Every once in a while, my brain suddenly reminds me that Runescape still exists. This usually happens every three years or so, and whenever I do I log in, play for an hour or so to see what's changed and what's still the same, then I sign off and forget about the whole thing for another couple of years.
If you're too young and/or did productive things with your time as an adolescent then you probably won't remember this game unless your first boyfriend was addicted to it. Runescape is an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) which you can play in-browser...unless you have Chrome because I don't think even C++ is supported by Chrome. It's powered by Java, and thus features the sort of graphics you'll see in a mobile game - although don't complain because when I started playing (2005) the engine was more primitive than the Alone In The Dark games.
Just this week I had my reminder that this game's still around. So I went to the website to find the whole game has been converted to a new engine. Instead of just updating each model and texture one-by-one, Jagex (the developers) have just created a whole new game engine. This actually looked sort of interesting, and even better, old accounts still work. So I decided to log in and see what's changed.
However, when I logged in, I found out my account had been permanently banned.
This confused me considering the last time I logged in was 2012. It was the Christmas holidays, and I wanted an excuse to avoid my family. Any excuse. So I decided to log in and see how they'd completely re-done the combat and somehow made it even worse, plus how they were adding fully-voiced quests without making them any more engaging. Once I'd done all this, I logged out and completely forgot that Runescape still existed until this very week.
Logging into my account settings page reveals I was banned in 2014. Even better, I was banned for using macro's. Automating your account was and apparently still is a huge problem in Runescape, as mines would often be full of obvious bots running around hogging all the ores to trade with another account that would take all the profits and completely mess up the in-game economy. Whenever I encountered these bastards, I always slammed the 'report' button because I'll be damned if someone actually went off and did something more interesting whilst his robot did all the work for him.
I definitely didn't do this myself. Even if I was actually online during 2014, I don't even know how to do this. Alas, there is absolutely no way to repeal a ban. Jagex have a zero tolerance policy to both bots (ironic considering how automated their customer service is) and account hacking. You get banned for using macros? Well, you shouldn't have used macros. Someone broke into your account? Well you shouldn't have given out your password. What? You didn't give out your password? You haven't done anything that might've resulted in your account being compromised? Well...it's still your fault. Somehow.
Yet last year the exact same thing happened to my Guild Wars 2 account - another MMO I remembered existed and decided to go back to. It turned out that my account had been hacked and turned into a robot which was eventually kicked by moderators. However, I was able to email ArenaNet and explain that the game was uninstalled from my PC in 2013, I hadn't given my account details to anyone, my computer has never had a virus, and all the things people ask when your details get stolen. Eventually the lovely people of ArenaNet rolled back my account to just before it was compromised, and un-banned me. Bear in mind that Guild Wars 2 is free to play. ArenaNet had no reason to re-activate my account aside from just being nice people. Meanwhile, Jagex don't even refund you if you're on a monthly subscription and get banned.
I don't know what depressed me more. The fact that Jagex treat their players which such contempt, or the fact this is industry standard. How many other companies have handed out permanent bans with absolutely no way to contest it? I can name at least five from the top of my head.
But I decided to do a retrospective of Runescape not because of Jagex being more approachable than the Iranian Secret Police, but because having my account of almost ten years stripped made me reflect on all the time I'd spent on the game; and what I'd taken from it. From 2005 to 2007 I played a lot. Not necessarily every day, because this was back when it wasn't socially acceptable for your whole weekend to be sucked away. Now people almost celebrate spending their entire week off watching Netflix, but in 2006 I was at least expected to take a walk or be dragged by my parents off to somewhere. I know a large chunk of my friends played this game more, and in fact the whole reason why I started playing the game was because my friends were. Together we all sunk enough hours into this to build a time machine (a worthwhile investment since you can then get all the time spent building the machine back later).
I have no idea why we invested so much time into this, because it sucked.
This game is awful. I forgive the visuals, given the in-browser engine, but not the soul-crushing gameplay, virtually non-existent world-building, sloppy writing, and broken combat. I didn't create a new account for the new game engine, but I did create an account for the 'Runescape Classic' - which is an authentic replica of the 2007 version of the game that I spent so much of my life on. Thus, my following critique will apply only to the version I grew up with, Maybe Runescape 2016 is a landmark in game design. Maybe it's somehow even worse. I don't know, and I will never know because Jagex treated me with such contempt.
I'm not bitter. I stepped foot in Lumbridge and all the memories came flooding back. The memory of clicking on a man, accidentally getting into combat with him, being killed and losing all my items. This was all just after I'd finished the tutorial.
I'm probably the only person who from day one had no complaints about how when you die you lose all but three items. It teaches you to be careful, to run away if you're losing, to always carry healing items, and to store valuables in the bank. What I have plenty of complains about it the combat; which was just awful.
To attack someone, you click on them. You then get a cup of tea, since the combat is entirely determined by your prior stats. I suppose you can use the chat to insult your opponent, which in hindsight I should've done - but I was only 11 years old and had zero imagination. The only advantage you have is that you can use items and cast spells whilst in combat, so you can do the Skyrim thing where you stop everything to neck a health potion. This means melee combat boils down to who has the most food. You can occasionally change your combat style, but this is pointless since everyone just picks the strength style since it hits the hardest. 'Attack' and 'Defence' style actually does less damage. Why on earth would you select a style that does less damage?
Meanwhile, the magic and ranged is completely overpowered. You level up in individual skills, but you also have a 'combat level' which totals your 'attack' and 'defence' skills. Your combat level is what's displayed to other players and what's displayed to NPC's. Of course, this all horseshit because Ranged and Magic weren't included in your combat level. You'll go up to either another player in PvP or some creature thinking you can take them when suddenly they'll pull a magic spell out of no-where and drain half your health. Or they'll flick a projectile that'll do the same thing. The Wilderness, or as I like to call it: 'Ze Designated PvP Area' was a no-go zone as everyone would be a really low level, but actually they were luring you into a trap. You'd attack them, and they're equally low level friends would show up and smack you with fireballs. This all could've been fixed if Ranged and Magic were included in your combat level.
I'm surprised at how many elements are a complete waste. How many items are made useless, how many skills are pointless, how many mechanics serve no purpose. None of these were ever rectified, which is odd considering how the game was constantly being updated. Nothing was ever removed or rebalanced. Instead, yet more pointless elements were added.
You have a wide variety of weapons to chose from. There's daggers, axes, hammers, two handed swords, one-handed swords, and scimitars. You'd think that a dagger would swing faster but do less damage, or a hammer would swing slower but hit blunt damage, whilst a sword would deal point damage with a mid-swing speed...but nope. They all attack at exactly the same time, but scimitars always did the most damage so everyone just used them instead.
One of the first things you're taught in the tutorial is how to bake a loaf of bread. There is absolutely no reason to bake anything, because catching fish and cooking it on an open fire provides all the health you need, and it's far less of a faff. There's also the 'crafting' skill where you can make jewellery, which is a pointless skill because jewellery always sold less on the market compared to armour and logs. Yes, logs sell more than necklaces - and it's stupidly easy to get logs.
In fact, it wasn't until The Grand Exchange when you could actually turn a profit from such endeavours. The Grand Exchange added a sort of auction house where you could sell almost anything. Before that, it was either merchants (who always overcharge and underpay) or standing in a town square saying "sellin yew logs" until another player requested a trade with you. This also meant you'd be walking down a forest road when some guy runs up saying "buy ur armour." Getting the best items in the game entirely consisted of spamming the same chat message over and over again until finally someone would trade for it in exchange for a stupidly inflated price. Maybe this game was actually trying to make a point about capitalism...
The gameplay is grind-tastic. In fact, the gameplay is grind. It's funny that people complain about World Of Warcraft being filled with grind when there is actually some pay-off. If you run around killing people in one area then you improve your combat skills. If you mine and/or trade then you get money which you can use to buy better gear. The pay-off of all this is the Player vs Player element. Once you're powerful enough, you can run into Alliance territory and kill other people. You can earn the respect of other players, or alternately just troll them. Yes, it takes forever to become powerful enough, but at least for some people the pay-off is worth it. There are great stories of friends banding together and running through horde/alliance territory massacring everyone. There are also stories of clans organising raids. There are actual stories.
In Runescape, there is no pay-off. No stories. There are some boss monsters lurking about, but the same enemies lurk in the same places, and each enemy has little to no strategy to them. And you don't kill these things for personal fulfilment, or because you're furthering your journey, or even because the game tells you to. You kill them so you can grind items...which you can use to kill more things...so you can get more items.
I know what you're thinking: "Oh, if you're a member then you can cut all the grind."Yes, paying £5 a month gave you access to more content...but you still grind. Being a member doesn't grant you extra experience, more ores when you mine, better trading routes, or anything like that because grind is built into the very code of the game. You take away the mindless clicking and there is no game left.
There are 'quests,' but they're very few and they're really shallow. There's very little surprise to them, and they're almost always just another task on the list for you to complete. Someone wants you to kill a vampire, so you kill a vampire. Someone wants you to bake a cake so you bake a cake. Someone wants you to rescue a prince, so you- actually that one was quite fun. But most of them just have you running around the world gathering items. Perhaps the worst quest is one where you just run back and forth between two cities carrying messages.
The very least you can do is grind together. You can either use the rudimentary chat to communicate with others, the equally rudimentary private chat, or you could use MSN Messenger to co-ordinate with each-other. This was before the days of Skype, and before the headset was a gaming staple. But that's all I ever did with friends: grinded together. My friend and I would meet up, and we would just stand there fishing. Fishing! We were two knights in an RPG! In any other game, us meeting up would result in some epic journey, or at least some combined trolling. Not fishing!
Once or twice we would duel for fun or go PvPing together, but the sheer emptiness of the game made the whole thing seem so lonely. Helping each-other on quests was always dull because it was merely a case of one player showing the other what to do. The way combat works, you can't actually both attack quest monsters. Once I went into all this effort to help a friend go kill a dragon. I got food for him, gave him some armour and weapons, showed him the way to it, and watched as he ran out and was promptly incinerated in a fireball. What's the point in this even being an MMO?
When all else failed, I would get my axe, go to the forest, and cut trees. I became a damn good woodcutter. I sold these logs for profit. When my friends had logged off, I would cut wood. Whenever I returned to Runescape, I would look around to see what had changed before going back to woodcutting. Even in 2012, I checked out the combat, did the new quest...and then cut some wood. I'm glad my accounts been banned, because I probably would've gone back to woodcutting. I would've played around with the new mechanics, then gone to the bank, grabbed my axe, chosen my most garish outfit, and cut wood.
It's a compulsion. Runescape is a compulsion. We all played it because it's a compulsion that would inspire endless mobile games. It's odd that Jagex has a zero tolerance policy to bots when the game turns it's players into robots. There is absolutely no art or any kind of experience in Runescape. I didn't even get a chance to talk about the ear-bleeding MIDI music or the dull dialogue-trees. I know World Of Warcraft is an addiction, but it's at least a well-made addiction. It's balanced and with multiple options for how to build a character. WoW is fine-cut cocaine. Runescape is sniffing deodorant.
