Why People Play Runescape

"Gamers have no future" - my mum.

I agree. Well, I used to.

I used to think Runescape was lame. The graphics were so horrible and I couldn't understand how the hell can people like my cousin sit there for hours chopping trees in the same darn old place in a restricted game window of horrible graphics. I could only conclude "Runescape sucks". I thought Runescape players had no life, seriously. I mean, come on, it's just a game, why not do something more constructive?? I watched my cousin kill a white knight because he was bored. "If you're bored then why don't you stop playing?? What the hell??" I said.

I thought my cousin was a noob. He was. Well, in real life. You know, little annoying kid. Little did I know that his knowledge of the game is absolutely mind-blowing, until very recently when I found out how pro he really is. Two years ago I thought he was a noob. Last year I found out that he was "good", until I overtook his "main account" in terms of total exp. Then recently he told me about another one of his accounts and then I was surprised. That noob is actually a pro! What a revelation. I could tell he was telling the truth. Only a Runescape guru speaks like him.

After I started playing RS (because I got pressured by a friend, you know who you are =P) and getting into it, I understood why people play RS. People play RS to take a break and relax. The reason why RS is so popular is because it caters for the gaming needs for all four player types: killers, achievers, explorers and socialisers.

If you don't know what I mean by "killers, achievers, explorers and socialisers", check this out, it's very interesting-
http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v1/bartle.html

RS provides the opportunity to meet new people and real-life friends alike, with the clan chat and friends list feature being very helpful in this. This suits the socialisers very well.

RS includes a lot of PvP minigames as well as PvP worlds to fight people. This satisfies the killers' desire to um... kill other players! It's funny watching them sometimes. The things they say to each other eg

player 1: Omg noob you ate I said no food. And you safed!
player 2: Hehe :P
player 1: Lol. Gf anyway.
(gf stands for good fight in this context)

Okay maybe not that in that nice manner sometimes but you get what I mean =P

The RS map is HUGE. Perfect for explorers. LOTS of things to be observed, noticed and examine. Years may not be enough to explore everything on RS. It never gets boring really if you try.

For the achievers like me, Runescape has heaps of skills, making it very challenging indeed! The skills also interact with each other very well, encouraging different skills to be trained in conjunction with other skills. For example, it would be kinda weird to not be able to cook the fish you fish! This encourages people to train cooking to complement fishing. However of course cooking by itself is very fun too, with so many different kinds of food and drink to bake, mix, ferment, chop up, etc especially when you've got a three-story cooking guild with its own bank!

All these things add up together producing a game called Runescape. This is why I love RS.

Back to my point. Isn't it possible to succeed at life and games at the same time? Has no one achieved that? Does every Runescape player really sacrifice their real life for this kind of thing? NO. In fact most Runescape players are F2P casual gamers. Like me, except I'm a tad bit more serious, because I am an achiever, although I do a bit of everything (in reference to the link posted earlier). Okay never mind, I am serious lol. I admit it. But I'm not serious enough to constantly make whole wikis and write massive blogs about it.

http://www.runescapeblog.co.uk/diary.php/2008/09/01/what-is-the-most-expensive-trash-on-rune
http://www.therunescapeblog.com/2008/06/the-road-till-maxing-out-runescape/
http://hiscore.runescape.com/hiscorepersonal.ws?user1=gertjaars

Now that's what you call hardcore. ;)

Can you believe it? I thought Runescape was lame to the max until after I tried it and loved it. This is why I say: You never understand gamers until you become one.