Why is Old School RuneScape so addicting? 

why do you look and sound like AI?

I'm 30 and just started my first account ~6 months ago with zero nostalgic attachment to the game. I'm addicted because it's from a time where games were made with depth and creativity, rather than some brainstormed formula informed by research done by funded psychologists to nickel and dime the consumer. The game has real depth that doesn't insult the players intelligence and doesn't hold your hand. Achievements feel like genuine achievements, and learning something new feels rewarding. The simple fact they are ok with spending tons of development time on things that a tiny fraction of the playerbase will be able to experience, like the inferno or hardmode raids, or the colosseum they are currently adding, all speaks to their integrity and understanding of what actually makes something fun and worthwhile trying to work for. Things current game studios would never in their dreams risk doing. It's all about being super safe and having the widest net of accessibility for them, that ultimately makes their games diluted and boring.

That gate north of Falador had me so curious about what's on the other side that my 12-year-old self back in 2004 negotiated a deal with my dad where I would mow and weed whack the lawn every week if he paid for my runescape membership. He kept calling it "run escape" and he thought it was hilarious because I would always correct him and say "Noooo its RUNE SCAPE not RUN ESCAPE DAD!" Great memories. Still play to this day.

I took about 10 years off and just got back into in last year. I’m in too deep now. I’m a working guy with a large family so I have limited time but there’s nothing like putting everyone to sleep and sitting on my computer desk working on some skills. RuneScape will forever be the one of the best games ever made for me

Bro just casually drops the best jokes and references ever 😭 This was really enjoyable, thanks for the watch

took ten years off & I haven’t been able to put it down in a month. whoops lol

a timeless gem. (required) community polled updates, i think, are the biggest reason why the game hasn’t gone off the rails. made my account literally 20 years ago, stopped after trade limits and eoc, immediately started again when osrs came out, but played very rarely … until mobile came out. apart from high level/endgame content, i think mobile feels better than pc. did so many skilling grinds on my phone before i finally got a gaming rig. never a shortage of content in this beautiful game … i hope to complete all of it one day !!! happy scaping everyone oh- and great video, man :-) fun osrs jokes and edits. subbed

Super based video man. Would love to see you making some OSRS content! PS: I'm glad to see some one else had the Taverley gate as his first goal after getting membership.

I recently got back into it on my 21 year old account. I had a week off and sat on my desk for about 4 days straight with minimal sleep. I hear this haha

Why I love this game so much is because it feels great to just feel free in the game , the freedom to go where I want, do what I want, talk to whoever , play with friends, I even enjoy watching people fight in pvp worlds . I love taking the game at my pace and it feels like I’ll never fully beat it but it’s ok cuz I don’t want to lol, I just wanna roam around and do random stuff for the most part nowadays.The older I get the more sentimental the game gets which is why I will always play. I’ve reached huge milestones that I dreamt of as a kids when I began around 13 years old. I watch jeopardy the tv show and because of RuneScape I know a lot of answers that otherwise I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t play RuneScape . RuneScape keeps that inner child still alive Within me and I thank god that it’s still here today. Thank you to the game developers for creating old school RuneScape, truly a masterpiece ❤

great video! first time watching anything from this channel. looking at your other uploads, most arent runescape related. itd be interested in more of this type of format, video essays about the game.

Lol that joke about youve played so much runescape your going to start spelling color with a 'u' was real good, loved the video man just keep making videos, theyre good!

After playing entirely too much and winding up with a pretty impressive main, I've been mildly contemplating making a new account having now not played for two years (minus leagues) but not knowing if I've got it in me to climb the mountain again. Clearly I do have some thoughts on this. I think OSRS is uniquely perfect at creating incentives to develop your own custom pathway through the game. The absolute beauty that is the mid game is so densely interwoven that you end up doing side grind 4 because it would help you with side grind 3 which is a pre-req for side grind 2 if you ever want to do main grind 1. From quest unlocks, to gear, to stats unlocks, the game is just so tightly bound together that everything feeds into everything else somehow and you end up getting around to doing it eventually because something you want to do comes along and tells you it's time. And the beauty is that the thing that you really want to do is entirely up to you. THAT is why the game is so engaging. The player motivation is entirely self-driven. It really dies down towards the end game though where no meaningful unlocks come from some of the most brutal grinds. At a certain point you've solved your money issue and have mastered the tick system and are well-versed in all the different training methods at your disposal. But until you get to that point, the game works like a charm. For literal years. And it's impressive af for a game to be able to do that for a few months, let alone a couple of years. Edit: also, the way the game builds on its deceptively simple roots really has the capacity to grab a hardcore player's interest for ages. I remember fuckin' SWEATING through Fight Caves my first time. It was so bad that I died due to an accidental double click -- my muscle twitched and disabled my prayer because I was stressed to the point I felt like I could black out. Going from having to study Vorkath to being able to knock out 10kc trips without using a single prayer potion, or being able to do Zulrah without the rotation plugin, being able to handle Chambers, then solo it, then solo challenge mode, all the way up to inferno. The game just gets harder and harder building on what's essentially nothing. You just get better at reading the game information and more accurate clicks / button presses, or better reactions. That's another reason I'm afraid I wouldn't get as much out of it a second time through -- I wouldn't have these fundamental mechanics to re-learn. But they sure as shit were a joy to learn the first time. And they keep you coming back for months and months.

Damnnn that was so enjoyable and soothing! Gonna NEED you to make more OG RuneScape content brother!

It’s Hyper-efficiencyScape now, but even that’s fun and you don’t have to play that way if you don’t want to. Iron man mode(s) is probably the best addition to OSRS to date.

Osrs and mabinogi are the vintage MMO pillars of my life. They're the essentials of 'doing as i please at my own pace' games for me. I really hope they both never die :(

This games the reason I stayed back in 7th grade

I’m 31 as well and sucked in bad. Been playing since 2005. Off an on. Took a four year break after 2012. But been rolling since.

Enjoyed the video! I love playing OSRS. There's just something about it that grips me so deeply. Squeal of Fortune was the day I mentally left RS, I saw the writing on that wall immediately and when they made it so you could buy spins I knew it was the death call of the game. The other updates I didn't mind, like EoC and Summoning. (Alao small thing, the music on your video was a little too high. Hard to hear you sometimes. I was listening on my phone so not sure if that was the problem. Anyway thought it should be said!)

Really summed it up nicely mate 👍🏻

hell yeah new gooba video essay

30yo here and fell in love with this game just like 15 years ago but even harder

Nice video! I’ve been playing an ironman for 4 years and it’s the most fun I’ve had in the game since 2009

I'm 34 and I started playing when it was runescape classic. One of my friends in I jr high introduced me to it. I too, remember playing f2p and seeing the members on the other side of the fence. Feeling left out and wondering what's beyond that. I played throughout the years, as you mentioned you never really quit the game. You take long breaks. And here I am back at it again XD

It took me SOOO LONG to convince my grandmother to buy me membership. She was so afraid that her information was gonna be stolen lol. Also, I can't believe the Falador massacre actually took place on 6/6/6!!

Great video! I'm glad the recommendation engine provided this. Your BG music to your voice is kind of off though. Thanks for uploading!

7:44 moment of silence I was legit devastated when eoc came out…

I feel like as we age, we try to move away from the person we once were, and then we age some more, and get enough wisdom to rescue it. What makes this games feel like magic when ur young, as the guy in the video says, about that gate your friends could pass by and you dont, is that you compare yourself to that archetype you see in tales. The child who wants to see things and become important. But as you age, u realize nobody cares, there is no fairytale, just tragedy.

Addictive...not addicting...but a wonderfully passionate take on a personal experience of osrs...

The Evolution of combat update was what totally killed it for me! Had already been off the game for a bit but cane back around everyonce in awhile to check it out. Didnt play much after eoc until 2019 and now for the last year and a half i have mems and playing a bunch! Loving osrs

That was a decent video. Thanks for that ❤

First thing I did when I got membership was pass those gates and drink tea. I was immersed. I had to do pool laps in order for my parents to pay my membership and I was happy running around when they gifted it to me during Christmas, even my brand new bike was meh. Good times and great video.

I never even tried Runescape but you talk about it like I do about wow, so I still watched most of the video

Been playing since 03 on and off.. start it on the Original Classic version upgraded to what was then referred to as RuneScape 2 Beta which is now referred to as OSRS never messed around with RuneScape 3

Love the Phineas and Ferb reference

Great vid man. And yeah, as a 28 yo dude who has tried almost every "modern" Western MMO that there is, OSRS is the one game that I always return to. It's just the perfect combo of simple brain dead AFKing and balls to the walls hard PvM encounters and PvP casual and full loot. The community is great (from my experiences) And the most important thing for me atleast is that every time you log in you progress your account just a bit more and that is a great feeling to have, from doing a quest that unlocks a brand new playable area, to a new monster to slay etc etc. There's always something to do that makes you get that "Hell yeah" feeling at the end of your session. It can be something as simple as running out of Rings of Dueling and you just choose to crank out a 100 of them and after that small grind you get that "Hell yeah" as you see your crafting and magic XP go up. It ain't much but it's fulfilling.

great video

Osrs is an achievement simulator. It appeals to people that want to feel productive, but may lack that feeling in their real life for some reason. Personally, I think it’s insidious, it scratches and itch which should be scratched by improving your real life situation, that’s why I quit and sold all my osrs gold in 2019 so I would never come back.

Nice little video. Have a sub homie

Him shitting on rs3 was the highlight this video 😂😂

Depth and sense of accomplishment are probably the two reasons why in my opinion. At some point developers became convinced people would be happier with instant gratification. Most games these days take less than a week to max.

1:55 noob didnt even shout out club penguin

nice video mate

I just buy gold whenever i come back.. game just sucks these days, to many simps and incels who play, to many ethots to, I’ve come across so many scammers and mean people telling me to kill myself cause of my stats

i never played runescape but good video :)

F2P is in no way 25% of the game Probably closer to 5% if that

dude i listen to the osrs sound track when im driving to work haha

You wanna get end game to get the cool gear and do bossing but you want even better gear that costs billions and you’ve put so much into it you don’t want to stop

hey how did you render all map chunks like that to record in the intro?

Number going up make brain feel good

Zezima still plays actually! He mostly sticks to RuneScape 3 and spends more time on League of Legends these days though.

bonds hooked me up. a nightmare, make 700k/day is just a excuse to fulfill my addiction

Mystic hoodie

I don't mind the late level slog because it's generally much more afk

Color with a u so relatable

There are soo many ways you can play it

Ive been hooked like a straight crackhead since I was like 10 lol. Quit during EOC debacle and came back to rs3 2 years ago and switched to OS a year after that. In my first year back on OS I got 3 99s, 1 quest to cape, and hit 1.9b in drops. If youre hesitant to get back at it because of how daunting it is, just do it, you will not regret it.

great vid man!!! plz make more osrs content pl0x

Boiled down its the skinners box principle

It's a love and hate all at the same time. ❤

I started playing in 2020, never played as a kid and I really enjoy it for pretty much all the reasons listed towards the end. Had a friend who played and gave me a 1m starting cashstack and I just found leveling all my skills while making gp really fun. (Btw smithing is based bitch, blast furnace gang)

It's not, you just think it is, so it actually is. When you stop playing, you actually get gains at gym at faster rate than slayer levels in runescape.

Big skychi vibes

I maxed last month. Haven't played much since.

I had to quit. I was wasting my life. It's fun but I don't want to look back when I'm old and say to myself I wasted my life in that game.

Dial up osrs hahaha i remember those days

Y’all chasing validation 😂

Dollar store J1mmy. Good stuff.

im thinking it wont be long b4 the cartel catches on to osrs, they gonna want to get a cut of this market

People don’t like the game because nostalgia, they like it because the game is very good. the best MMO adventure game. Rs3 however, that game is the gaming industry’s biggest disaster

the music is mix with crack

you can hide random events btw with runelite plug in. :p your welcome

Almost 95 agility and it makes me not want to play it.

It's addicting because number go up and you're depressed IRL.

bahahaha the underground pass hate is warranted.

the part of the video where you talk about rs3 is kinda out dated, yes when EOC relesed it was bad but it has been fixed and remade over the years and actually provideds a great experince now. still not the same as old school but definatly better then when it was first relesed

Depression

Oldschool Jewscape

How would you stare at the world map back then? I'd just stare at the entrances to p2p areas...

Is it? Lmfao. To each their own.

Only thing I don't like about RS3 is the flood of cosmetics, it ruins the immersion. That's what I don't like about newer games is whatever theme they're going for gets thrown out the window when you ad micro transactions. OSRS aint like that.

Osrs is gewd

Decent video, but I've done 100+ hard clue scrolls on my current account and never got PK'd in the wildy.

Because you allow it to?

Nice video, music too loud bub

i give up on this game

Trick question. Its not.

Rs3 is dog poop becaus of Mod marcdonald

It really isn't addictive. Try playing rust lol

Game sucks, i found you can play classic version which is wayyyyyy better Way more nostalgia

As Runescape is a British game you should use the word addictive not the americanism 'addicting'

turn the music down

It’s not really though. Except for nostalgia chasers

This game is garbage- move on folks.

It's not addicting. Anyone who doesn't have any real life goals or desires to not be a brokie their entire life aint sitting on a computer wasting their life away accomplishing nothing. Video games are for brokies.

Made it to level 86 back in highschool till untill 2010 The level of nostalgia coming back in my 30s is unreal. Honestly this game has so much depth & is actually so refreshing compared to the "AAA" junk that we have today I actually have to *work hard* to achieve a good weapon or armour in this game - Compared to todays video games where you literally unlock everything within the first week - lol Something that I didn't know my first play through is how HARD the combat gets later on - It's actually a challenge which is something that is really missing in games these days

soo is stealing the j1mmy video method gonna become the new thing