If you’re of a certain age, it’s the game that got everybody banned from playing games on the school computers until you found the loophole that was Cool Math Games. Today, it’s one of the longest lasting MMO games on the market.
Runescape has existed for 25 years with varying degrees of popularity. It still maintains a healthy player base that would make most attempts at modern live service games incredibly jealous.
There are many factors for it’s popularity, such as nostalgia, the ability to play it on both mobile and computers, sunk cost mentality, relatively relaxed nature of general gameplay and how much it stands out from any other game on the market to name a few.
One thing that is clear when playing it is how the game involves a much more in-depth set of questions and choices that players will make about which decisions they make in terms of progression. RuneScape is a game that is more like a sandbox than a strict path in which players need to take. No questline has to be completed unless the player chooses to complete them. Many quests offer some form of unlock, such as a new region, a teleportation method or location or access to a new feature or resource. In parallel, these may also require the player to have specific Skill levels to access or utilise.
Aaron Swiss-Hamlett 