[insanitybit]

I've never played another game like runescape. It's pretty insane.

1. Tons of free content. I didn't get a membership for a long time. When I did it was something like 5 dollars a month, which I could scrape up as a kid.

2. Massive world. You could wander around for hours and find new stuff. Even just little things like some cool empty building, all of it was so fun to explore. Staying up late and exploring the wild with a friend was legitimately thrilling - and horrifying when you'd see a little yellow dot show up on the minimap.

3. Tons of quests and content, new content came out all the time.

Whoever pushed RS3 greatly misunderstood all of this. Graphics improvements were appreciated but not super necessary - otherwise, the game was basically ruined by having tons of random shit and an extremely cluttered UI. Really bad mobile game vibes.

I played against a year or two ago, just for a week or two, and it was still super fun. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a time sink, and I just can't spend time on it anymore. But it was a hell of a lot of fun.

[tjbiddle]

RS3 is terrible, but they released "Old School RuneScape" (OSRS) which is a wonderful re-release of the old RS2 '07 version. They still update it regularly with new content!

I got back into it a year ago and it's nostalgic and fun - but yes, definitely a time-sink. I'll often have it in a spare window though doing some AFK skill such as fishing or woodcutting - helps keep me sane when I need to do some more mundane work tasks, lol.

[rcme]

Minecraft probably comes pretty close for today's younger generation.

[bombcar]

Yeah if Minecraft had been designed so each “world” was actually just part of a massive online one, really far apart it would have been similar.

There are some really old multiplayer servers kinda like that, where you can find ruins of ancient buildings from early betas

[GaryNumanVevo]

Which was originally available as a demo in browser as well!

[AlwaysRock]

Yeah didnt have a lot of money growing up but runescape ran fine/well IN BROWSER on our old terrible computer on rural wifi. Brother and I were also able to $5 a month together for members.

We probably would have played WoW if we could afford it and our computer could run it but for a lot of folks like us that just want realistic.

[insanitybit]

Same here - even Runescape was pushing the limits of our computer, but it worked.

[AlwaysRock]

Right. We were running it on the lowest settings possible. Pretty blobby haha. But the great part about RS at the time was even at high graphic settings its wasnt that much better.

[fierro]

the wilderness was truly thrilling, PKing eventually became the main draw of the game to me. I will never, ever forget waking up one day to learn that Jagex had essentially removed the wilderness and PvP mechanics to combat Real World Trading. PVP was dead and I was legitimately depressed.