The year is 2007. I’m in 7th grade and all my friends and classmates are abuzz with some game called Runescape. It’s this game you play online with other people and there’s so much to do!

I was no stranger to playing games in a web browser. These were the prime years of gaming when Miniclip and Newgrounds were the go to source for free games. But unlike those flash games, this one saved your progress.

Runescape wasn’t my first introduction to online games but it was close. That honor goes to the colorful world of Club Penguin. I remember playing around with my friends in that game but when I look back I’m not sure what we saw in it. Maybe it was the novelty of talking to other people, however limited that may have been. More likely it was my first introduction to dress up with online games and I was enamored with getting the next piece of clothing.

I remember it took me a while to catch on to the Runescape hype. But I don’t remember what it was that finally got me to play. It was probably the fact that it was all my friends were talking about at the time and I wanted to be included. This was

Runescape became the only game I played for a good 1.5 years. What I liked the most was there were skills to level up that didn’t involve fighting. I could be a cook, I could fish, I could make armor. Most of my days weren’t spent fighting monsters but chopping trees and mining ore. In fact, the only reason I participated in combat at all was to hang out with my friends.

During the summer we’d all meet up at the library to play on their computers together. You’re library card got your 1 hour of computer time so when our hour was up we’d go do other things. I had one friend who collected other people’s library card numbers so he could play all day since he didn’t have a computer at home.

Eventually, I moved on to Guild Wars.But I’d always look for games that had the same amount of non combat skills as Runescape and never quite found one. Runescape was so niche and started many, many years of MMO gaming. I’ve been curious to go back and see if it would still hold my interest today.