Recent reviews by [iH] Tmein

Another person here with close to 10,000 hours played before the Steam release. You will never play a game like this one. Although it certainly isn't for everyone, Runescape has such a variety of content that most people will find something they enjoy doing. The open ended nature of the progression system means that, while it can be daunting for new players, there's a near endless amount of things to be doing and working towards goals you set for yourself is incredibly satisfying.

I've been an endgame player for multiple years now and this is the only game I play with any regularity. It is of course an MMO and with that comes all the social benefits that can be found in most online communities, but the game itself does a lot of things that personally appeal to me over some of the competition such as:
- Combat skills being just one of a large variety of other skills, with combat level not treated as your "true" level. There's a lot of variety in the skills and the training methods for each individual skill.
- Combat not being class locked. You can be a mage one moment and chuck on a different set of gear and become a ranger mid combat. Learning roles at group bosses is as simple as showing up to learn rather than needing any specific account build.
- Relatively linear gear progression where you aren't constantly swapping out equipment and accidentally destroying it while enchanting. There is an "enchanting" system with some element of rng however you only ever lose materials not gear and chances are in the realm of 1/2 to 1/20 not ridiculously low for the good ones.
- Quests all having their own story and not ever having (kill x monster) style dialogue to progress the narrative.
- Weekly updates. Not every week is a big release but there are usually some small quality of life features to look forward to when there's not new content to explore.

There is a membership free which you will need to experience the majority of the gameplay, but there are options available for paying for that subscription with in game money, and at an endgame level making that money becomes almost trivial. The same goes for any of the rest of the monetisation, there is nothing that a player who is rich outside the game can buy that a player who is rich inside the game cannot.

As someone who played the original game a lot, I sincerely recommend reccomend the HD version, even if only for the ability to play easy multiplayer with friends after years of the original multiplayer not working very well. The rest of the game is almost exactly how I remember it, which is great.