I'll try to stay as civilized as possible, sorry to those who were hoping for a nerdrager.

First of all, I have played runescape for about 5 years in total. 2002-2003 was my first RS experience. This is where my earliest memory of the game is also from - picking a bunch of halloween masks in low wilderness during the holidays. I returned shortly after RS2 was released, and then took a longer break until 2007. And now in 2010, I have finally quit this game once and for all. Currently waiting for Rift / TSW and playing America's Army 3 when I can be bothered. Anyway, on to the topic at hand.

Gameplay -  It gets constantly more babyfied and simplified to hand everything to the new players on a silver plattern. Example is the Lumbridge tutors, advisor system, beginner area borders. None of these things existed in the old days, and no-one complained really. It gave the game that wild feel and the possibility to explore the game yourself instead of constantly being babysitted by jagex beginner systems. Another thing that bothers me is the instantly completely opened world map and quest list. There is no excitement in going into a place you have never been before, because you can just open the world map and see everything that is there. Same goes for quest list. Every single quest in the game is in that list from the start. Instead of letting players individually explore the game and find quests as they go, jagex gives you all quests with the start points, sometimes even with the items needed. The best approach would have been to only add in-progress quests to the list, not every single quest in the game. Also you can't enter any dungeon or dangerous area in the game without getting 5 warning screens in the process. They warn you how you can die, drown, get poisoned and what not. Well that's why we play a game, to get something we don't get in real life, so let us explore without babysitting!

Grindfest - The amount of repetitive grind in this game is just disgusting. I'm not really surprised that half of the game bots their stats. Hunter cape isn't even called hunter cape anymore, it's called botter cape. Why? Because the popular training spots are always full of bots who never say anything. JaGeX has said that they haven't seen a bot yet that their bot-detection software can't detect. Well obviously you can't see it when your detection software only detects about 5% of all bots. (made-up statistic)

So let's have a look at the reasons why people bot. Getting a skill from 1 to 99. The hours aren't the same for everyone, just the commonly accepted times. You can see just how many people bot when an update occurs. Every bot in the game gets owned by an update and won't be back until the human puts him back in. This can result in 100k players before an update, and 60k people around 30 minutes after one.

Strength - 200 hours of grind

Ranged - 220 hours of grind

Fishing - 280 hours of grind

Herblore - 30 hours of grind and 300 mil gp (more reason to bot)

Mining - 280 hours of grind

Runecrafting - 300 hours of grind

Hunter - 160 hours of grind

The list follows a similar pattern for every other of the 25 skills in the game. This is why I never blame the botters, I blame the company. After all these hours of nolife, people will discover that endgame content is boring and flawed at best. PvP will only make you a reasonable profit if you get a kill:death ratio of 5:1 or higher. God wars dungeon is all about repeating one boss 30 times every hour and hoping for that high value drop so you are one step closer to that 600 mil divine spirit shield. Where's the fun in that? Lets face it, 99% of the game is based (made-up statistic) on repetitive grind. Not all is bad though. The only good memories of RS are from questing, which is probably the only 0% repetition thing to do in the whole game. Every quest is with a unique storyline and NPCs. After you finish them in lets say, a few months, then it's back to the same old repetitive grind.

In addition to endless repetitive grind, there really isn't any useful reward for getting a 99 skill, just a skillcape, good for showing off, not so good for anything else. 99 strength could let you modify some popular weapons, giving them more str bonus, 99 mining could let you mine any ore in no longer than 10 seconds. But no, we get skillcapes.

PvP - or player vs. EP. I call it this because if you want any profit, you will be spending most of your time sitting in a quiet place, not fighting people. Pvp used to be completely without restrictions, you could go in the wilderness with any gear you want, kill anyone you want, get all his items, come out and be a rich person. This is no longer the case. These days you wait 2 hours in a not-so-crowded place till your EP (drop potential) goes to 100%, and then you can go kill someone. If you kill 100 mil at 0 ep, you will get a addy sq shield or mithril platebody at best. Even at 100 EP, you will most likely get a 1m drop from killing 100 mil. This is JaGeX's pathetic attempt to get real world trading out of the game. But guess what, it's still there. The only thing they got out of the game was the PvP community who was extremely disappointed by these decisions. More people started botting for money to make up for what they lost in pvp, just to keep pvp'ing like they used to. PvP can make or break a game, and in this game it's certainly breaking it. Not to mention the 0/1-itemers in pvp, they waste people's food, vengeance, time, and money, and they are everywhere. Need your special attack back to 100%? just attack a random person and annoy him until he kills you - this is what most of the rushers do these days.

Economy - The world-wide trading auction house, grand exchange, is a breeding ground for merch clans, scam clans, price manipulators and pyramid schemes. All would be well if the seller could enter any price he wants, and there wouldn't be any set price for every item. Potions, food, armor, weapons can become completely unbuyable just because scam clans buy out all of the supplies and create an artificial demand, which pumps up the price of their selected item. The average player is suffering for their actions, sometimes he can't buy potions for a boss, sometimes he can't sell his herbs because they are being mass-sold by a scam clan. This has forced richer people to make their bank into a warehouse, having a supply of all potions, food, useful weapons, just to be independant of grand exchange. Free trade was completely removed, every trade has to be balanced. This has forced RWT-ers to simply move on to other methods of making real money.

Customer Support - Crippled. First of all, appealing an offense. Appeals that have good detail, legit proof and valid points, usually get declined. Appeals like 'AMG cat on keyboard' get accepted. This has been tested and proven by many people. Secondly, Jagex avoids any sensitive topic about their game. Jmods never ever post on topics about the flaws of their game, or how botting ruined runescape, or how half the player base is gone thanks to removing oldschool pvp. Even when you manage to see a Jmod in a clan chat, and 2 people ask a question.

Player1: Hey Mod ****, i herd u liek mudkipz?!

Player2: What is jagex planning to do about the large amount of bots in runescape?

Mod ****: yes i quite fancy some nice mudkipz ^.^

A few other issues, you can report a bug in the game, and it can still be there 2 years later. You can be banned for botting at any time even though you didn't bot. Botting is a good excuse for jagex to ban a random person, because they don't have to show you the evidence that you botted. This is to 'prevent botters finding new methods to avoid the bot detection system'

Last but not least, the game is incredibly addicting. You can start out with 2 hours a day with no problem, but soon you'll be hooked and playing 12 hours a day or longer. You simply can't compete with old players unless you play a lot. At 2 hours a day, it can take 3 years or longer until you can finally go out and defeat a 120+ player. 2 hour a day players will be remembered as 'the kid i 3-hit in soul wars' or 'that dude who died to a revenant at green dragons'.

I probably forgot some stuff but these are the most important issues.

I didn't read your whole post as it was pretty lengthy, but I skimmed it to get the jist of it.

I honestly find it funny reading posts like yours, those types of post that say something along the lines of I played this game for 5 years and it sucks and I finally quit. 

It didn't always suck, i quite enjoyed getting to know the game in the first few years, then jagex started with their world saving updates and it has been going downhill from there. Last 3 years i have been playing just in the hope that maybe one day they will come out with a good update.

Originally posted by Mazin

I didn't read your whole post as it was pretty lengthy, but I skimmed it to get the jist of it.

I honestly find it funny reading posts like yours, those types of post that say something along the lines of I played this game for 5 years and it sucks and I finally quit. 

I don't see what's funny. This guy has a legitimate experience. This guy is a veteran. However, I find funny the fact that trolls like you exist in a highly moderated forum like this.

The problem is the same as with most of the gaming industry now.  It's run by greedy corparate types, who only have eyes for the money and don't view it as an art form.  Ever wonder why games are getting shorter, less original and easy?

Originally posted by NasherUK

The problem is the same as with most of the gaming industry now.  It's run by greedy corparate types, who only have eyes for the money and don't view it as an art form.  Ever wonder why games are getting shorter, less original and easy?

 They're not running a charity. Ask UNICEF to make you a game.

And in order to grow their business, they need to reduce the barrier to entry to those players that are 5 years behind everybody else if starting out anew.

And to the original poster, he sounds as though he's mad for being busted for botting. Like he just haasd to bot.

see this is where purported veteran players just put on blinders. Sure devs could make a game " you" want. However contrary to what you believe the game will have a very limited appeal. The game with a small populations would have a very small staff, get few updates and would be floating on a small budget which if some form of unplanned for cost arose like say server rent increases or something, the game suddenly finds itself in the red, and if it continues to try to stay a game " you" want, the game ends up going belly up. The simple fact is games need money to survive, if that means eroding the entrance barrier to people whom might actually enjoy the game more than you and actually pay more so they get more content and features...oh well...capitalism works for a reason.

I think this game kinda blew, I would have played it, it looked kind of fun, but who wants to play a game that is F2P with advertisments at the top of your screen all the time, that kind of blows, and I like a full screen look, and that is only available to members, and that is really stupid, I think games like this that are F2P, should actually be F2P, and quit faking it. I don't care to much for Guild Wars but I would say play that over this anytime, at least it actually is really F2P.

You talking about botting?Remember level 3 bots?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwMjiYJFs88

where are they now?

Still exist but not that much compare to what it was before RWT update.

And yes i agree RWT ruined PVP but it also reduced massive amount of Bots on RS .

All Mmos are suffering Botting And RWT,Some are completely dead like 2moons other are dieing slowly Ex: SRO(silkroad)

They did all this to save their asses otherwise things could have gotten a lot worse.

And btw you don't have to max  to 99 to enjoy the game

There's a lot noobs at level 20+ having fun in wild :)

Originally posted by Oenone

I think this game kinda blew, I would have played it, it looked kind of fun, but who wants to play a game that is F2P with advertisments at the top of your screen all the time, that kind of blows, and I like a full screen look, and that is only available to members, and that is really stupid, I think games like this that are F2P, should actually be F2P, and quit faking it. I don't care to much for Guild Wars but I would say play that over this anytime, at least it actually is really F2P.

Actually you can play it with full screen as a free member, trying google once in awhile. You may amaze yourself. http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?p=3403760

Just got there to look how it changed.

Before all I must admit they approve tutorial system & help newbies to get money fast by doing tasks, it works well.

Now mobs are not aggressive in starting areas & game is enjoyable at low levels ( before grind ).

Bots are back too...

My browser keep close RS window for data protection, somehow they manage to try data violation (no clue how & why). It very annoying & I never seen such issue before.

For less grind & way more fun, don't count of f2p, pay member & look how game mechanic may change=D

Fortunately now items stay longer on the ground after your death, managed to run & recover all with my new char.