A love letter to RuneScape

Vision

During the pandemic I wanted to try new hobbies as well as revisit some old ones. Video editing was high on the list as something I wanted to re-visit, and when my friend asked me “What sort of games do you like, and why?” I realised I wanted to say a lot and a Discord reply wouldn’t suffice.

I didn’t want to cut any corners with this video and if I didn’t find the right copyright free resources, I was willing to pay whatever price to ensure this was the best quality I could put together. Luckily there were a lot of amazing free resources that matched what I was after such as Sakura Hz’s “chill.” track, however “Interoperability” and “Bulldog” required licensing.

Development

Video

This was my first video that I’ve made that wasn’t comedy, so the learning process of writing a script and spending months of work on editing it was completely alien to me. But thankfully, I loved every second of it. I knew I wanted to punch the viewer in the gut as soon as they started the video, so I put as much nostalgia at the beginning as I could to hook people in… including a familiar “DING” 🙂

I received a lot of help and assistance with Open RuneScape Classic on their Discord and without them this video would’ve taken much longer to complete, so I’m very thankful for their assistance with this. It was so strange having the whole of RuneScape’s map to explore all to myself, however with it being a sandbox sort of environment it really helped replicate some of my old memories such as the Dragon Slayer quest.

I spent a good month or so on x3 leveling to to get the footage required and also to complete all of the original quests. Playing them as an adult really made me appreciate the comedic dialogue a lot more.

Feedback

God you have me in tears, I have such great memories from back then. I also miss the comradely and social aspect, my most vivid memory was that someone told me TheOldNite had died in real life and that they were a great person always kind. It actually made me so sad hearing this without ever knowing him, I will never forget this (I think it was the first time it really dawned up on me that we are mortal beings). Thank you so much for making this video, RSClassic is sometimes forgotten because of the popularity of 07scape, but it deserves all the praise it gets it was truly an unrivaled experience.

YouTube Comment

Hey man, brought a tear to my eye. I still play rsc thanks to the private serv community we have, and even though we are not that many players left I still love playing classic and I always will, it becomes a part of you, rsc is so unique and special.. I wish sometimes I could go back in time and see a thousand players roaming the world. really amazingly put together and the editing was so good. Thank you.

YouTube Comment

Thanks for putting this together. It’s great to see that the work we’re putting in to try and make Classic playable again was able to help you revisit a part of your life that had special significance. I agree with you too that RuneScape has lost a lot of its indie charm and personality over the years as a result of A-B metrics, profitability, and just from expanding its team from just a dozen or so employees during the RSC era, to hundreds of different employees over the years. This video was touching, thanks.

YouTube Comment

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