4 ms·
Runescape was incredible for the time, I played even before there was a paid membership, starting around 2000. There were so many great features like cooking be
by nivenkos 4y ago
Runescape was incredible for the time, I played even before there was a paid membership, starting around 2000. There were so many great features like cooking being useful for people heading to mine rare ores in the wilderness so you'd have cooks naturally lined up on the border trying to sell stuff.
The wilderness PvP worked with a level gap system, so when we went out as a group it was good to bring some mid-level characters to be able to suddenly attack lower-level players in the early wilderness who wouldn't expect it. That really felt like D&D - having someone prepare meals beforehand, etc.
It's a shame most games have given up on that systemic, open-world player driven style of game. Back then with Ultima VII, Baldur's Gate, Runescape, Daggerfall, Ultima Underworld, etc. it really felt like in 20 years we'd be playing games like Daggerfall persistently with thousands of players online.
And instead it's just devolved into Skinner boxes and microtransactions.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoWhile it's not as open as Runescape, some games still have this feeling of a persistent world; a friend of mine mentioned building an automated shop in a Minecraft server to sell things to other players. Games like Rust and Valheim allows you to shape your world, although it's not "massively" unfortunately. Before Minecraft, there was a game called Wurm Online (the creator of Minecraft was involved in that) where players could band together and (tediously) shape the world around them. The other side is modern-day MMOs; I mainly play FFXIV and have done so for a long time now, and while it doesn't have the freedoms as Runescape had, it's still a great game with a pretty good community and ad-hoc community activities.
- nivenkos 4y agoValheim was great, my friends and family hosted a persistent instance on AWS so we could play from all over the world. It was awesome building bridges and then finding someone else had built a new base the next day, etc.
- smcn 4y agoI still have a few friends who play 2007scape and it looks like the thing to do these days is Ironman mode, which is just "no trading with other players". It's apparently fun in a North Korean self reliance kind of a way. No microtransactions at all. I've been tempted to join them but I currently lack the time to get addicted to it again.