LogFAQs > #967902980

MabusIncarnate posted...

This is one of those games i've heard about for a long time and don't really know what it is.

The short answer is that Runescape is a free-to-play MMORPG with a point-and-click control scheme. It has quests you can complete, but they're not really necessary unless you begin paying for a membership.

The backbone of the game is the selection of skills you can train. Being a point-and-click game, you can probably intuit that you can fight a goblin or a big rat by clicking on them. But there's also mining - clicking on a rock and waiting for your character to mine ore from it - smithing - clicking on an anvil with a smelted metal bar and making something like a helmet or a sword with it - or woodcutting - clicking on a tree with an axe in your inventory and waiting until you cut the tree down.

One reason why it's so popular is because of how robust that skilling system felt back in 2001 for a game you could play for free. A lot of people grew up playing this janky point-and-click RPG, including me. But I think the actual spark that makes the game work so well is that downtime between you intitiating an action and the RNG granting you the result you wanted.

For example, at level 1 woodcutting, you could stand at a tree for a minute and a half before you get some logs from it. At level 5 woodcutting, you're going to cut trees down faster. Then at level 10, you'll be able to equip an iron axe and you can chop down oak trees which are a bit tougher than before. You can do this while watching a show, or you could listen to the in-game music and ambience, or you could just be listening to music. Same thing with fishing - cast a line, chat with other players in the world chat, cook your fish around the campfire and go fishing again. It's a game with a lot of downtime, and it's a relaxing routine.

And what seals it for me is how open-ended the skills are. Even without paying for a membership, you can smith entire sets of armour and make your own in-game weapons with the six default metals in the game. There's no in-game resource shop, you don't need a checklist of three bars, two spikes and a leather trim to make a platebody. This isn't Monster Hunter where you have to grind limited drops for good gear. You can go up to a rock in a mine, get some ore, turn that ore into metal bars and make yourself an entire set of armor and weapons. But before you do that? You have to level your smithing so that you can make a helmet, then a shield, then platelegs, and then a platebody.

It's immensely satisfying to be able to get raw materials that you always have access to in a set location in the game world to create armour pieces and weapons. And to go from making bronze armour to iron armour to steel armour, all the way up to fantasy metals like Mithril and Runite? The feeling of progression is unmatched.

And every skill has that same evolving level of mastery. You can catch bigger fish that restore more HP when you cook and eat them. You can chop down the tallest trees in the game. If you pay for a membership, you can just outright steal gems and precious metals from merchant stalls.

Runescape is a game about downtime, personal choice and progress. One day you're having a chat with some random players while you catch a fish. A year later, you're fishing for lobster on a tropical island so you can finally use a harpoon to start catching swordfish. That freedom to train whatever skillmyou want, and the feeling of achievement once you can start producing those high-level items? Unmatched in any game I've ever played.