From its low-poly graphics to its point-and-click interface, Old School is about as barebones as it gets, but simplicity isn't always a bad thing. It is about improving your account by reaching the end lines you set for yourself, whether that's earning enough money to purchase an expensive thing or training a skill to 99. You decide what you want to do, and also with each landmark you hit, you unlock new things to do. It's a hugely engrossing RuneScape gold cycle for the right sort of player, but it's not always an enjoyable one.

I moved to Old School with a definite short-term goal in mind: complete Recipe for Disaster, Runescape's hardest and famous pursuit. To do this, I would need to finish dozens of different quests and instruct multiple skills to adequate levels, which makes it a great way to find a lot of the sport in a brief time. For new players, it's also the ideal means to learn the way Runescape handles quests.

There is no defined effort or primary storyline in Runescape. Rather, its universe is fleshed out through quests which are structured like short stories. Runescape's quests are not disposable jobs such as the fetch quests you pick up from random NPCs in many MMOs--at least, the majority of them are not. They're loaded with branching dialogue, unique puzzles cheap RS gold and endearingly janky cutscenes.

In one pursuit, by building a research tower I unwittingly helped a lot of researchers develop a homunculus, then I had to calm the perplexed, malformed being I'd helped produce. In another, I uncovered a fraudulent plague that a king had used to quarantine half his kingdom in order to cover some demonic dealings. Recipe for Disaster is all about rescuing committee members by the Culinaromancer, a powerful food magician, by feeding them their preferred dish.