Runescape – I Nostalgia’d Everywhere

Ahh high school, a time of excelling in academic performance, the smell of fresh air, the glistening summer sun, love, the beach and broadening of knowledge. None of which i partook in. I was more of a dark dingy monitor tan sort of guy and boy was i proud of it.

Runescape, that pretty much sums up the last 4 years of high school for me. Every time my mother would scream “Get some fresh air!”, i’d run to Port Sarim and type in wavey font “ahhhhhh fresh air”. I was absolutely in love with everything Runescape, hosting online parties at my house every time i leveled. Heck, i’d act out emotes in real life, always walking up to my fellow Runescape friends and barraging them with ancients. Except in real life nothing happens.

I’ll never forget one of my friends being the first in our group to get a 99. We were all so happy for him, assisting him every step of the way. Running food helping him cook faster, waiting for the little sparkles above his head, and when he got it all of us were left doing stupid emotes and typing in “Woooooooot” with as many flashy and wavey text types as we could.

Or the fist time we all went group PKing behind Varrock with our pure Range and Mage class characters piling on people getting sweet loot.

Oh those were the days.

I just logged in again after a few years and a lot has changed. Firstly graphics, wow what an improvement but its lost that certain niche feel it had. Everything is lush, colorful and vibrant however in my opinion Runescape was so attractive because it was so crap. It was the game you could play on any decrepit machine you could get your hands on. It didn’t attract hardcore gamers and the community was tight knit, people had there own servers and you would know where to find certain groups/clans/guilds when walking around. All of this…. Gone.

I whimpered as i walked around Varrock. I was around when Grand Exchange was implemented so no huge surprises there…and then i saw it. A goblin in the bottom corner of my screen. I moved the mouse slowly towards it and over, the goblin stopped dancing. *click* oh god no! Oh mother of god why, how could they? What is this?

Squeal of Fortune, a gamblingesque addition in which you spin a wheel and if it lands on a rare prize ta-da you win 1M. You can buy spins with real currency, WHY? Like everything that was once beautiful they had managed to taint it to a point where it has become a commercial piece of garbage.

Don’t get me wrong i still played for quite a bit because everything i loved was still in place, all the skills, all the quests, the combat, it was all there but something had changed. It’s like breaking up with a girl you really liked and coming back to find that she had grown an extra boob, its good but kinda weird, you just have to ask why is there an extra boob.

I’m going to give it another go now that I’m much older and wiser but I don’t think i will be as happy as the high school-er I was meeting all the people i loved online. The community that played has changed significantly and I’ve found more of the below for current players to be true.

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