Places that used to RS gold be vacant are now brimming with NPCs, quests and stories. Each inch of the world has been filled in, or sometimes expanded, in order to incorporate all of the characters, enemies and attributes that Jagex have been busy stuffing into the game for the last decade. The simple fact that Runescape is an internet game is now a bonus as opposed to its main draw. Jagex may take their match completely offline and it might still be worth playing.

But that's the biggest difference between Runescape and its running Old School Runescape counterpart. Both share roughly the exact same number of concurrent players, but how players interact in each one is quite different.

Old School Runescape may just have roughly 25,000 players at any given instant - hardly a scratch on the amounts it used to achieve in 2006 - but its players've known the game for years. They've decade-old friendships there, they know where to hang out, how to interact and almost every talking point the game and its particular history has ever produced. They wander past each other without commenting, do not all converge in the same areas for no reason or attend pretend parties in vacant attics... they simply get on with playing the match.

Runescape is best experienced as a never-ending RPG. You will find online experiences to be had there, but the ones I played through were structured and curated than anything in Old School Runescape. My memories of Runescape in 2006 entirely revolve around interacting with others. I had been scammed or lured into PvP zones and killed almost daily since I had been promised some talent from a buy old school runescape gold top level player, but as often as gamers exploited my ignorance there were also countless times that they offered to help me, taking me under their wing in testing boss battles or giving me free gear.