State of the game

In light of the recent survey controversy, I've had a lot of negative feelings toward Jagex as have many of you. I agree that MTX is a blight on this game that devalues account progression for mains and fosters gambling addiction in its customers. I'm also immensely frustrated that there has been very little discussion, progress or updates on the cutting back of MTX that was promised last year.

I feel that the CEO and execs at Jagex and its shareholders are benefiting financially year after year and taking in high profits, but despite that the actual development teams are underfunded and constantly having to shelve hotly requested updates and fixes. It really bothers me that the wealth distribution in this company (and every company, really) is so heavily skewed toward people who have zero love for the -thing- they're selling and only care about the money they can make from it. Stuffs gotta change, sooner rather than later, or the game will continue it's slow depopulation until it finally goes offline.

All that said, there are a few places where the passion for this game lives. One is with the developers, the jmods. The content that gets put out, while obviously having hits and misses, has improved in scope and polish so much over the years in my opinion and I genuinely really look forward to whatever the headliner update is for the month. Combat mastery achievements next month look great and I'm really excited to have a reason to revisit bosses I've already "completed" to work on the new stuff, without feeling the pressure of losing comp.

I think, especially with everything going on, that it can be easy to lump the mods in with Jagex as a whole and while I'm sure they're not perfect, they're not who I'm upset with at all. I'm greatly appreciative of the work and love they put into this game that means so much to me.

The other place you can find passion here is with the community. I look over this sub a couple times a week and absolutely adore seeing all the 3D prints, cosplay, cooking, tattoos, pets, and artwork from people who care about this random game from my childhood as much as I do. And even though the constant negativity and latest hate trains can get really tiring, I appreciate that for the most part, it's more people who love RuneScape but feel like the company has let them down.

It's in large part for these reasons that I stay. This game has been an integral and important part of my life since I started playing in the mid 00s. In the time since, I comped, quit, lost access to that account, started over, recomped, then trimmed. My journey is almost done, my list of long term goals gets shorter and shorter all the time. But this game will eventually go away, I want to be here til its gone and make as many memories with the people I've met on here until it does.