I've only played Old School Runescape (OSRS) for about 9 months now, but here are my thoughts on the game.


+ The community is extremely loyal to the game.

This was one of the most appealing things to me when I decided whether or not I would get into RS. Growing up, I used to play games that would often get shut down because the devs didn't plan on sticking around for the long run. Knowing that the game, let alone the franchise, has been around for 8 years now was really nice to hear.

+ The community is really helpful!

There are the occasional elitists who’ve played the game for years and end up being less helpful than you’d like, but overall, I’d say the majority of the community is super nice and is willing to help you get into the game.

+ There’s a lot to do!

You can gather resources, make things, fight things, build houses, roleplay with friends, challenge yourself by setting restrictions (ironmanning), and more. There’s a lot to do in the game, and I don’t see myself finishing the game in a long time.

+ OSRS can be easily run on old devices.

+ You decide what goes into the game!

Most updates are proposed to the players and then polled for whether or not the devs should introduce the content. This means that proposals need to meet a % threshold (current 75%) in order for the proposals to pass. Having control like this is pretty nice. Although the Jagex Mods (a group of Jagex employees) do tread on a slippery slope by proposing “integrity changes,” changes that are not polled to the players, they are also, for the most part, good about taking players’ feedback in general, so even if a set of proposals aren’t directly polled to the community, they do a good job about gathering feedback in other ways.


- Bad customer support

If you ever need to talk to a Jagex (the company name) about something, chances are it’s most likely going to be done through their Twitter, @JagexSupport. A lot of people complain about how they often don’t end up helping you when you reach out to them; I myself have experienced this. What makes this even worse is that while many players are stuck with bad support, content creators who promote OSRS have direct access to the Jmods in a private Discord server that they can easily contact if they need anything.


- OSRS can be time-consuming, and it takes a while to access certain content.

OSRS is a grindy game. It can take months to upgrade certain stats to a level that you are able to do certain activities. Combat is a good example of this. You can kill a rat as soon as you start the game, but certain combat activities such as the Chambers of Xeric can take months of training before you have the levels and gear to be able to play to where you don’t instantly die by the first thing you encounter. What I’m saying is you’re playing something like OSRS Leagues (which is a temporary, seasonal game mode that has highly increased xp rates and loot drop chances), it helps to have time on your hands to progress faster in the game.

- The native client isn’t as good compared to others.

If you download this game right now and launch it, you will be playing the OSRS vanilla client, the client that the game gives you to start with. When I make this point, it’s not bad, but it’s not nearly as good as RuneLite, a modified, approved version of the client Jagex gives you. RuneLite has a lot of good features that will make playing OSRS easier. Getting the client is pretty easy, but it’s just more work you have to do to benefit yourself.

- Bots… EVERYWHERE!!!

Bots are without a shadow of a doubt the worst part about OSRS. These bots, gold farm, the practice of obtaining Runescape currency by various means, automatically spam advertisements in chat, take high scores in the OSRS Highscores[secure.runescape.com] and more. Because of bots, the economy is in bad shape (compared to what it was years ago), highscores are often filled by bots, and other bad things have come from bots. Despite all of this, although Jagex Mods work on stopping this issue these people make bot accounts at a faster rate than the rate that these mods can ban them. They have acknowledged on Reddit that they understand how bad bots have been and that the 2021 roadmap has plans to address that, but that’s the current state of the game regarding that.



It certainly has its flaws, but I think Old School Runescape is a good game, but I know it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. I recommend at least giving this game a try and see what you think.

I usually couldn't care less about a world's lore, but Square Enix (SE) does a good job at making the lore interesting. Though there's a lot of plot holes in the story, it's interesting, and the parts that aren't interesting can be ignored/skipped. So long as you pay attention to the voice acted cut scenes, you're kept up with the important stuff (this is coming from a person who hates reading).

The game play itself is good. There's various classes/jobs you can play with each having their own unique play-style. Each class has over 20 possible moves, so in terms of combat, it's fairly complex in terms of abilities, but this difficulty is offset by the fact that enemies are far more predictable than in a game like Lost Ark. Bosses execute abilities at very specific times (i.e.: a boss might execute shadow beam exactly at 1 minute into the fight) with potential variation within that (i.e.: said boss executes a shadow beam facing east, north, south, west).

The community is overall very nice and is willing to help you learn the game.

The largest strength in FFXIV is the ability to pick whatever class you want to play at whatever time. Want to be a healer? Just switch your class/job to healer. Want to be a tank? Etc. etc. This made me feel like the game really respects my time in this aspect as opposed to WoW or Lost Ark where one character can only have one class at a time, and if you want to experience all the content the aforementioned have to offer you need multiple characters.

From a technical standpoint, the game was made for the PS3, so the hardware utilization isn't high, even with the use of third-party graphical enhancements. You can buy this game on Steam or through Square Enix. People usually suggest Square Enix because to run the Steam version, Steam needs to be functional, which introduces a second point of failure, but in return, you get to use the Steam Wallet and your hours get tracked on Steam. Pick your poison.

I'd give it a go. The free trial FFXIV offers is not time-gated and will give you a sufficient taste of what the game is to become. Edit: You can upgrade from a trial user to a regular user on the same account, but keep in mind whatever platform you made your account on (i.e: Steam or Square Enix), you're bound to it.