Who's Playing RuneScape?

[kool kitty89]

I got into it again for several months up until Evolution of Combat hit . . . and that screwed things up too much for me and I lost interest again. I didn't mind the new features, but there's a number of odd/annoying things that just made it less fun and feel "off" in general for me, including some feature/world changes that added a new learning curve (basically un-learning the game and learning the new alternatives to the established gameplay elements).

Certain common enemies got ranged attacks, which didn't before (greatly changing established tactics/strategy), the "improved and better balanced" combat triangle is still screwed up and unbalanced at least as much as the original IMO (just different -and requiring total re-learing and re-investment of that too), then the new mechanics for pretty much all item stat bonuses (the whole crit bonus over general stat boost sucks IMO -average damage/defense boost is WAY more useful than crit), having only one attack style per weapon is pretty lame too. (the new HP bonuses for armor also kind of breaks things . . . scaling the HP again wasn't really a bad thing though -more precision for limited integer stat values is fine)

Then there's probably the biggest thing that makes the game less fun and fair for everyone: all areas are multi-combat now (so easier for low level players to get ganged up on by enemies, among other situations), and (more importantly) how this affects the biggest problem:
Experience is no longer gained per-hit in combat, but per-kill, so not only a problem with retreating enemies (or retreating from enemies), but a massive problem in terms of kill stealing and team based combat mechanics and even more so since every area is now multi-combat. Prior to that, there was no kill stealing . . . all players attacking in mult-combat shared XP (gained per hit) and the only competition was for who got the spoils (or rather, who got priority access to the dropped item -based on whomever dealt the most damage).

Honestly, the XP mechanics of runescape was one of the coolest features overall in the game next to several other MMOs or action-RPGs in general. (though it's interesting to note that The Elder Scrolls series games pretty much all use the per-hit XP mechanic, and that extends to some non-combat stuff too)

Now, some of those issues don't really hurt my experiences that much directly, but the idea of how stupid some of it is for new players makes me frustrated. (that or if I ever wanted to make another account)

[QuickSciFi]

I just hit the game again after some time (Runescape "3" now), and it looks like they've added a whole bunch of cool new things. The nicest thing is that all my old stuff and my XP remains.

The battle for Lumbridge wont last long, so that's a good reason to visit.

I go by Zeuguirdor, if anyone wants to look me up.

[Obviously]

People still play RuneScape?

That was my reaction too since I remembered it as a really awful game from the early 2000's but a quick Google search shows that it's changed a lot.