It was the only game of its own buy OSRS gold size and scale I had access to - all it required was a dial-up online connection and a browser window. As an additional bonus, that meant I could play it both at home and in school. Ten years on, despite cataclysmic adjustments and additions, its unique brand of total access is still going strong at a world where free MMOs are commonplace, and you do not have to await your parents to get off the phone to log into.
Related: talking of free MMOs, here are a few to test out in case your Steam pocket is empty. I recently attempted to log into to a very old email accounts, which I could only do by searching down an even older login for Runescape. A username may bring back a lot of memories as it happens, especially one such as g0ds1ayer94. Fuelled by nostalgia, I made a new account and started exploring the dream world of Gielinor once more.
In the ten years I've been away, Runescape has gone from a fantasy-themed chatroom to a fully fledged MMO, complete with its own yearly festival, a card game spin off and enough material to make 12-year-old me weak at the knees. If you can think it, you need to really download the most recent version of the game.
It is a game that's maintained many of its players through constant updates and unrivalled audience interaction; log off for a month and you might have missed something that the community will be referencing for the upcoming few decades.
I logged off for ten years.In that time, Jagex have canned their outdated tutorial island, added a totally new combat system, overhauled the whole game engine five times and filled the game world with roughly 200 new quests. And those are only the biggest changes: Runescape has also obtained around 650 other feature upgrades in that RuneScape gold moment, and of course countless patches and fixes which have been deployed. The fact that Jagex removed the Wilderness for 3 decades still feels like an insult to a previous self - even though I was not playing at that moment.
