📕 RuneScape is Awesome, And Here's Why

Came for the medieval cookie clicking, stayed for the class warfare

Can't express how much I appreciate this love letter to my favorite product of humanity and the best 20 year waste of time I could have hoped for.

Every single MMO developer out there right now needs to have a sit down, and take notes off this video. Thank you for all of your effort, this was...beyond words.

This is a phenomenal breakdown. For years I've always felt Runescape scratch an itch that other MMOs never do and I haven't ever been able to put it into words. You did a beautiful job describing the unique aspects of this game that are so hard to pin down, and explaining their appeal to those who haven't ever played it.

The RLM "you might not have noticed, but your brain did" is how I feel about this essay. As someone who has played RS on and off since 2003, this felt like discovering my own thoughts. It's really the only game I've invested a significant amount of time in so I also learned a ton about other games and why I probably wouldn't like them.

This essay ascends the niche of old school runescape to an amazing talk on mmo's and gaming in general. It even has a rare and deceptively valuable take on how society views labor and gaming as a use of time. I would call this nothing less than a masterpiece in long form video essays.

Runescape is the type of game you can play while playing Runescape.

If you added some citations to primary literature throughout, you have yourself there a PhD thesis.

I am so incredibly sad that it took over two years for this to hit my recommended page. Truly a fantastic write-up of why RuneScape is such an exceptional game, and also the extremely difficult explanation of why it is that great game. Trying to describe this game to others that have no concept of it, felt nearly impossible until this video.

"The graph of people who like long videos and runescape players is a circle" Accurate

"Testing patience is a legitimate form of difficulty" is a really good way of describing what makes the grind appealing. As you spend hours upon hours doing the same chain of tasks in runescape, the experience slowly gets less difficult and more enjoyable. It's a mindset and an acquired skill to be able to appreciate the road towards the end goal.

This is the definitive dissertation on OSRS game design and appeal and it would, ideally, not only be watched by everyone interested in the genre - it'd be a landmark for the industry and designers, too. Really great work.

Video too short. Interrupted my grind.

That was incredible. I’ve never seen someone take such a deep dive into video games in general, let alone RuneScape. I think you explained the game extremely well in a way I’ve never heard before, coming from a 15+ year veteran. The time to make this video must have been immense, and I appreciate the effort you made. Even playing for 15 years, this video gives me a new perspective into the game I love. Thank you.

"The venn diagram between people who like RuneScapr and people who want 3 hour long videos is a circle."

I always refer to the joy of labour in Runescape as 'The Zen of the grind'. Runecrafting was always my favourite skill and my first 99 (back in 2008 :) ) precisely because of how grindy it was. You can really lose yourself in it. Just as another take on the 'Misery Zone' there, I think seeing it as Zen is a way to find joy in it (or maybe some of us are just built different)

"the Venn diagram of people who like to watch long video essays and the target audience for RuneScape is a circle" Never have I been called out for something so painfully true.

This is a masterpiece. I’ve been playing the game since 2003, more off than on, but this perfectly refines the (sometimes obtuse) reasons why RuneScape is a hard game to stay away from. It’s just so different to everything else on offer, and allows the user to enjoy similar content at different paces, that mean it’s usually viable to play. I can even go for a nature walk while afk training combat, screen sharing every 20 minutes to a desktop to click a single button. About 30 seconds an hour of work for tangible improvements when I do decide to play the game with more focus. I look forward to the other video ideas you mentioned.

I got 2 magic levels during this video

Not sure why it took youtube so long to recommend me this video. I have been playing osrs for 3 years now, never played it when I was younger so I have no nostalgia, you capture exactly why this game is so great and at the same time so hard to describe to people unfamiliar. This game hooked me like no mmo ever could with its unique sense of achievement and it would be crazy to see what a modern fresh take on this kind of game could look like.