How is runescape almost as popular as wow?

I played runescape from 2006-2016, Its a great game, its way more grindier than WoW though. I forget the year but RS turned into RS3 and Oldschool when they released a new combat system similar to WoW, that was the turning point for me. I didn’t enjoy the new WoWesque system. Back in the day they only had skills go to 99, now they go to 120. Runecrafting to max the skill could take a normal person 3-6 months alone.

( Which is why have a damn near laughing fit when people here complain about grinds. theres like 26+ skills total).

It has a TON of quests, the storylines range from fun to deadly serious and they are all great.

There are two versions, an extremely limited free version and a paid version. Old school rs is way more popular then RS3.

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As an “RPG” is a trillion times better than wow. That’s why.

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I used to play it may years ago, got tired of losing all my gear to PVPers.

People are going to excuse WoW and say that RuneScape is a very different game.

Duh. They are different games, but not completely dissimilar. Not so dissimilar that WoW couldn’t learn anything from Runescape’s longtime success.

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A whole lot of mobile MMOs are Eastern cashgrabs.

Runescape didn’t start out like that. It was (and still is) on PC, and a lot of people currently into the genre grew up playing Runescape. We had Runescape books at our god damn Scholastic Bookfairs. Growing up in my area, it was totally normal to run into kids at school talking about Runescape. WoW never once came up. And I graduated HS in 2012, so the timing wasn’t exactly wrong for it.

Anyway, especially when considering a more Western Audience, Runescape already had a huge leg up on Eastern games that people not desperate for a new MMO will never see.

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OSRS is just point and click. Much like Classic WoW it has major nostalgia factor too and a fanatic base.

That along with it being able to be played on mobile phones allow you do play it without n the go or while waiting around for stuff. I like the new RS in many ways, but OSRS is just the original simple version. I am also fairly sure JAGEX is building upon the OSRS game with mostly input from the community.

New RS added too much that enough people didn’t like, OSRS appeals to what original RS players liked without the QOL changes new RS brought and the loot literally thrown at you with the keys/chest thing. I do like the keys/chest thing as just some nice bonuses for simply logging in and playing their game though… just grinding skills wasn’t necessarily “fun” but people like to Grind apparently.

TLDR, it’s a lot of people’s favorite old MMORPG and it’s on mobile.

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I have a premier membership at Runescape. (Cancelled my WoW sub will be done June 2nd) Runescape is f2p with some nice perks and more quests available if you sub. It’s a ton of fun! Lots of people there in both versions. Lots of skills to work on and rewards for skilling. Skills are useful and needed in both versions. There’s skilling, bossing, dungeons, quests, clue scrolls (like a treasure hunt) Pets, transmog. Yeah, not surprised they both old school and retail are popular.
Edit: Seems to be some confusion here. Let me clarify. Both versions are f2p but a sub expands the land areas you can go to and gives more quests. 1 sub to either gives you access to both.

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1: Its one of the most classic mmos of all time

2: Its on the phone now

3: They still give the game regular content updates

4: The players vote on all the future updates, if 70% dont say yes it doesnt go live, this keeps the players engaged to have their vote on new content

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that voting thing sounds pretty cool although the downside is that a consistent minority never gets anything they want, for example in wow that would mean regular raiders would never win any votes nor would rated pvp players

hopefully they throw the minority block a bone every now and then

“Heck if you add New A plus Old A it’s more than New B by itself (but if you add Old B to Old A it’s not as much)!!!”

Lolwut kind of logic is this?

Awww ya!
who wants to play some good ol’ Tic Tac Toe?!?!?!

Failure of innovation on retails part.

Repacking Visions as Torghost isn’t much in the way of nuance.

Neither are restricting Covenants.

thats cause OSRS adds content to it;s old version via a voting system. unlike classic were just given content we had back in that era.

I haven’t actually played RuneScape but I definitely see the appeal.

Graphics aren’t everything, and that game has a ton of grinding and actual RPG progression systems going for it while WoW just removes this constantly and lvl squishes from 120 to 60 out of nowhere, so people that enjoyed those grinds are forced to play old school games instead.

Then also RuneScape just has no absurd sub fees and other BS like that from what I can tell (I think they have some subs for like premium membership or something with some perks though idk…) Either way it’s cheaper than WoW and more accessible in that sense, meanwhile I just went to do 6 months sub and realized, “hey wait what happened to my 6 months for $78 option…?” and notice its gone because Blizzard are disgustingly greedy, and just imagine normal folks comparing other gaming options to WoW and seeing this recurring cost, even if they want to play they just won’t.

I have a near maxed main in Osrs and a 1900 ironman on top of just starting an Rs3 ironman a few days ago. I would say for Osrs, around 40% of the playerbase is bots. Jagex is way more incompetent than Blizzard. Player support is non-existent. People that have been falsely banned have to make a post to the 2007scape leddit and hope there is enough outrage that a Jmod has to look into the appeal. On Rs3 recently, there was a massive bug that allowed players to make the equivalent of 50m+ wow gold off of an exploit. The punishment? 2 week ban and they keep the gold. I find myself going back and forth between Rs and Wow and it’s been this way for a long time. But Osrs/Runescape has been drastically going downhill for a long time. Much worse than Wow. Mtx and pay-to-win in Rs3. Rampant bots in Osrs. “Integrity” changes that bypass polling that ruin pieces of gear that were bis. It’s sad to see.

I played that when it was current before coming to WoW :smiley: its actually a really good game. It has a lot of charm, good professions, and the world is woven together where it all feels relevant and peoples goals occasionally line up.

Like, the reagent that people use to cast spells is mined by miners and enchanted by another skill, The herbs used for really good potions is also grown by people who level up farming–which is also the source of a really good food used for healing (but other sources are fishing), and people who train fletching for bow-making and fire-making both need wood from people who train wood-cutting.

Just a note here that the base-f2p game doesn’t have all the skills, quests or areas that the sub-based ‘members’ servers have, so usually the f2p places were a bit more active to density and particularly social

The community was pretty massive and the servers were from everywhere, and a single character can do pretty much anything as long as you level the appropriate skill.

I used to know an Aussie kid there that told insane lies about them being a 17 year old fighter pilot that still went to school, but they were so entertaining that I never called him out on it. Lots of different people xD

In WoW, people level by doing quests, but in RS, you need to level some skills to be able to do quests for dif rewards.

RS is also a very old game, which means it has withstood time and competition just like WoW has. Its a real marker of its success overall.

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Current Osrs you get 90% of all skilling mats from pvm. Slayer is the meta now. Especially for ironman mode. Rs3 skill connectivity is like Rs pre 2008, but that is only for ironman modes. An example is back in the day, Pure ess only came from mining like you said. But now, bosses drop them by the hundreds-thousands. The meta for years for Rc was to just farm Zulrah until you had enough ess at Zmi to hit 77 and then do blood rc which doesn’t require any pure ess.

I don’t know how it is now a days, but I’d played a little runescape when it first came out. I can say that the skill system is extremely rewarding. It was basically a more extreme version of vanilla WoW’s profession and weapon skill system. By comparison, retail doesn’t have any RP elements attached to it’s weapon skills, and very little to it’s professions, which is really sad.

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Free to play games attract large playerbases due to being free.

And runescape isn’t the worst free to play game in the world so it just attracts people even more.

  1. It’s Free to Play.
  2. It runs on mobile phones.
  3. They have a community vote on any changes to the game, and only changes that get (I think?) 80% or higher vote get done by the devs.