RuneScape 3 Review: Is It Still Worth Playing?

Ah, RuneScape. I have fond memories of killing cows in Lumbridge, cutting Willows in Draynor Village, getting scammed out of my armour, and mining in the dwarven mines. Good times. But how does RuneScape hold up to review today?

RuneScape was an incredibly popular and successful MMO that a lot of people knew about. It reached its peak in around 2007-2009. Afterwards, RuneScape saw drastic changes to its combat system, which alienated the players and prompted Jagex to release a separate version of the game, Old School RuneScape, which was based on a 2007 build of the game.

From RuneScape classic to RuneScape 2, RuneScape now exists as two separate games: RuneScape 3, the main one that continues from the Evolution of Combat update, and Old School RuneScape, the one based on a version of RuneScape 2.

I personally prefer RuneScape 3, partly because I didn’t want to start a new account all over again and also because the game itself is really fun for me. The lore, the features, the quality of life changes, the power creep, and the combat system. I enjoy all of it. But objectively speaking, is RuneScape 3 a good game?

The Good of RuneScape 3

I’m going to start off with the good parts of RuneScape 3. While RuneScape 3 (which I will just simply call RuneScape from here on out), has its faults, there are a lot more good in the game than bad. So, here we go.

The combat system in RuneScape 3

Let’s start off big with one of the most controversial updates in RuneScape history: Evolution of Combat, also known as “EoC.”

Originally, RuneScape had a relatively simple combat mechanic. The game runs in 0.6 seconds intervals, known as “game ticks.” The original combat system had weapons with varying attack speeds and damage values. Some weapons even had special attacks.

While the combat system was quite simple, it still had a charm and culture behind it. Players were performing feats and PKing (player killing) strategies that were, admittedly, impressive, given how rudimentary the combat was.

The combat system of auto attacks and special attacks was a part of RuneScape’s identity. And PvP became one of the most popular activities in the game, and the best money maker.

Evolution of Combat completely changed how the combat system worked in RuneScape. Instead of relying solely on auto attacks, most of your damage comes from abilities. You have this action bar, which you place your abilities into and also assign keybinds to. You press the keybind and your character performs the ability.

There are channelled abilities, abilities that stun, abilities that do more damage when your target is stunned, abilities that deal bleed damage over time that increases if your target moves, abilities that empower your damage, and so on.

When Evolution of Combat first came out, it wasn’t that good. However, now in 2021, Evolution of Combat is well established and really fun. It’s not perfect, though. For instance, up until mid 2021, Magic was rather outclassed by Melee and Ranged.

Magic wasn’t terrible by any means: you can kill bosses with magic effectively, but it was still behind in terms of damage output.

Recently, Jagex has made Magic the best combat style with the addition of new weapons, armour, and abilities from Elder God Wars Dungeon. And with the new toys Magic has to play with, Melee has become the “weakest” style.

It’s a constant cycle of one style being more powerful if you have the best in slot equipment, but regardless, endgame bossing in RuneScape is incredibly engaging, interesting, and fun.

I haven’t done too much bossing compared to most other PvMers, but killing a boss and looting the rewards is very satisfying, and even more so when you get a rare drop.

And even just the process of learning the mechanics and dealing with them is a very fun experience, barring paying loads of cash when you die. However, Jagex is currently aware of the issue of RuneScape’s incredibly punishing death mechanic and they do plan to discuss this with the community.

Even if you’re not into high level bossing, RuneScape has a Revolution mode, which automatically casts these abilities for you, based on the order you place them in your action bar.

While this isn’t optimal for high end bossing, it is more than fine for killing Slayer mobs or just general combat. Revolution is great because, in a way, it brings back some of the low intensity, automatic combat that RuneScape was known for: just click on an enemy, and let it play out.

So, overall, I’d say that the combat in RuneScape it’s definitely a positive aspect of the game once you get used to it.

The skills in RuneScape 3

At the time of writing this review,  there are 28 skills, with a majority of them being non-combat skills. Skills can be levelled up, which grants players access to higher levelled content.

For example, if you train Woodcutting, you can cut higher levelled trees and get their logs. If your Fletching level is high enough, you can turn those logs into higher levelled bows, which can be used with higher Ranged levels.

It feels rewarding when you unlock higher levels and the game’s progression feels quite balanced for the most part. However, RuneScape is a very grindy game, so you spend a lot of time just to earn a few levels once you’re high enough, but it keeps you interested enough with the rewards to keep you going at it.

In the older days of RuneScape, leveling up skills was much more grind-intensive. However, over the years, content has become “easier,” with newer and more efficient methods of training skills being added to the game.

Before, it would take an extremely long time to reach level 99 in just a single skill. But now, we have many players achieving level 99 in all skills and even some skills have their max level at 120.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making max skills levels more accessible, because it respects the player’s time in real life. I got 99 Hunter back in 2008/2009, and boy, it was a grind.

I can’t imagine attempting to achieve that level today with the same methods I had used, given that I no longer have as much free time than I did in high school.

However, it isn’t just that newer content has made skills easier to train faster, but there are also microtransactions in the game, which makes the game a bit pay-to-win. Although, it’s not as bad as it sounds, since RuneScape isn’t mainly a PvP game.

However, this is a problem if you wish to compete for a place in the RuneScape HiScores. But we’ll talk about microtransactions later.

Every time a new skill is added in RuneScape, it is a really big deal, since skills add loads of new content to the game. The last two skills released, Invention and Archeology, I would say are incredibly successful and amazing additions to the game.

I won’t get into too much detail, but Invention acts as an item sink, which helps maintain value in what would otherwise be junk items, stabilizing the economy. And Archeology is a skill that feels like the classic RuneScape gathering and artisan skills, but modernized. 

Also, in 2021, Jagex released its first true skilling boss, Croesus, which provides skillers with a PvM experience that separates itself from traditional combat. While it’s not as popular as other bosses, I personally found it to be extremely fun and rewarding to play.

As of 2021, Jagex is currently releasing Double Experience quarterly: four times a year. In my opinion, this isn’t a bad thing, since this just makes it easier to reach endgame for people who can’t spend too many hours playing RuneScape.

And even if they reach that endgame quickly, there is still so much to do in said endgame, so the game never really feels like it runs out of content.

However, this can be a bad thing in terms of competition, since it means that the top spots in the HiScores are frequently filled up players who have reached the experience cap in all the skills, and the only chance of overtaking someone above you is when a new skill is released and you reach 200 million experience in that skill before anyone else.

But, this isn’t a concern for a majority of players and really only affects those who wish to dedicate a lot of time to the game and claim a spot on the HiScores. I also mentioned before that there are microtransactions, where you can acquire free experience or bonus experience in a skill, which makes HiScores less competitive.

But whenever a new skill is released, there is also an embargo on that skill that prevents it from being affected by such methods, which means that players gunning for the number one spot can’t buy their way to it. Speaking of microtransactions…

Microtransactions

Let’s quickly talk about the good parts of microtransactions. Yes, there are good parts of microtransactions, also known as MTX.

First of all, Bonds. Bonds can be purchased with real life money and traded to players. What do they do? You can redeem it for membership, or premium currency in the form of RuneCoins or Treasure Hunter Keys.

Treasure Hunter is like RuneScape’s form of lootboxes and you can win lamps, with grant experience, or stars, which grant bonus experience, and even cosmetics, and so on.

Bonds were introduced into the game to combat real world trading, in which players buy gold from other players by paying them money. Now, players can buy their own gold, but it’s fully regulated by Jagex.

They give money to Jagex in return for Bonds, which the player can then trade to other players for tens of millions of coins.

This also allows players to essentially get membership on RuneScape without paying real life currency. If a player is able to earn enough gold coins in game, they can purchase a Bond from another player and redeem it for membership.

So if you’re incredibly dedicated to the game and can earn lots of money ingame to purchase Bonds from other players, the entirety of RuneScape is essentially free to play.

Of course, there was controversy regarding the release of Bonds initially, but it is a fact that the amount of real-world trading significantly dropped. And Bonds are likely one of the best additions to the game.

Even if you absolutely hate microtransactions, it’s not a big deal because you can enjoy practically every bit of content without paying anything outside of the subscription based fee (which again, you can by pass by earning money and purchasing Bonds from other players). Personally, I haven’t spent any money on MTX for several years, and I’ve enjoyed the game as much as I always had.

You’ll just be missing out on cosmetics and such, but again, if you don’t wish to fall into the microtransaction pit, you can just buy Bonds from other players using in-game gold.

Of course, there are times when Jagex goes too hard on microtransactions. I have witnessed the months when they were constantly getting backlash because of the excessive amount of MTX promotions they kept pushing out, but surprisingly, Jagex has improved on that… for the most part.

In conclusion, microtransactions are here whether you like them or not. They keep the game alive, since let’s face it, Jagex is still a company that needs to make money in order to maintain RuneScape.

But don’t feel like you ever have to spend any money on it, since nothing is locked out for you if you choose not to participate in microtransactions. They are there if you want a bit of a shortcut because you wish you could play more, but don’t have the time to.

However, this does bring into the issue of mental health and gambling addictions, but that’s a different topic altogether.

Music

I won’t spend a lot of time talking about RuneScape’s music. It’s great. Plain and simple.

When I first played RuneScape, I immediately loved the soundtrack. Listening to some of the old tracks still hit me with nostalgia, with “Adventure” being one of those tracks.

Over the years, the RuneScape music library has grown significantly and the quality of all the tracks has improved dramatically.  There are several tracks that a retired RuneScape player would probably not even realize it’s from RuneScape.

The music has variety, ranging from the relaxing tunes as you travel across Misthalin to the intense guitar riffs while fighting a dinosaur boss.

Here are a few of my personal favourites if you’d like to listen to them. I think it’s better than me talking about music theory and stuff and pretending to know what I’m talking about.

Story and quests

My experience with quests has changed a lot throughout the years I have played RuneScape. When I first started, I thought that the quests were fun and engaging and it was a nice way of immersing myself into the world of RuneScape.

However, when I discovered quest guides, I just ended up spacebarring (skipping dialogue) through the quests.

Quests are great in RuneScape because they provide not only experience, but also special items, access to new areas, and even new abilities and prayers. And the rewards make the quests worth doing.

The past few years, there has been an overarching story going on in RuneScape which involves the gods of Gielinor returning to the world after a cataclysmic event that took place during one of the quests.

Many of the updates and quests since then have been tied to this narrative, and at the time of writing this, a dungeon has been released called “Elder God Wars Dungeon.”

The short version of it is that the player character, known as the “World Guardian,” is working with the various gods and heroes of Gielinor in order to prevent the Elder Gods, beings that created this world, from destroying it.

It kind of has the same high stakes and teaming up vibes from Avengers: Endgame, and this narrative has been built up over a span of around 8 years since the release of the quest, “The World Wakes.”

After the events of that quest, the game has entered “the Sixth age,” marking a significant change in the course of RuneScape’s history: that being that the many gods of Gielinor are now able to set foot on that world again.

I mentioned before that I had started to get into the habit of spacebarring through quests, but the recent ones have become quite entertaining that I actually take the time to read the dialogue so I can better understand the story. And in my opinion, it’s completely worth it, as the writing and plot is really engaging and a worthwhile investment.

Also, RuneScape dialogue is incredibly quippy and can be really funny. You just know that the writers had fun with this.

While I’m a fan of the current story that has been the primary focus in RuneScape for the past few years, there are still plenty of unfinished storylines that have been long forgotten by the developers.

The Gnome quest line comes to mind. It’d be nice to see them come to a close, but with how development goes behind the scenes, it’s hard to imagine that happening, and that’s something I’ll probably touch on later.

AFK

So let’s talk about actual gameplay… rather lack of gameplay? Perhaps my favourite part about RuneScape is its AFKability: you click once every few minutes and you make progress in whatever it is you’re doing. and many activities are possible with this.

For instance, if you want to go fishing, you click on a fishing spot and only have to click again when the fishing spot moves or when your inventory is full and have to bank again. With a lot of content being added with the balance of AFKing in mind, making money and progressing in this game is low effort, but requires a good amount of time.

So while RuneScape is a game that has a lot of grinding in it, it doesn’t feel as grindy because you can simply do other things while your character cuts wood or mines rocks or even killing slayer mobs. RuneScape has even branded itself as a “second screen game.”

With that said, RuneScape isn’t just all about AFK content. While RuneScape does have a unique identity in MMOs as being an AFK game, there is still a good amount of content that requires your full attention.

These ones tend to reward higher experience rates and money making methods. RuneScape feels quite balanced in how much  you’re rewarded depending on how much attention and effort you’re giving to the game.

The bad of RuneScape 3

Microtransactions (the bad parts)

Now let’s talk about the negatives of RuneScape. I’ll start with microtransactions. While I said that this game is perfectly playable and enjoyable while ignoring microtransactions, it doesn’t help that they’re frequently shoved in our faces and is even a daily thing you can do.

The only reason I play Treasure Hunter nowadays is to get rid of the notification that pops up on my screen saying that I have keys to use.  And you get a key everyday (two if you’re a member), so it’s kind of hard to not notice these things.

Furthermore, some of the useful features are also locked behind microtransactions, such as more bank space and auras. Auras are timed buffs which give you benefits in the game while they’re active.

Granted, you can get the bank boosters by earning ingame currency and buying a bond, but the vast majority of auras are locked behind a timegate: Loyalty Points. Loyalty Points are earned every month for subscribed members and the longer you’re subscribed for consecutive months, your monthly Loyalty Points gains increases.

Recently, Jagex has added ways of acquiring auras through playing the game, such as unlocking combat auras by killing bosses, but most of the auras are still only available by having membership for several months and even years.

Additionally, just because the game can be played without paying much heed to microtransactions, there is still an inherent problem with them in that those with gambling addictions can easily fall prey to them.

Combat readability

While I praised the combat in RuneScape and how it has evolved over the years, there is still the fundamental problem of readability of the game’s combat system.

For instance, the desyncing of animations and visual effects to the actual abilities is a big one. Animations for ability effects override other animations instead of cancelling, which is incredibly misleading to newer players.

PvMers are able to grasp this after enough experience, but it still has a negative effect on the game’s clarity. There is a full video on why RuneScape’s combat system feels bad. It covers several other aspects of why RuneScape’s combat system can feel clunky and unintuitive.

The reason I still praised the combat system earlier is because once you’re able to get the hang of these visual problems, you’ll be able to look past them and still perform well in PvM. These problems, I feel, are really more important for newer players, which is still a big part of drawing in new PvMers.

Messy development

I don’t really know how else to word this besides “messy development,” but RuneScape is built on 20 year old code and a lot of legacy content is quite messy and hard to work with.

I’m not a coder, so I’m unfamiliar with how the game is programmed, but Jagex Mods (employees of Jagex) have been more than vocal about RuneScape having lots of spaghetti code. After all, RuneScape consists of over 20 year old code as a foundation and a lot of really old content is just incredibly messy to work with.

Another problem with Jagex is that there is a lot of content that is simply unfinished. The first one that comes to mind are the aforementioned unfinished questlines.

However, another glaring one is the continuation of The Liberation of Mazcab Raids. When released, it included two extremely difficult bosses that are balanced around having a team of 10 players.

Today, it’s still a relatively popular piece of content, but Raids was originally supposed to have a third boss, which you can clearly see when resetting the loot lock on the bosses. Obviously, a third boss in the Liberation of Mazcab Raids was planned.

Supposedly this was supposed to be the Airut Shaman, which was mentioned at RuneFest 2015. However, 8 years after the release of Raids, there are still no plans of the completion of the Raids content, and the question marks at the reset interface are a frequent reminder of this.

There are many other contents that have been promised by Jagex but have failed to deliver on them. To their credit, they have acknowledged them, referring to them as “Unfinished Business,” and making an effort to make them a reality, but a number unfinished business has yet to even be announced to be in any sort of progress.

To add to that, there are many other issues with the game that haven’t been addressed for a long time, such as tier 92 armour still degrading to dust despite being repairable.

Another example is Ectotokens, which were promised to have an abundance of use years ago, but still is dead content today. Also, Group Ironman coming soon to RuneScape? That was tweeted 4 years ago.

While in my opinion, RuneScape currently has enough content to keep many players engaged for a long time, Jagex does have a problem with overpromising and under delivering quite frequently.

To their credit, they are now more vocal about clarifying whether at content of content they want to make will even be released or not instead of jsut outright promising them.

Sometimes, they make it up with really good updates, such as Anachronia, Archeology, the Mining and Smithing rework, and Elder God Wars Dungeon, but it’s still not an excuse to promise players content that will not come to fruition.

Lack of integrity

When I talk about lack of integrity, I’m mainly referring to Jagex’s refusal to punish players who abuse bugs in the game. When Elite Dungeons 3 was released, there was a bug that allowed players to skip the entire dungeon and face the final boss. This was abused for a long time by many players, yet no bans were given.

While we’re on the subject of Elite Dungeons 3, at the time of making this video, there are many bots farming Elite Dungeons 3, which is injecting a tremendous amount of gold in the game, resulting in impact to the game’s economy. The bots, wearing budget magic setups, simply farm the trash mobs up until they reach the first boss, then they reset the dungeon and repeat.

While I think it’s nice that Elite Dungeons 3 can be used by low levelled players to make money, it is way too easily botted. And despite negatively affecting the economy, they don’t really seem to be doing much.

They have released a statement about a fix to discourage botting in Elite Dungeon 3 and should be “coming in the following weeks,” yet there has been nothing on it after 6 months. Even if the fix they had planned didn’t make those involved happy, they should at least communicate to the community why it hasn’t gone live yet.

Buggy releases

This section isn’t necessarily as bad as the previous ones I mentioned, at least personally for me. But Jagex’s updates tend to contain plenty of bugs, some of them serious, which resulted in a meme in the community “Don’t play on Mondays.”

Now, I understand that Quality Assurance isn’t perfect and that even among triple A title games, there will be bugs present. After all, no matter how big or proficient a QA team is, it pales in comparison with having an entire playerbase trying out the content.

But, RuneScape is a little notorious for having some really nasty and annoying bugs that are blatantly easy to replicate that it’s actually worth questioning whether they even tested the content. It’s even more irritating that these bugs have been reported and acknowledged, yet many of them have yet to be fixed.

An example that happened recently occurred during the release of Arch-Glacor, where if you killed the Bolstered Glacor at 250% enrage or higher, the Arch-Glacor’s health would drop to just over 1k HP. This resulted in incredibly fast times and players abusing the bug to push the enrage level.

This was so easy to do that players were questioning if the boss was even tested at 250% enrage or higher, since killing these Bolstered Glacor is part of the boss fight and practically impossible to not experience.

Another example of a newer boss is Zuk. Upon defeating Zuk and if you had a Summoned combat familiar, the familiar would keep attacking, resulting in continuously “killing” Zuk over and over again, netting you kill counts and drops without having to clear the waves and boss.

A lot of people still play and do dangerous activities on Mondays, however, Monday patch bugs aren’t too big of a deal, in my opinion, and are far from the biggest problems with RuneScape but it is still worth mentioning.

RuneScape 3 is unfriendly to new players

This one is also a problem with RuneScape in that it doesn’t really help new players get into the game or help returning players catch up. On the plus side, the community does have guides on the official RuneScape Wiki, and the developers have actually implemented a Wiki search feature in the game itself.

However, every so often, we see someone post on the RuneScape subreddit asking how to get into the game and how overwhelmed they are with all the content in the game.

The community tends to be friendly to new players wanting to learn more about the game, but it would be nice if the game itself provided players with a more easy to use, easy to notice guide to help guide players.

There is a Path System for helping players with some Achievements, but it’s not exactly the type of thing that would be helpful in helping players get into the game.

This is also a problem because with RuneScape mobile being a thing and also releasing on Steam, it attracted a lot of new players, yet a bunch of them likely didn’t get too far past the beginning stages of the game.

Basically, there’s a lot that the game doesn’t tell you, but as long as you can set goals for yourself and are into the game enough to research stuff on the wiki or even visit the subreddit, you’ll find yourself having fun and learning at a decent pace.

Verdict

While not perfect by any means, RuneScape is definitely fun and worth trying out even in 2021. While it’s not very beginner friendly, it offers more than enough content to keep you engaged if you spend minimal effort looking up details on pieces of content. 

Yes, it’s a huge grind to max out your levels and microtransactions can help speed up the process, but it feels less and less necessary to rely on whaling because of how frequent Jagex runs Double Experience events, so you never really feel pressured to be 100% efficient.

And with RuneScape being a “second screen game,” it’s quite easy to idle and AFK in it and still make progress, which is a niche it has proudly embraced on being.

The fun comes from the satisfaction of spending the time to reach those goals you’ve set and approaching towards the endgame.

RuneScape is rough around the edges, but has a certain charm to it that persists despite the overhauling of the combat system and its many updates that separate it from its Old School counterpart, which retains most of the original feel of RuneScape at its peak.

You may have a hard time getting into it, but once you’re invested and engaged, it truly does become a fun game to play.