Old School RuneScape Review
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This review was originally published in May 2018 and reposted with Old School RuneScape’s 2021 steam release. RuneScape was previously reviewed in the October 2009 issue of PC Gamer UK and received 72% positive reviews.
need to know
What is it? A sandbox MMORPG, originally released in 2013, based on RuneScape in 2007.
Estimated payment: Play for free, Full access is $10.99/month
Developer: Jagux
Publisher: Jagux
Comment time: Windows 7, i5-3570k, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070
multiplayer game: Massively multiplayer games
Association: Official website
Play: steam
Most MMOs will guide you through a battle that introduces the most important roles, areas, and activities, and then they will unchain you and tell you to do whatever you want. The last point is Old School RuneScape Start. This is a sandbox massively multiplayer online role-playing game, deliberately rude and daunting to let go. You completed a 5-minute tutorial that taught you the absolute minimum, and then you unceremoniously entered the hometown of Lembridge. In this kind of game, you must bookmark the wiki before you can get anywhere. However, if you are willing to go through a harsh learning curve, and if you find that RuneScape’s freewheeling adventure feels liberating rather than overwhelming, then you are likely to find a game forever.
Part of the reason why Old School RuneScape is not good at explaining is due to its tradition. Ten years ago, there was no Old School RuneScape. Only RuneScape. But after a major update overhauled RuneScape and turned it into what is now commonly known as RuneScape 3, Jagex conducted a poll to see if players want a separate server where they can play RuneScape as they did in the past. Nearly 500,000 people agreed, and Old School RuneScape was born. Therefore, for people who have played RuneScape before (such as myself), the outdated tutorials are more than enough. In other words, Old School can still better guide new players because it is completely different from other MMOs.
First of all, there are no courses, only skills. Everyone has the same 23 skills, which can be roughly divided into combat skills such as strength and range, production skills such as Herbore and Fletching, and collection skills such as fishing and mining. All skills start at level 1, and increase to level 99 as you gain experience by causing damage, making potions, fishing, etc. In other words, you are not a mage, you have high magic. You are not a fighter, you have high attack, strength and defense. Your skills reflect your play style, but there is no rigid division between character types. Encourage everyone to upgrade all their skills, the ultimate goal of most players is to make them all reach 99.
Old School RuneScape does not play like most MMOs. It lacks the usual skill bar, hotkeys and cooldown time. It feels more like an old cRPG. It is presented in simple literal terms and is almost entirely operated by the mouse. The world is laid out on a grid. To move the character, click the square you want to move to. To talk to an NPC, click on their “talk” option. To attack a monster, click its “Attack” option. You can almost complete all operations without touching the keyboard, but it will be easier to play after setting some shortcut keys.
The secret of success
From low-poly graphics to point-and-click interfaces, Old School is almost a barebones system, but simplicity is not necessarily a bad thing. RuneScape has no fat. It is effective because, most importantly, it is a game about setting and achieving goals. It’s about improving your account by reaching the finish line you set for yourself, whether it’s making enough money to buy expensive items or training your skills to 99. You decide what you want to do, and as you reach each milestone, you will unlock new things to do. For the right players, this is a very fascinating loop, but it’s not always an interesting loop.
I entered Old School with a clear short-term goal: the secret to completing a disaster, the most difficult and famous task in RuneScape. To do this, I have to complete dozens of other tasks and train multiple skills to an appropriate level, which makes it a great way to view a large number of games in a short period of time. For new players, this is also the best way to understand how RuneScape handles tasks.
I have been looking forward to the next opportunity to be a smart person.
There is no clear battle or main storyline in RuneScape. Instead, its world is enriched by tasks structured like short stories. RuneScape missions are not one-time missions, just like the acquisition missions you get from random NPCs in many MMOs-at least, most are not. They are full of branching dialogues, unique puzzles and cute simple cutscenes. In one mission, I built a research tower and unknowingly helped a group of researchers create an artificial person, and then I had to calm down the chaotic, deformed people I helped create. In another article, I discovered a fraudulent plague that a king used to isolate half of his kingdom to cover up some demonic deals. Recipe for Disaster is about rescuing committee members from the powerful food wizard Culinaromancer and providing them with their favorite dishes.
I remember when I was a teenager, I clicked spam in the task with nothing to do, but this time I must read all the conversations. I am glad I did, because RuneScape is a very interesting game. It has a wonderful and boring British humor, and it is not afraid of being stupid. One day, I helped King Arthur and his knights (who were on vacation in RuneScape) retrieve the Holy Grail, infiltrated a monkey kingdom by disguising as gorillas, and helped the quarrelling goblin leaders choose a new wardrobe for their tribe. .
I especially like the way the tasks write characters. When you choose a relatively mild dialogue option, it’s funny to see your avatar reacts fiercely. After an immortal gypsy explained that if I did not complete a task, the entire universe would implode, and my character exclaimed: “Not the entire universe! That’s where I put things!” If you mess up After a conversation, you can try again, so I said that every line is available, just to watch different conversations.
One of my favorite tasks is One Small Favor, which is basically a series of fetching tasks, during which everyone you ask for help with something asks you to help with other things in turn. This continues until you have a list of favors that can be honored, and after the fifth or sixth request, your character is absolutely angry. “Oh let me guess,” When countless NPCs stammered and talked about missing something, my head hissed. If I were not eager to read, a small favor would make me feel bored and cry, but I always Looking forward to the next opportunity to be a smart person.
Ship
However, before I start my legend, I need to make money and buy some basic supplies. My shopping list includes potions for improving skills, food for restoring health, accessories for teleporting to important locations, and magic stones used to provide energy for spells, especially convenient teleportation spells. I decided to make money by training hunters, which is one of RuneScape’s newest skills. The basis of Hunter is simple: you set traps to catch small NPCs and critters, and then harvest their carcasses to obtain resources. This is one of the most Sims-like skills, and developing it is enjoyable for all kid goals involved.
From start to finish, I spent about 20 hours hunting, and in the end I had a lot of cash to fund my missions and training. It was a long grind and took me a few days, but I like Hunter because I used different methods and visited several areas. I started catching birds in the south, and then turned to the butterflies and hedgehog-like creatures in the northern plains called kebbits, until I could finally hunt the little raccoons called chinchompas, which are very precious on RuneScape’s auction house Grand Exchange. As the hunter level increases, I need to gain more and more experience to enter the next level, so I look forward to unlocking new and faster training methods, such as chinchompas from gray to red.
Mastering chinchompas is particularly interesting, because I chose to use a form of animation cancellation called three ticks for hunting. I won’t tell you the details-just know that by putting in more effort and shortening some time, you can reduce the time required to complete certain actions by tricking the game engine into covering long animations with short animations. Old School RuneScape is still using the same engine as it was 11 years ago, and this animation technique is just one of many ways players can push it to the limit. Veteran players have figured out how to do all kinds of things that Jagex never really planned, from shortened animations to cheese artificial intelligence.
I spend more time on hunters than any other skills, but they all follow roughly the same pattern. They are like a tug-of-war game against the game itself: as levels begin to require more experience, you will learn more effective training methods. As dirty as RuneScape, as long as you feel like you are roughly keeping up with the ever-elongating EXP bar, and as long as you have clear goals, it will never be too intimidating. But many skills stagnated in the early stages. Defibrillation shocks that unlock new training methods have become very rare. I know from experience that when the skills reach the 90s, the situation will only get worse, and one level may require dozens of hours of the same activity. The EXP column is getting bigger and bigger, but nothing new can be seen. This is where the leveling skills start to become boring.
I found the production techniques to be particularly boring. For example, to train Herbore, you need to take one stock of herbs and water from the warehouse, and then you just need to observe your character to combine them. This is a slow process and no meaningful changes will ever occur, because unlike setting different traps in Hunter, no matter what potion you make, you are always doing the same thing. These skills are the worst when you lose money in a transaction. They feel like the second job you have to pay. Some other skills, such as agility, feel uncoordinated. Agility allows you to access time-saving shortcuts all over the world, but you can train it by going around in circles in rote obstacle courses. Agility is dynamic and helpful in action, but training it is a completely different chore than you actually use the skill.
I hope to see more skills follow the model of my favorite skill Slayer, which is about killing monsters assigned by the master Slayer. Slayer takes you through RuneScape to make your combat skills training more interesting, and because it allows you to fight with so many different monsters, you will receive drop items that can provide fuel for various non-combat skills ——The gems used for making, the seeds used for farming, and the metal rods are Smith. I would love to see the diversity of skills like Herbore and Agility, and I would like to see more skills interact with other skills, such as the way I train logging when leveling hunters. Efficiency is fun, and RuneScape is at its best when you are not stuck doing one thing.
New tricks
Over the years, Jagex has managed to squeeze amazing complexity out of Runescape’s basic combat system
Fortunately, some of the recent updates of Old School RuneScape introduced some mini-games that help to liven up boring skills such as cooking and making fires. Although some skills are still boring to train, they are at least more valuable, thanks to the addition of the skill gated area diary, which provides you with a to-do list for traveling around the world-kill this monster, and This NPC talks, completes this task, makes this project and so on. Completing the diary can unlock very useful utilities and shortcuts, so they will motivate you to train your skills and complete tasks. They also provide a small but precious direction: if…
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