There are a lot of games that I played as a child which now give me a strong feeling of nostalgia. Of all those games, though, there are two that really stand out- Donkey Kong 64, and Runescape. As the title implies though, I'll only be talking about the latter- it's not that I prefer it, there's just more there to talk about.
Runescape is the only MMO I've ever really played. I was introduced to it around 2006, when my brother started playing. At the time, we only had one computer between the two of us, as I've mentioned before, so I spent more time watching him play than playing myself. That said, I still did play- I have no idea when, or why, but I did. I never took the game particularly seriously... I did a couple of quests, and I put a lot of time in, but most of the time was spent exploring and messing around, so my skills were all at fairly low levels.
In all the time I played, my highest skills were probably in the 40-50 range- those would be things like combat, fishing and mining, as those were always my favourite things to do. I believe I played for around 1 or 2 years- I stopped partially because of some updates I didn't care for (or at the very least, they happened shortly after I stopped and discouraged me from starting again). For comparison, my brother recently got back in to the game and got to around level 80 in a couple skills... In the course of just a few months.
I have tried a few times to get back in to the game. Most notably, there were a couple of private servers I used to play on, which had around 5-10x experience gains, which makes it easier to see what the game has to offer without grinding for levels. The problem is, those servers never last long- some shut down due to technical issues, others are shut down by Jagex, and one I remember was slowly killed off by hackers and a shrinking community (which was, I should add, made for quite a dramatic and turbulent time to be playing). I gave the game another try more recently, when the Evolution of Combat update was just about to be released, and it was quite fun (if very different), but eventually even that was updated to the point of me losing interest.
The main thing I wanted to say about the game, though, was how nostalgic it is for me. Listening to some of the songs from the game (which are all very well made) can take me back to when I still played- be it cooking shrimp on tutorial island, mining in Al Kharid, or fishing on the docks of Port Sarim. It's quite sad, really- I want to get into the game again, but I'm well aware it wouldn't be the same. It's not that the game changed- they made a version that's essentially a clone of how it was in 2007- but that I have. I know everything that's in the game now, and I know what's efficient and inefficient, and honestly I've become less adventurous with age. The game used to be a different world to explore, full of wonder and magic, but now I see it for what it (technically) is- a series of tasks to be performed, requiring certain levels in skills, in order to get better levels in skills.
I guess the point applies to nostalgia in general. Even if the thing you miss still exists in its original form, there's no guarantee that you can go back to it properly. ...This is a pretty sad way to end the post I realise, but... I dunno what else to say.
Anyways, hopefully you enjoyed today's post! If you've had any experiences with this game, let me know about them!
