My thoughts and feelings towards RuneScape have changed immensely over the past few months. I first started playing 6 or 7 years ago, when I was just a wee little kiddy in the 6th grade. I started for the same reason that many of the people I have met along my journeys started. RuneScape was an escape. Escape from the real world, escape from school (main point, haha) and escape from parents!
My first account was on RSC. I quit that after a while. It never made it past level 4 and I lost interest. The funny thing about this account was that I thought I had broken RuneScape by using it. You see, I had logged out in a potato patch, and way back in the day when I first started playing, we only had a very, very, VERY slow dial-up connection. So every time I tried to log in, I would get the same frustrating message: “You have lost connection to server. Please wait while we try to re-establish a connection…” After what felt like a million tries, my little 10-year-old mind ran wild. I thought my account broke RuneScape! I thought Jagex would come after me, and make me fix their game. I then quit for a month or two, fearing that the big bad Jagex would come and take my cookies.
They didn’t come. I figured that it was safe to go back on again. Still, I decided to play it safe, creating another account, which was completely different from the first one. That way they couldn’t track me down! Muahahahaha. (This is obviously before I knew about I.P. addresses :D) By the time I had started playing again Jagex had released the RuneScape we all know and love today. I started seeing all these high levels around (they were level 50+!) and I wanted to be just like them. So I trained and trained until I got to their level. When I did, at first I was ecstatic. Then, about 30 seconds later a level 70 walked past. Back in those days that was big news for me and I thought, I want to be like them! So I trained and trained until I was level 70, and again, the novelty of the situation wore off when a level 126 walked past wearing full Saradomin. As you can probably imagine, I was quite shocked and amazed at this RuneScapian’s skills and, once again, I wanted to be just like this guy.
That day came quite a long time after my initial plans to make the long hard journey to 126 combat. After 9 other level 99 skills, I finally reached the coveted level 126. But this level felt different from all the other smaller achievements that I had made throughout my RuneScape career. It was… boring. Almost like getting level 40 in cooking after buying all the raw food. I knew it was a great achievement; my nooby friend kept telling me so. But it just didn’t feel… good. I believe that after achieving this goal I realized how much I had been missing out on in Real Life™ that it just made me feel like… cabbage. In my peak I was getting around 2-3 million experience in a week. On school days. That is too much playtime, no matter what your situation. I could probably understand if you were doing it in a fast exp skill like cooking or fire making, but when you’re getting that much in a week from woodcutting, it’s probably time you slow down a bit, go outside and smell the roses. I know I wish I did. I’m not saying I regret everything about playing so much – I mean, I made amazing friends out of it, people who I will never forget – but things like not keeping up with my studies to play a game, that’s what I regret.
What I’m trying to say is, enjoy your time on RuneScape, but don’t forget Real Life™ needs some attention too sometimes, and school work should always come before games. I am studying for my Higher School Certificate (It’s a 12th grade thing here in NSW, Australia) and I really regret not having discipline earlier on – it would help me so much right now. So, if you can relate to the above and you’re in high school, or soon to be, listen to what I say. I have been in your situation and the end result will not be so pretty.
P.S. My Tip.It account name is my “noob” account’s name –the stats prove the above.
