[The degradation of Old School RS]

A lot of the themes raised in this thread have also been attributed to the so-called "deaths" of other MMORPGs. I'm not sure if a lot of this criticism is about OSRS vs EoC RS specifically, or a trend that can translated generally to the genre, which when you look at the video gaming industry as a whole, is a weak genre, and getting weaker by the year. The loss of the "laid back, sociable" community can probably be explained by the recent rise of arcade-era gaming genres which are more casual-friendly, and are more able to provide the emotional experience those groups of people are wanting from a game.

 

If there's any part of RuneScape which was most to blame for driving those groups away from RuneScape, it was probably skillcapes and their consequent unrelenting focus on achievement-setting and goal-planning, not EoC. If you accept that, you accept that the damage was done many years ago (predating OSRS) and the current situation is more a scarring from actions taken back then. I know people (and I'd hardly describe them as 'efficienados') who quite casually talk about spending seven or eight hours per day grinding a skill to achieve 99 by a certain date. No matter how much you look at EoC, while that mentality exists across the whole community, you will never attract the kind of people who only want to play/can only play for one, two, maybe three hours a day, while taking things at a slow pace so they can be more sociable and laid back. Skillcapes, more than anything else, removed any notion that you could play RuneScape on a casual basis and still hope to progress at a pace relative to anyone else around you.

 

tl;dr -- The "death" of RuneScape's community is more likely due to competition from outside the MMORPG genre, and even if there is a problem with RuneScape driving people away, it's not likely to be EoC.

 

Probably the best response on this thread thus far.

 

I remember back in 2003-2004 I was able to level at my own pace and still keep up with the vast majority of players. Now with this "grind" mentality existing across both EoC and Old School, I'm having to play several hours per day in order to keep up.

 

Personally I feel the "death" of Runescape's community is a combination of competition from other genres along with Jagex's incompetence to please the majority. The bottom line is several factors contributing to the decline, too many to list in one post.

[Forgot how to Plunder efficently.]

I'm not quite sure if Pyramid Plunder is worth it at 56 Thieving. I didn't really do it until I was 85 Thieving on my original account, which I managed to get before Pyramid Plunder was released.

 

Penance Gloves/Spottier Cape/Boots of Lightness are good for cutting weight, which really helps your run energy. The rest depends how lucky you are in looting the urns.

 

I usually keep all the gold items and sell them to the NPC. Made a good bit of money doing that after getting 17M-18M XP or so on Pyramid Plunder on my main.

[Number of Nats p/hr in Abyss]

If you want to be quick I would suggest using Mousekeys and buying up a few Super Energy pots to keep yourself going.

 

I found that simply walking to the Abyss is too slow and generally not worth it. Especially since a while ago I was PKed twice while I was Abyss RCing Natures.

[Old School RS Screenshots, Videos, and Sounds!]

Very impressive work. Especially with the Visage drop.

 

Haven't got anything significant yet in terms of skills or drops yet, so hopefully I'll get something good soon.

[Future of Old School RuneScape playerbase]

This is to be expected, because Old School Runescape isn't getting many new players, if any. Most new accounts are simply bots and gold farmers.

 

F2P will only bring in more bots and gold farmers. So there's really not a whole lot Jagex can do at this point.

 

Save for a few hardcore players, I find it very likely that Old School will die out by next year. Such additions as GWD might be a possibility, but it's been deemed too controversial to even be considered adding into the game.

 

We're at a lose-lose situation.