nostalgia to do all of the quests and newbie oriented activities again.
If you are a new player you have to keep this in mind:
- This is at its core still a browser game from 2007, so the graphics aren't that good, but to be honest… they never where, this is a game that blew up despite of its bad graphics, similar to minecraft for example. Not because of them.
- The way that the core of the game is designed is by 3 brothers in their mom's kitchen 20 years ago.
So its simple at its core, but it has tons of charm and totally unique elements to it.
- There is an opensource client called runelite that can be found online (.org).
It has A LOT of plugins you can turn on to enchance the graphics and make things easier to use etc…
I do recommend giving it a shot if you think the game isn't really playable enough in 2021.
It makes all of the difference.

That being said...
It’s quite different from all other mmorpg's around, quests are full on story's that take you on journey's across the world and can take quite some hours to do. (and there are about 200 quests i think)
With puzzles, boss battles, really interesting story's that are tied into the stories of the other quests and the world around you.
With entire lands, quests, special items and grinding area's to be unlocked by doing them pretty often.
The game as a really good sense of humour and self-awareness, but at the same time the lore behind the game that gets revealed mostly through quests & random dialog, is really interesting and gets pretty serious at times to.
There are nearly 30 skills that you can grind though at will, so combat is only a small part of the game.
Fishing, woodcutting, magic, melee combat, ranged combat, mining, smithing, crafting runes,
building a house, killling bosses, doing quests... it’s all in here to be done when and how you want to. No classes or other limiting bullsh** going on here.
1 Of the only true sandbox mmorpg's out there.
Do know though that grinding is part of the experience...
Getting your skills up is going to take grinding, and lots of it.
The grinding needed to level gets really really brutal beyond about level 85 for most skills.
Maxing a few skills in this game is an admirable achievement,
so see it as a game that is about the journey to the endgame.
It’s about setting up goals for yourself, and crafting your own adventure and story.
This game is perfectly playable for free, but a lot of content is for people with a membership.
You get about 1/3 of the game world, 15 of the 23 skills with new stuff up to about level 50 in all of them vs up to 99 in the paid version, 21 out of 147 quests fully available.
This all may sound as not much, but again keep in mind that this is a game with literally 30.000hours worth of stuff to do in it, so even though f2p only gets a small part of it, that still is enough to play this for like a year perfectly fine without running out of stuff to do.
And membership is about 7€ a month, which really isn’t that much for an mmorpg
and you can play both runescape and oldschool runescape for that price.
So in reality you’re getting 2 actively updated full mmorpg's for 8€ a month.
Most games of this kind charge almost double that!
And there is no paid-for-expansions or stat/account resets either.
You can pay 8€, lay for a month, not pay for 3 years, then pay again, and your account with all of your stuff will be there waiting for you, this game is a real long term investment.
The game world is pretty big as in most mmorpg's, but unlike most... every last part of the map is packed full to the brim with stuff
that’s relevant from your 1st hour of playing until your 3000th hour and beyond.
Every npc interactable, all items examinable, all cities and lands have lots of lore to be learned...
So the world feels really alive and well crafted.
Add to that 1 of the most underestimated soundtracks in gaming.
There’s a custom soundtrack for every little area in the game, so about 650+ soundtracks in total.
It is pretty much cleaned up midi music, but it really is all done with so much charm and its all so fitting and varied… its such a joy to listen too, and I have so many amazing memories attached to so many rs tunes now.
So definitely play this with music turned on, it’s an experience to hear the mood of the music change to the area when traveling through the world.
So overall you get an incredibly interesting game world that is a true experience to explore.
With all content added in the last 8 years since its re-release, the 7 years worth of content already in it before the re-release, and the weekly additions and changes still being done actively to this day... the game has pretty much no end.
I have 4000 hours clocked in at this point, and I never even got close to running out of useful stuff to do.
You really can literally play this for decades, for hours each day… before even reaching “the end” for 1 account.
The combat system in this version is simple to understand but hard to master.
At its core, you click what you want to fight and your character fights for you…
But underneath the simplicity, there’s so much you can do to gain an edge over your opponents,
Both in pvp and player vs monster combat!
Potions, prayers and specialised equipment that give all kinds of buffs.
Different fighting styles you can change on the fly, because there are no classes, hybrid setups and switching equipment mid battle is very viable and even pretty common.
There is pretty active communities for both pvm and pvp, so you can pick for yourself what you like most, or just enjoy both!
The combat triangle is pretty important as well. (melee beats ranged, ranged beats magic, magic beats melee and so on...)
It all looks boring but it really isn't, trust me!
The interface is not that customizable with the default client, but there is quite a bit more customization when you download runelite.
And its really simple to use as it is honestly, a good interface doesn’t need much customization and that is definitely the case here.

You can buy gold in the form of bonds, but it is really quite expensive and so much stuff is locked behind quests and skill requirements anyway that it really isn’t worth it.
Overal this game is pretty much micro-