What it's like to come back to Runescape after a decade apart.When I first played Runescape I had been a snivelling preteen with too much time on his hands. It had been the only game of its scale and size I had access to - all it took was a dial-up RS gold online connection and a browser window. As an added bonus, that meant I could play it both in your home and in college. Ten years on, despite cataclysmic adjustments and additions, its distinctive brand of total access is still going strong in a world where free MMOs are trivial, and also you don't need to wait for your parents to get off the phone to log in.
Connected: talking of free MMOs, here are a few to test out if your Steam wallet is empty. I recently tried to log in to a very old email account, which I can only do by hunting down an even older login for Runescape. A username may bring back a lot of memories as it happens, especially one such as g0ds1ayer94. This saga got me thinking: what is ol' Runie like these days? Fuelled by nostalgia, I created a new account and began exploring the dream world of Gielinor once again.
In the ten years I've been away, Runescape has gone from a fantasy-themed chatroom into a fully fledged MMO, complete with its own yearly cheap OSRS gold, a card game twist off and enough content to produce 12-year-old me weak at the knees. If you can believe it, you need to really download the most recent version of the game.
It is a game that's maintained many of its players through continuous updates and unrivalled audience interaction; log for a month and you might have missed something that the community will likely be referencing for the upcoming few years.