Un-Biased Runescape Review: Settling this dispute once and for all

[Angrywyvern]

I do not like runescape. I do not HATE runescape. one thing is for sure, every other person on earth either loves or hates the game, I don't know why. It's just weird to me. Just so all you people know, I will be doing this review in installments, hopefully long installments, and each will be based around one topic. Unless this is against a rule or something, I'm going to do it. Please forgive me, this is my first thread.

Anyway, here's part one.

1. Introduction

If you surf you tube, you'll find many, many videos titled along the lines of:
RUNESCAPE SUCKS!
RUNESUCK!
SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK RUNESCAPE!
RUNESCAPE....RULZ!

Sorry for the spelling, but that's how they appear.

Now I'm not against those people showing their opinions, as long as it's reasonable and logical.

The usual "runescape sucks" video is comprised of them making futile arguments about crap. Each one revolves around graphics being suckey,which we will get to, but they don't really suck anymore, since the HD update, which actually made the 3d graphics pretty amazing for a flash/java engine.
They also made some other arguments, but I will spare you.
Now this isn't a biased review, I still don't like runescape, it's just I don't understand these youtube people ragging on graphics and click controls (what? do you hate Diablo too?) when there's perfectly good HORRENDOUS game play to Yahtzee-style crucify.

No offense to the people, it's just, confusing.

And then of course, some people who like the game, highly offended at the free speech, either

A. Do exactly what their "enemies" did and make some futile arguments about the futile arguments

or

B. Make some kind of montage of them killing people with different weapons, even though pretty much all combat is the same, no matter what weapon your using or creature your fighting, combat is pretty much always the same, click on the enemy, and if you're really advanced drinking a potion to increase strength or eating something, but we'll get to combat in part 2.

And this is why, I am settling the dispute once and for all. Both haters and lovers of runescape are in a huge flame war, rather than actually discussing things. In this war, they are all Nazis, and I'll kill them all with my reviewing KAR of awesomeness, that shoots golden bullets.

In the next part, anyway, in which I'll start on the basics, and get to the you know, reviewing part. See ya later, hoped you liked this part. Comments welcome, I don't need reserves. (I'll post the page of the next installment in an edit if I get too many comments)

 

[Ace of Spades]

Well stated. I played Runescape for a while when I was in middle school and I got totally addicted to it. Then I took a step back and took a good look at what I was playing. In Yahtzee's words: "One click combat, endless trudging from place to place, quests involving killing X amount of monster Y for lazy stationary cockhead Z" Why am I playing this? I'm not having fun...

 

[milskidasith]

Honestly, if you are going to split this review into sections, you might want to A: make each section at least as long as a normal review around here and B: have actual review content here instead of you bragging about your (currently incorrect) view of your awesomeness as a review and talking about flame wars on the game you should have been reviewing.

 

[Angrywyvern]

There is a good amount of solid quests in the game, one of the actually good points. If you recall, the quests actually have deep stories, instead of running around killing x amount of monster zed

And I'm not talking about my "awesomeness" it was just an analogy/joke. And I'll actually 100% review the game later one, I promise. Just remember this is my first thread, if that counts for anything.

 

[Angrywyvern]

Part 2: Basic Combat and Skills

Jagex recently decided, that with all the recent game play changes, that they needed a better tutorial. So nowadays, instead of being dropped on some colorful island were people with names like "Survival Tutor" and "Cooking Teacher" tell you what to do. They subconsciously reminded you that it was a game in their dialog, which wasn't very immersive. They said things like "And remember angry, these are real players, playing a game just like you on a computer, and this isn't a real medieval world were you can scam people, it's all fake. So remember, it's just a game, don't do anything stupid."
The transfer from tutorial island to the real world is also as smooth as a TNT explosion, to roughly quote Yahtzee. Because of this I decided to start a brand new character, who I gave a half-realistic name, "Harry Winth"

Nowadays you actually start in the beginning village. After you create your character, which again goes against immersion because you can make them have neon teal and purple hair, you start in a basement. Some knight or something appears to be waiting for you, so you go up to him, and he goes on to make you learn about everything and anything. Something that really stuck out in my mind is he got me go get him some crayfish, which I didn't know existed when I played runescape at age 12 a long while ago.

Before, the starting fish was shrimp, now there's something new, coexisting with shrimp. Their inventory graphics look pretty damn similar too, the only difference is that if you want crayfish you need a cage, not a net, which is kind of inconvenient, considering the whole lot of other net fishes, while there's only one kind of fish you can catch with a crayfish cage.

Anyway, to get back on topic, after I blew up a mine, offended 4 local priestesses, caused a public disturbance, and condemned a valiant knight to stay picking his nose in a basement for the rest of his life making sure a dragon doesn't come back, the locals grudgingly destroyed the barricades encasing me in town, and let me roam free.

I quickly re-organized myself with the new changes, and started summarizing the details for my review.

There are a shit load of skills, not more than EVE, but a lot. They all play rather similar though, basically you click click click click click, somethings your combining, sometimes your harvesting, but there's a lot of clicking. The only differences are basically how they apply to other skills, and their uses. So woodcutting, which can be used by fletchers and fire makers (yes there is a separate fire making skill, which is pretty useless, because if you're training cooking you'd probably just use a stove anyway, and it consumes logs which need to be bought or collected) would be a lot different from smithing, which requires ore from mining and provides melee weapons.

You can also practice as many skills as you want, which is good. You're not limited to a certain "Trade", your just doing what you want to do. And you learn to mine by practicing, not paying some weirdo in Gnome Town a silver piece to LET you do things.

God forbid you start mining without your teacher's permission.

This can be very interesting sometimes, but it does NOT excuse the boredom of constant grinding, but it does effect the economy very thoroughly.

Sometimes skills require you to travel ac across continents just to get the required material for a loaf of bread, which only heals a bugger 2 health anyway. God knows, the good citizens of Draynor can't build a well next to their grain collection and processing area so speed things up.

Of course the travel won't effect many people too much due to how small the world is. You could walk across the Free civilized world in 15-30 minutes or something, and the member's (Pay to Play, which pretty much makes the game worth while) multiplies the size by a mere 2.5 times. (of course most of the P2P world is just forest) There's also a separate "wilderness" which before, was the PVP combat area, but now is just dangerous terrain, because they wanted to crack down of Real World Trading, more on that later) which is about, when you don't pay, double the size of the Free world, and the member's Wilderness is 3 or 4 times the size of the free world.

Runescape has some combat skills, here they are: Attack, Streangth, and Defence for warriors, then Archers get archery, and wizards get magic, how fair. The skills have some sort of equation that adds up to your combat level. The height of your combat level doesn't physically effect you, but it decides how you're paired in PVP, and let's people know how long you played this crazy game. Instead of XP bars, everything is shown in numbers, and since most gamers have suckish eyesight, it seems like a better idea to made some huge purple bar to look at than give them a few number and challenge them to find the difference.

The combat is rather dull, when you get down to it. In MMOs like WoW or Guild Wars, you get a new attack every once in a while. In Runescape, all you get is better hit-rate and damage to your normal, or only attack. There is a degree of variation if you get members and are a high level, like potions and special attacks for uber weapons, but potions don't heal health, they just give stat bonuses, for your boring old regular attack, and special attacks are more flash than fury.

The weapons and armor are also boring as well, there's a line of different armors, each with a bunch of weapons inside them. There's no slightly unique items at all, pretty much all "special demon slaughtering swords" you get in quests are shit. There are no enchanted armors. You can also tell how high level an armor is by the absurdity of it's color. There's Brown Bronze, Gray Iron, Lighter Gray steel, and this is were it gets weird folks, Black armor that you can't make yourself called simply "Black Armor" (which gets points for looking badass), Mithril Armor (Mithril is supposed to be slightly yellow or something) that is dark purple, Adamantite Armor that is a dark green (jeebus Christ I'm getting a lot of red lines from this) and finally, Rune Armor, that is Aqua. Then there's Dragon if you're a member, which is red, and looks more badass than black armor because it changes things besides the color in it's design.

Jagex favors it's warriors extremely well, apparently, because it gives them 6 (a 7th for members) different kinds of armors and weapons, each with a moderate range of choices, even though only a few of them are actually used, like the scimitar and plate armor, but nonetheless there's plenty of choice for the newbies who use maces 'n' shit. For rangers there's a few different pieces of leather for armor, then 4 dragon hide armor sets, each with barely as much choice as the warriors get. They then get 2 different kinds of bows for each kind of tree, and 1 crossbow with each type of metal (melee must get like 10 weapons per metal) There's then the mages, who if you play free, get one set of robes that do no good, and for members, theres a bunch of flib flab you can get in quests to add your arsenal up. There's also a staff for each elemental magic. Wow.

Runescape is incredibly simple. There's no trick to skills, just click, same with combat, which doesn't change much over the levels. All strategy was taken out, especially after they nerfed everything to stop victim less cyber-crime and shit.

Now this has been boring for a while, giving a bunch of details, well I hope it isn't too boring, because this is all I have for basics. There's plenty of crucifying to do in the next part, economy, community, and the grand exchange. Comment generously, at least this is an actual review.

Peace out

 

[The Wooster]

You lost me at the third sentence. 'Immersing' is not a word.

 

[Angrywyvern]

Well it was one of the choices when I right clicked the red underline, so i guess it is. I changed it to immersive though, even though the computer is telling me it's not a word.

 

[Zallest]

I have a buddy that still plays runescape that is in his early 20's and he is level 100 something.

I could never hate Runescape even though if i look at it now and only think "Sucky Graphics better free games out there". I could never hate it because of the fun times i had with friends in middle school and early grade school, playing this game. Hating Runescape would be like hating Mario Bros for the NES because it looks bad compared to everything thats out today.

 

[Angrywyvern]

I agree, the best times I had in runescape was playing with my older brothers when I was a kid, but they turned to WOW, and I wasn't old enough yet.

I wouldn't want to play WoW nowadays anyway.

I also enjoy reaching out to the newbies, baking them pies and shit.

I was the team doctor.

 

[Angrywyvern]

Part Three:
Economy, the Community, and the Grand Exchange.
Also, Graphics and Sound.

If you read the user reviews on Game Spot F&Qs made in 2000 or so, every negative review talks about the community being a rabid bunch of 1337 speaking psychos. Things have changed though. There isn't that many of the 1337 speaking psychos left. This is partly due to the recent PKing updates, which pretty much ruined PKing forever, and for everybody. The crazy 1337 speaking "Pures" (people who specialize in only one set of combat skills to be effective, but still keep their levels low so they can bypass the level difference barrier that ensures fair matches) are all but extinct.

But the community still has a whole lot of work to be done on it, with a million scammers and Real World Traders running amok, and for other reasons too. But, we'll talk about that when we get to it, but for now, let's go back to the starting town of Lumbridge, were we left off...


Coming out of Lumbridge, you notice quite a bunch of level 3 newbies training all their skills. You can train pretty much anything you want in Lumbridge, well, almost, but it's not the most effective place, like Mines than focus on mining and smithing. The noobs are by far the nicest and best member of the community you will meet. Bring them some lunch and they'll thank you graciously, and unless they aren't playing their "Main", and are just old players starting new characters, they won't insult you.

The first thing I did was start heading up towards Varrock, biggest city, and home to the Grand Exchange. Let me start from when the Grand Exchange didn't exist.

Back in the older times of runescape, trading required both savvy and connections. You had to have friends to hook you up with clients, and the knowledge of average prices was valued.

But nowadays you basically go to a giant "auction house" stuff some shit ina box, were the price is calculated (you can chose to change the price within 5 to 10 gold XD) and you get either you're items or the money for them pretty much instantly, as long as you're buying or selling an actually USEFUL item (basically either plate armor, unrefined or raw trade items, or fish) that would be on the market, and not say for example actually high-level cooking items, or blunt weapons, in which case you'll never get anything.

If all the noobs knew about the grand exchange, you would never see anybody wearing bronze. They'd all just take 30 minutes or so to chop 3 inventories or so full of wood, and then sell them for a few thousand bucks, and buy full iron and a scimitar. There's no need to have bronze EVER if it has the same requirements as Iron (nothing) and you can raise the money incredibly easily.

But instead, noobies remain ignorant, and they run around in half a suit of chain mail bronze armor until level 20.

In short, the economy in runescape has been cut down to bite sized blocks, you can't even change the prices of things within 3k or so (not much) when trading face to face, which means that the real prices of things are controlled by jagex. Thanks guys.

Earlier on you must have remember me whining about immersion, but once you get into the game, it's pretty damn well immersing. (that is a word, look it up) Since the HD update, walking through the countryside can be very soothing. Colors blend, the trail looks realistic. There's a ton of farms in the south, walking up toward Varrock, chicken pecking the ground, all very good. The sounds are also quite better than what they used to be, especially in music, which before was a bunch of bleeps and blips, but now really sounds good and sets the mood for each area you come into.

But all of this is torn away from you and thrown out the nearest window as soon as you see a real-life human being walk by.

Everyone always chooses the same pants, town at the bottom with cuts on the legs, and the same torn shirt, (well, almost always.) They make sure they have the most absurd hair and color, neon green, teal, and purple colors. They wear their oddly colored generic armor everywhere they go,(even though it's practical not to when your walking through the country side, because you use less energy and can run faster.) even when they're baking a cake or shearing sheep for XP, perhaps to show everybody the extent of their power. This would all be well in say WoW, when the surroundings blend with it. Hell, monsters everywhere, orc buildings that look torn and stuff, critters with barbarian looking armor, it looks perfectly good to have a strangely-haired person with torn clothes beneath armor glowing with an aura. But walking through a peaceful countryside with sheep snoozing and farmers farming, said person doesn't fit in. It's also worse because the peaceful farmland more or less takes up most of the Free, Civilized World. The only places were it really gets definitely dark is in dungeons and the wilderness, and nobody really goes in the wilderness anymore, and there aren't many dungeons. You can have a really good time just walking on the road to Falador (not a very popular road, but then again, what is a popular road due to mass exodus of players recently) with the default music on, and walking slowly, can be great fun, if you go into it with the right mindset, kind of like how you need to go into Fable, with the right mindset.

So there you have it, the bottom line of this entry is, go into the game with the right mindset, you won't find much fun if you're looking for a grind-a-thon,
but you might find fun somehow else.

Also, make sure you make the right friends, at the very least, make sure they are friendly and helpful.


If you're going to say something negative please tell me on a score of 1-5, 5 being the most negative, how much I suck, and clearly write down why you hate me, so I can improve later.
This thread is MOSTLY an experiment to learn how to post better.

NEXT UP ON SETTLING THIS SCORE ONCE AND FOR ALL...
NPCs, QUESTS, AND AI!

 

[D_987]

This is an extremely biased review, Runescape is without a doubt a very poor game, it is for 10 year olds, lets face it, the game has slowly morphed into a kid-friendly starer MMORPG. If any self-respecting teennager actually plays ths game, then I feel very sorry for them...

As for your review style, its pretty poor, seems very biaed, repeats the same points again and again, theres no real structure, especially when your splitting it into sections.

You picked a really bad topic (and a personal pet hate) to review and your english seems adequate at best.

 

[Angrywyvern]

Look I see what you mean about my structure, English and review style, but apparently I haven't made myself clear on the opinion of the game.

I said earlier that:
Combat/Skills monotonous, just clicking over and over again in same basic locations
Community pretty bad, player-controlled character models do NOT fit in with scenery, and community is unrelenting and will almost never be helpful
The economy has been cut down to bite sized blocks, taking all depth out of it along with human communication.

I was also going to GET to the child-friendly in the next part, and I will no doubt try and be a bit more aggressive. Obviously these are the consequences of writing the review in parts, I'll try to be better in the future.

The Overall score at the end will probably be 2-4 out of 10, and unless you want a -50, then obviously YOU'RE the one being biased.

Also, the meaning of biased is liking something so much that you won't take part in actual intellectual conversation about it's flaws, and refuse to think it's anything but great. This can work on certain levels of your like of the game or movie or book etc.

It does NOT mean that you can't either like or hate it, and every man is worthy of his own opinion. He can only be called biased if he can't defend his opinion with actual facts, instead of fan boy fanaticism.

 

[Gxas]

Also, the meaning of biased is liking something so much that you won't take part in actual intellectual conversation about it's flaws, and refuse to think it's anything but great. This can work on certain levels of your like of the game or movie or book etc.

It does NOT mean that you can't either like or hate it, and every man is worthy of his own opinion. He can only be called biased if he can't defend his opinion with actual facts, instead of fan boy fanaticism.

Wrong: Bias- a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bias] You had it up until... nevermind... you never had it.

 

[Angrywyvern]

I guess you're right, in a way, but I still said that if you're biased you can't discuss things factually, which is in a way part of what I said.

But I'm pretty sure I wasn't biased, I was never closed out consideration. Also, you corrected my English, but you didn't say whether you thought I was biased or not, which kind of confuses me.

Also, I wish you people who hated me would stop being prejudice yourselves. (not Gxas) Even if I did like RS it would just be biased of yourselves to hate me for it, or for making a bad review. You're kind of getting a little angry it seems.

 

[Angrywyvern]

Ok guys, it appears that Jagex has brought back the Tutorial Island thing that I said was Abolished Before, so just disregard the tutorial description that I mentioned earlier ok?

Constructive Criticism!

 

[D_987]

Ok, how about this - stop posting on this thread, go away and finish your entire review, then I will read it. Its a kids game, but I hate it because I still know people who play it, and they are utterly addicted, and I don't know what to. I could sort of understand if it was WOW, at least thats a half decent game, but Runescape is a terrible game.

Im sorry to say but anyone who thinks Runescape is "immersing" is beyond help, and you actually claim its graphics are not poor,(I saw the update0 they are still horrible, for kids, and unrealistic)

 

[Angrywyvern]

Ok I agree with the child-based foundations of runescape, I totally do. I was just going to get to that in the next part. Also, yes, there was only one more part left, but I won't do ANYTHING in installments in the future.

And as for the graphics, I'm not comparing them to ACTUAL games like WoW, I'm comparing them to other Flash and Java games. For Flash/Java they ARE pretty advanced, but for people who usually play games on discs and downloads, they won't impress, and are definitely childish.

 

[milskidasith]

D987...As far as Java based games go, Runescape's graphics are pretty damn amazing. It isn't on a CD, it doesn't have the luxury of a high end graphics engine.

 

[hippo24]

im not a real fan of the game, having played it once or twice when stranded in a waiting room, i can say its simply grind after grind

 

[PhantomEnigma]

I have come to notice that mmorpgs have the ability to make you spend vast amounts of time doing pointless things to better some fictional character without you even realizing it. Runescape is a testament to this. How a game so terrible can have that many people playing it remains a mystery but I shall not partake in such needless thankless false entertainment. If you are gunna play one at least let it be World of Warcraft thats at least half decent.