Really Sorry, But Can I Get A TL;DR On Runescape?

I've been away so long but yesterday I stumbled on RS (3) again, noticed that it's a downloadable client now and I was just wondering, would anyone mind summarising the past year or two? I also saw there was 80k players online, that can't be right?

Thanks!

 

New op weapons, less players, 07scape (40k players) Everything is relatively low in price (except partyhats) Good luck!

 

The game is based around microtransactions now. Skills have become way faster to train, there are over 40,000 players with maxed stats.

 

Yeah, the micro transactions have been pretty prominent for a while but I can definitely see them becoming more and more of a thing, thanks.

I also noticed about the training, firemaking and cooking you can do everything in one click which I'm fine with. I haven't played legit for more than an hour in over 4 years but I sat and training firemaking and cooking quite a bit yesterday.

You say less players, but the counter says 80k people online? 40k on old scape and 40k on RS3, but the last time I was about there was only 30 thousand spread between both? So is the counter a lie completely or is it just not "live" players? Also thanks!

Another question I'm wondering, why exactly are they banning so much for bots? I thought bots brought in money for them via membership? Or are their bans tactical against F2P?

Thanks!

 

Since everyone wants to be biased, i'll tell it how it actually is.

The whole "MTX = buyable skills!!" mantra is a half-truth. You get bonus XP and still have to train the skill. (majority of MTX updates are cosmetic related. AKA: FashionScape)
New T90 weapons released with the new bosses and they are undeniably more difficult than their predecessors.
Elf City was released, basically the XP is good and AFK.
tl;dr the game has become easier, but what's wrong with that? Nothing, only elitists cry about that.
PvP has virtually 100% died out except for WB's. (WB's doesn't even technically count) Legacy is the only place you'll find "active" PvP.
Jagex continues to pump out PvE related content with no end in sight, completely ignoring the PvP community.

Moving on.

OSRS released F2P. (this resulted in their player-count equaling RS3's, people who say "OSRS has more players!" they're not being entirely truthful. At certain times it will be higher, in retrospect, so does RS3 at times, it's neck and neck)
I actually can't comment on anything other than that on OSRS since I gave up on it, I find it boring so you'll have to ask someone else about it.

There's inherent potential for both. OSRS seems to have the edge as the OSRS developer team works closely with players via their polls. RS3's developer team hasn't figured that out yet after 3~ years so... yeah.