RS from a gaming standpoint is average. You fight things, you gain levels, you get gold. Once in a while you complete quests for rewards of stat gains and useful items.
From a role-playing standpoint it is hideous. Many of the free-world players are what you would consider \"n00b\"s. Most of them do not comprehend the value of role play in an RPG. As a result Misthalin and her sister kingdoms aren\'t worlds to be conquered or explored, they are text on a JPEG.
At one time, the world of RS was significantly more tame: it had a stable economy, and players seemed more respectful of others. Small fan-sites popped up here and there and all was well.
After it grew in popularity, the forums of such fansites became home to elitist \"oldbies,\" holding the same hatred you all do for the now average RS player.
There was no official RS forum until about a year ago, and even now it remains a poorly maintained newsgroup-style BBS moderated by a few of the disgruntled ex-members of the elitist communities mentioned earlier. No real discussion exists there, only inquiries regarding the best locations to PK or train fishing.
RS will not go out of business anytime soon. It has been around about the same amount of time PS-3D has existed. It began humbly as a rather simple free-to-play Java-based RPG consisting of two towns and three levels of armor. (sound familiar, anyone?) Now it has three continents and thousands of avid fans.
There is no point in lowering yourselves to the level of the few RS players that apparently harassed this community some time ago. They do not represent the whole. Many older RS players find those sort of actions intolerable.
Players of RS will inevitably find PS, just as players of PS will happen upon RS, but that does not make players of either game inherently bad. To make such ludicrous assertions that the opposite is true is, in my opinion, absolutely absurd.
~Indi (Snokitty: Level 82 Combat, 84 Cooking, 82 Fishing)
