I’m really enjoying the way the quests are written. The story so far has pulled me in much more thoroughly than the early RuneScape quests did.

It feels more like RuneScape did in the early days when you played the game … and not to just “gain XP and level up.”

I think Brighter Shores also has that “gain XP and level up” dopamine hit, but it’s clearly been designed to keep you doing different things and bouncing around more and minimize the “I’m going to spend 30 hours at my computer doing the same thing over and over to get the next level” sort of thing that made RuneScape so famously grindy.

The way the game sort of “levels up” areas with you and the explanation of how each new chapter is supposed to make leveling things up again feel new is fantastic as well because it means over the long term we should see places continue to feel lively. RuneScape especially as it got older suffered from areas just feeling like wastelands because new content would be added and higher level players would abandon the old areas.

As a long time RuneScape player, I can see that Brighter Shores was carefully designed to resolve some these design issues with a long running MMO … and that itself is really exciting to me.

I’ve also loved to see Andrew Gower back in the driver’s seat and pushing out thoughtful blogs, quick patches, etc.