Brighter Shores, the new massively multiplayer game (MMO) from one of RuneScape’s creators, is essentially “What if RuneScape was made by the same people, but older?”
That is to say, what if Andrew Gower, instead of being 23 years old, was, in fact, 46 years old and was tackling the game knowing everything he had learned since leaving Jagex in 2010? This would be great, but if you were expecting a revolution from Brighter Shores, it is more iteration.
It’s also incredibly RuneScape.
Trapped in the RuneScape
It’s a lot of repetitive grinding tasks in a twee British-skewed world, except the major difference is a genuine idea of how to string the player along to actually have an overarching sense of accomplishment. Everything from fishing, mining, fighting, and even sillier stuff like cooking all works into the main loop of the game.
It’s the same loop as RuneScape, just more pronounced. It’s obvious that an early given quest of catching a “fetid flounder” – that required level 25 fishing skill to complete – was intended as a massive trap to keep you from eating through the game too fast.
I completed it now, but I’ve been playing the game for nearly two weeks at a regular human pace. It’s endearing, and a little soulless right now, but Brighter Shores really is RuneScape but if it wasn’t made for lunatics.
Actual RuneScaper – RuneScape-e? – weighs in
My partner has played RuneScape 3 for seven years, which is now a vastly different game to what you probably remember from late primary school or high school computer time shenanigans. Charlotte describes it as RuneScape but faster, with a harsher wall to climb after a certain portion. At that point, they mention, it’s when they want you to pay.
That style of gap is present in Brighter Shores, but for what seems to solely be to keep players on the wheel longer with such limited content.
That old style of the game still technically exists, dubbed Old School RuneScape, and is the purer form of the game, less kind than its successor. You’ll have to contend with the time capsule limits in the game, like how slow that game can be if you’re not watching slop on YouTube at the same time.
Old School RuneScape, once you leave the tutorial area, zaps you into town and says, Go.
Go where? I guess I’m making bread – goblins?!
It can be quite overwhelming – even after my three year on/off relationship with it – when you’ve spent a month with World of Warcraft which quite literally points you where you need to go. Unless you install RuneLite and now that’s an entire other rabbit hole.
Old School RuneScape has been dissected on the level of something like World of Warcraft. There’s nothing like seeing breakdowns of World of Warcraft, but only comparable to an entire, officially “Jagex thumbs upped” third-party client, that breaks down the exact actions needed to level up, marking things on maps by splitting the entire gameworld into a grid. Able to zoom out even further than anticipated by the game, showing off its gaping black void in the sky.
runescape is 23 years old today. time to fish.
— joel (@joel.zone) January 5, 2024 at 10:07 PM
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But even then, you need to push the ball to get things rolling. Sure there’s a whole bulleted list of quest solutions that you can use in RuneLite, but you need to be motivated enough to start it or go smelt some ores for several hours.
Brighter Shores, on the other hand, still masks a lot of the super granular areas. You can’t see how many whacks it’ll take to level up mining. It does, however, have another trick up its sleeve: a main quest.
We’re talking MMOs, of course WoW was going to get brought up
It shuffles you, WoW, into its dragon politics heavy expansion, Dragonflight, when you start and that’s kind of like a sink-or-swim situation too. Who are these guys, why are they still talking? Then you suddenly have a dragon, just flying over all this “content”.
God, I love World of Warcraft. Do you know how good it feels to play that game? It’s a little crusty, but big numbers never fail to make my brain go “awooga”.
Tugging the thread in Brighter Shores
Charlotte, the RuneScape addict, says that RuneScape still kind of dumps you into the world and expects you to swim. The gaming laptop we share is filled with internet history going to the RuneScape Wiki for guides and tables.
The thing with Brighter Shores is that it has a main questline. It’s not the biggest overbearing thing in the world. It seems to be more of a way to get you acquainted with the game better. Go talk to this guy, don’t worry, he’s on the path you need to pass through anyway. It just keeps the potential for disorder and disorientation from what’s possible in-game from spiraling too far off.
This careful balance of guidance and letting the player off the lead, it’s very naked. It also bares its fangs of the absurd quest design in RuneScape.
RuneScape’s quests are a mixed bag. You’ve got the standard MMO fare of killing a certain number of creatures, but also heavy point-and-click inspirations too. That “there’s no real hint of what I’m supposed to do” and “figure it out, it’s all there.”
It’s quite similar in Brighter Shores. A quest needed me to write a letter. It’s the fetid flounder quest again, it’s fresh in the memories. That letter needed to go into the fish to be used as a handoff.
At no point did the game, or if it did, very early on, ever point out where the quill and paper were. It just assumes you’re going to move the mouse over every object and click away. I’m not here for fun and games,I’m here to move this torrid last-minute written dialogue on as fast as possible, so I can play the real game here.
For a game seemingly designed on the notion of saving aging RuneScape fans’ time, it’s an odd element to keep in.
In comparison, RuneScape still seems fixed on that “let them run free” mentality. Last year, my partner achieved level 99 in Fire Making. They’ve also made so much money most of their time questing has devolved into buying the needed item from other players and skipping large portions of the gathering element of the loop.
my darling @biggertits.bsky.social reached lvl 99 in fire making yesterday on runescape
— joel (@joel.zone) August 1, 2023 at 12:21 PM
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Brighter Shores has directly implemented in-game shops that will sell you the necessary materials to increase your level in that particular skill to help progress another quest elsewhere. Getting starfish requires level 18 gathering and I’d rather just spend my little coppers and silvers on them than spend three hours right now getting there myself. Do you know how much cash I made making jellied eels – it’s British didn’t you know – for the scrapyard manager? A lot. I did that at least three times.
Brighter Shores has also solved one of Old School RuneScape’s worst issues: sharing resources. If someone is mining a rock in OSRS, you can’t use it. In Brighter Shores, it doesn’t care and lets you get on with what you’re doing.
In tandem, it doesn’t spread each kind of resource into different areas. An upgraded version of Oak won’t now be in the more dangerous area of the forest. It belongs in that node. When you hit the higher level in say, woodcutting, and you need the better tree to earn more XP for the loop, it just replaces the tree already there.
Which is also just a great design choice. It keeps what you’d think were lower levelled areas populated with all sorts of players. That one person who spots the guy sprinting by with his cape, now jealous, spends their day fishing with their anonymous compatriots in the river. Nothing ever feels empty, because the whole bird of the city is constantly in use for one reason or another. The starter area will always be bustling because the kitchen and potion shops are right there.
It respects your time, at least right now.
Primordial ooze: Early Access MMO
RuneScape 3 is riddled with microtransactions and keys to unlock treasure chests with sometimes very useful items. As Charlotte said, there’s a business going on here. They need more than that £7.99 a month. However, the Old School RuneScape players would actively start riots in the streets if it ever graced that game.
Brighter Shores, despite being incredibly early access, does offer a subscription. It unlocks further areas, which is my only bugbear. However, the game keeps dragging me in, again, despite being incredibly early access.
It’s so weird playing an MMO that is so much still in a primordial ooze, where a recent patch allowed you to click on the map to move your character was responded to with “I’m gonna bust” in a probably, severely sincere way. Nearly every big patch, some new feature gets added and makes the game that little bit easier to play.
It’s so weird to play an MMO so early that in six to twelve months, I could be writing a hit piece on Andrew Gower.
Gameplay loops and rewarding yourself
There’s a lot of busy work, as with RuneScape, however, Brighter Shores offers more than the incentive of earning XP. You’ll earn knowledge points too, which when they hit 100%, can be converted into XP for other skills – so you’re never entirely wasting time working on something else – or cash. Another element that opens up when a skill reaches level 20, is that you can participate in these passive skilling tasks. These don’t require you to even be online, as if you log out, your little fellow will continue for up to 24 hours just working on this one task.
It’s ingenious, it’s not new, just look at the idle genre, but it’s an incredible addition to this loop. This endless grinding loop. Even when you’re away, you can be safe in knowing that the number is going to get bigger. It’s like a prize whenever you log back in. I love it. It’s absolutely something that a nearly 50-year-old game designer would consider including. Who has the time to sit in front of the computer all day long these days? Who wants to? Have you seen the internet?
Everything about Brighter Shores isn’t just about “improving” RuneScape. It feels like it is designed by people who respect your time, more than anything.
Here’s an incredibly bleak way to put it:
Sure, you’re going to be grinding for hours fishing for a cape, only to realise that there are like 500 levels per skill and you just hit 50. But you didn’t have to be there for it all. You earned those coins from selling Appetizing Bacon Sandwiches after work. You bought those sea slugs and crates. Now, you’re catching the dabs, to boost the fishing skill to finally catch that fetid flounder.
I work alone…
The last real thing to point out is that the game seems massive on privacy. It understands that, no, I don’t want to interact with the other humans in this MMO, really. Especially now, where there’s no real need to do that anyway. There’s no trading or big interconnected exchange, it’s a fairly solitary fare right now. You can block your name entirely, turn off the chat, and in an incredibly smart move, each section of the area you’re in is essentially a different instance. If you leave and return, you could be with an entirely different set of people.
It’s also nice to just float through the world without ever speaking to anyone. Everyone just doing their business. Like a real English street, ey? Geddit, send that one to your dad. UKmemes will love it.
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