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hits home. I am an EVE Online and Wurm Online/Unlimited player. If you know these games, you know they're a lot about the grind. 95% of the game is a grind. We play them because of the remaining 5% - and those 5% are worth more than other games' full time. Well, at least for us. And, without those 95% being grind, obstacles etc we wouldn't be able to fully enjoy those 5%.
Imagine a situation in real life. You build a company, you spend all your money and all your time including the nights building it, making it working, there were moments when you thought you're going to fail, but finally, you managed to overcome all the obstacles and your company is now running and it's worth of, say, 10 billions USD.
Now imagine you'd spend exactly the same amount of time moving dirt from one hole to another, or other mindless work. And then somene gives you 10 billions USD.
Obviously, in both cases you have 10bil bucks. But which one feels more like an achievement, a confirmation that you as a person CAN DO THIS?
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Other point to this, not sure if valid for OSRS. Many time I logged into Wurm with only limited amount of time, trying to do something. I'm able to some chores, but I simply can't go to the longer trip to visit this cave over the continent. or to hunt animals in the steppe on the south, simply because such a trip takes literally hours. And when I finally manage to have enough time to do it - it is THE journey. It's like a story from some movie or TV show. Now compare it to your average MOBA, where after a battle you just stay in the lobby, and even if you have to disconnect during the battle, you just end up in the same lobby, not stranded in the middle of nowhere. Themeparks like WoW? You just port to the nearest town whenever you need, there is no sense of journey, nothing.
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I would also like to return to this, because it shows the way you're looking at the games:
I appreciate that your question is genuine and that you really want to figure out why such games might be appealing to certain people. So let me introduce you to even worse offenders:
Chess, backgammon, game of Ur, Mahjongg, Go, etc.
All of these games are far, far older than OSRS and provide far, far less content than whatever cool game you're playing currently. They don't have any classes. No dungeons, no bosses. You play every game with absolutely the same set as before. The graphics is ♥♥♥♥♥♥, they don't do any cool effect when they move or kill the enemy or whatever.
So how comes people still play those instead of PUBG or Dota?
When you find the answer to that, you'll understand why people play ♥♥♥♥♥♥ OSRS (EVE, Wurm...) with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ graphics and outdated grindy mechanisms that are not cool in 2021.
That says to me that the game is not a direct combat or dogfight simulator. I hear the same complaint from newbies in EVE. I prefer a simple combat, because then I can more focus on tactics rather than being a muscle on the field.
Yep. That means when you finally reach them, they are much more valuable. Remember those 95% vs 5%?
Sounds like a wonderful game to me and I'd play the hell out of it, if my time wasn't fully occupied by other games without graphical, sound, combat appeal where I have to pay monthly, but where I have much more fun than playing some scam for free, with cool graphics, cool sound, cool bosses, cool rails I cannot move away from, cool themepark that holds your hand so that you can't suffer even a slightest challenge, where the only way of playing the game is to rush to the endgame and then run the same cool awesome bosses with cool awesome graphics over and over again.
It is not. We are not the robots, we literally need some form of unwinding. I passed one of the tests in uni purely because I played the hell out of Transport Tycoon. I use the skills I've learned as a guild leader in real life. If you play Factorio, Kerbal Space Program and similar games, you'll learn a lot about particular areas of engineering, logistics, rocket mechanics etc.
Even if you play just some stupid mindless shooter, at the very least you are reducing your levels of stress. And that's a very important part of self-psychohygiene (is that even a word?).
TL;dr, be proud to be a gamer! :-D
I mean thats good for GW2, but if I want to play good action combat I don't look into the MMO genre and instead play games like Monster Hunter. Which is another game similar to Runescape, where you can choose to play with other people but you can clear like 99% of the game yourself.
Being able to do the majority of stuff in RS is a huge appeal to a lot of people, it might seem antisocial, but it isn't. Trading is actually a huge factor in OSRS, unless you play Ironman which can't trade.
Why is trading a huge factor? Because you can choose to make a ton of money instead of grinding an activity to get the reward from that activity by buying the item from another player. Now the other player has made a good amount of cash for the item he sold, so he can invest that back into getting better gear or making a stronger character by buying materials to grind with. Compare that to games like FF XIV where you are forced to fight the same boss over and over in endgame just to get a loot roll in a chest which isn't even guaranteed to be for your class archetype and is on a weekly lockout to keep you subscribed to the game because SE takes forever to release new patches (unlike Jagex, for the most part) with actual new content. And you can't even utilize trade in those games because the only gear you can buy is crafted gear, which is usually not worth the money because it will lose viability in the next patch anyways.
I mostly play on mobile. Why? This is easily the best way to spend your time at work lmao, and travelling. I like the repetitiveness. Not Runecrafting tho xD
Brief trading with players is not actual social interaction.. still fairly lonely
Meanwhile smithing is still not fixed
I admit, the game is a grind, but what games out there aren't these days? At least MMO's, can't speak for FPS games.
Honestly, I was like 10 when I first played this (although *this* is nowhere near the 2000's version of the game anymore, it's constantly evolving) and ever since then I've been looking for some 'new game' even remotely close to it. Spent a long time playing Lineage - no dice. WOW - no dice. Tried even newer stuff like Archage or Black Desert - noooo dice. Just name an MMORPG, I've tried it and never felt like it offered a fraction (let alone ALL) of the content OSRS does.
The appeal for me is that it has everything - or - at least a little bit of everything. I love crafting and trading aspects in games the most, can't stand games where you do gathering/crafting only to find that all or majority of the stuff you are gathering and crafting have absolutely no value at all because nobody wants it / there's no real use for it (so wtf is it doing in the game?!).
OSRS? You can sell everything that's tradable. Sell the lowest tier sword you just smithed, sell this bird nest that just fell on your head from a tree you've been cutting, sell the tree, sell your girlfriend, sell your soul...nvm, that's untradable. Sure, the demand and profit will wary, but you will never again be stuck with a bank full of ♥♥♥♥ gear you just crafted to skill up - everything sells. In bulks. The econ in this game is just unparalleled...EVE Online comes a close second, to be fair.
Combat? Yep, used to think the same thing, just point - click - wait for mob to die - heal up with a shrimp - profit. Yah, that will work around Lumbridge for a while and there are plenty of mobs and areas where you can pretty much afk if you have the stats and gear for it...but oh lord. The real combat is...something else. Even for me - an avid PVE player who never visited Wilderness outside of quests - it's INSANE. There are bosses and raids that will give you nightmares. There IS a boss called Nightmare...it's pretty nightmarish, ngl. There is so much more to combat than you might think on lower levels. Once you try your first boss or raid or even something as simple as Barbarian Assault, you'll sober up quick and will have to learn a bunch of stuff to rise up to the challenge. And that's just PVE, PVP's got its own level entirely.
This is what I think is the appeal of the game - ask yourself what you like in an MMO, then ask someone - does OSRS have it? 99.9% I'd say yes. You know what it doesn't have? MICROTRANSACTIONS. How...refreshing. It's got a pay-to-play subscription model, but in reality you can play the game without ever spending a single penny of RL money on it. Like EVE Online, pay for the Members-only content with the game currency. Refreshing, indeed. F2P and P2P also don't mingle at all, so you always have a pure F2P or pure P2P experience - aka, no more getting your free-ass killed by a dude who pays for the game and has higher tier gear. REFRESHING, INDEED :D
You love quests? It has quests for days (more like years) and they are DEEP, no go there - kill this - repeat. The dialogue is superb, the exploration feels fresh and unforced, the tasks range from simple and silly to the longest and biggest adventure of your life...and I say that even though I HATE questing. Tons of content is behind quest so you really feel like progressing somewhere when you realize all the places you can suddenly go to and stuff you can do that your broke-ass fresh-out-of-Tutorial Island self couldn't even dream of.
You a completionist? Well good luck because the Quests, Achievement diaries and Collection logs will keep you occupied for like a decade.
You love PVE content? It's all over the place - Slayer, bosses, dungeons, BIG-BOI RAIDS, small-boi raids...and the rewards are grand.
PVP? There are PVP minigames, the Duel Arena (one of few things that I feel is very poorly designed tho), increasingly difficult but high-reward levels of the PVP Wilderness area with unique mobs and bosses and even risky but best skilling opportunities. Aside from Wilderness there are entire worlds that are PVP only, where everywhere is a battle-zone outside of a bank. Not challenging enough? Play on Hardcore Ironman...in a PVP world only! See how long you can survive that! (shoutout to our overlord and mad lad, Mister C-Engineer)
Love the skilling grind? Plenty of skills to grind. Getting sick of mining? No problem, just go fishing next. Tired of smelly fish? Go cook them. Burnt them all? Go hunt some rabbits or plant a tree or clean some 'herbs' and make 'potions'...just do anything, any time you want.
Unlike the majority (seriously, the biggest majority ever) of MMO's where you have to decide what combat oriented character you wanna be, what crafting or gathering you can do because it LIMITS you to just a few or even less than few...like one...or none. You are a warrior? Oh well, can't be an Artisan then...huh. Well, OSRS slaps a big NOPE on that approach - just do everything.
Be a mage, be a ranger, be a knight, be a whip-wielding dominatrix (no joke). Be a man, be swift like a coursing river, decide to be a woman instead for as simple reason as wanting to try on a pair of melons - welp, now you can and don't even need to pay real life money for it. The world of Gielinor is your oyster.
The worse thing about the game is deciding what to do when you log in...because there's just SO MUCH to do. And when you MAX OUT, reach that exhalted state of having done everything and owning the best stuff and big bank...well then, just go do it again. Ironman mode. Hardcore Ironman mode. Ultimate Ironman mode. Not enough? Restrict yourself to F2P, or PVP; draw a circle around an area on the map...and restrict yourself to just that! (don't pick Morytania...shoutout to swamp-lad Settled) Make unique kinds of accounts for whatever purposes, like PVP. Go to the Dark Wizards outside of Varroc and pretend to be coins (seriously).
There's just everything. I haven't even tried looking for another MMO in years because every time I try, all I can think of is all the stuff it lacks - as opposed to OSRS. Awesome graphics, sub-par voice acting, boring quests, takes up half your SSD drive, microtransactions or pricey subscription plans, restricted classes, no or broken economy,...? That's a hard pass for me.
OSRS just has all the good stuff (and some bad stuff ofc), all in a 6MB download. Run it on your phone. Run it in your Minecraft. Run it in VR. Run it on your toaster. Run it on your Google glasses...oh wait. Nvm.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk, hope I've offered some answers as to why this seemingly old-ass gem of a game can still compete in MMO market today.
Is undying nostalgia the only reason?
If we're talking strictly from a F2P perspective, in 2021, there's so many other games that would provide far more content.
If we're talking about the full "paid subscription" experience, why would you ever consider it worth it?
Paying 10$ dollars a month to play a game that was made 15+ years ago and plays like it.
The majority of the content is the most busiest work possible to anything grindy.
There is no visual appeal (other than the initial appreciation of the classic artstyle).
there's no voice acting of any sorts to establish character.
The OST although very nostalgic for someone who has played this as a kid; is nothing special.
There is no "combat" you mouse click on a target and wait for it to die. sometimes changing passive buffs or a weapon during the fight or opting to click somewhere else on the map to run away.
The bits of content that you could consider enjoyable are locked behind a long journey of trial and error and grind.
I doubt anyone plays this for plot/story.
Although the game is an 'MMORPG', as to my knowledge, the "PARTY" mechanic is very very limited. Most content , unless designed specifically to hold more than one player, revolves around you only and other people just exist around you completing tasks for themselves in the same location.
So there's no graphical appeal. No sound appeal. No combat appeal. No story or characters to be attached to.
You have to pay money MONTHLY ( or grind even more to pay) for more content. The gameplay loop IS the grind.
I don't see how any person who just wants a new game to play would look at this ancient creation and think this would be something worthy of his time.
It may sound hypocritical as a gamer myself to use the words "waste of time" as any gaming is technically a huge waste of our time, but playing this literally feels like wasting your life away.
Gaming isn't a hobby for you, it's an addiction. Go outside LOL