I aim to be the weatherman, not the whether-man. I try to say what happened, what is happening, and what appears likely to happen. I try to keep my biases in check, although that is not always possible or easy.

This post is mostly personal opinion, based on data, research, and experience.

I do not think RS3 is failing yet. But the player counts do not look great. I do think it is worth discussing how Jagex should in the future use surveys more effectively than it has in the past.

EoC is a great comparison because Jagex made a consequential decision in 2012 after sending out surveys to players who no longer played the game. According to RS WillMissIt's video, Jagex found that the combat system and people's friends leaving were major reasons why players had left. Enter EOC.

Here is a list of EoC changes that I curated. Please read this list and tell me which type of RuneScaper you believe was most impacted.

If your answer to my question was PKers, player killers, PvP players, correct.

I recall that most of my friends moved to OSRS after EoC. I think most of the major PKing clans moved there also.

OSRS gave old PKers 2007 RS again, an active play style based on the old combat system. And they were later joined by PVMers, and then even later by new age OSRS skillers. OSRS also had very good community managers in the JMod team who understood the game and that specific community.

Back then, EoC highlighted an age-old divide in RuneScape: skillers versus PKers. The skillers stayed on RS3 and the PKers went to OSRS.

It should also be noted that people with immense sunk costs also stayed: rare traders, high-level accounts, big banks, and probably people who just liked the RS3 version of the game.

Jagex essentially nullifying how PKers enjoyed the game ran off 25 to 35% of the active player base in 2012, and you could still argue the ripple effects are being felt now, 14 years later, and it could possibly get even worse.

Are we seeing this repeat today?

Feedback to fix or change game mechanics sourced from people who left the game is not a surefire way to bring those players back to the game or retain existing players. Those players may have left even if those issues had been resolved before they left, and there still may have been no correlation with what might be appealing, what might be satisfying, and what might actually bring those players back to the game.

Jagex should have been more balanced in 2012 when asking players for feedback. They not only should have done an exit interview, but a stay interview.

So what went wrong for RS3?

Many currently believe that MTX caused the degradation of skill achievements, and it has. But so has Time. So have normal updates and natural game progression.

Pyramid Plunder was released in roughly 2005 or 2006, and it was roughly 180K Thieving XP per hour. Before that, the best XP was likely Ardougne guards. I recall Herbaman refusing to do Pyramid Plunder because he thought that it would taint his achievement, and he finished 200M Thieving on Ardougne guards.

High-level PKers used to disparage other players who used Pest Control, labeling them PC products. The reason was that they believed Pest Control ruined the game because it made combat advancement easier. It created too many high-level accounts, degraded the achievement of combat stats, and made PKing harder because more players would return to fights or run-ins, and those players had built up more gear and bigger banks than previous generations had.

What people were really complaining over was the loss of Imbalance. Pest Control was making the game more balanced and therefore less fun to high-level players.

I am recalling these examples because this is what is happening now. The people who are complaining about skill degradation are making the same argument that people made over Pest Control. These are likely people who have high-level accounts on RS3 and are simply upset because currently there are over 6,000 players who have max XP. These are players whose accounts have become just another brick in the wall.

I think that the truth is that the game has simply become more balanced, allowing people with less time available to achieve more and compete with people who have an infinite amount of time available.

Solutions

1.Reduce the Number of Max Players

One solution could be to reduce the number of people who are maxed.

OSRS distracts players with content that is fun and satisfying, such as PvM, PvP, and community-based achievements. In OSRS, being a part of the community is kind of the endgame.

OSRS has roughly 51 max XP players right now, whereas RS3 has over 6,000. There are probably more skillers on OSRS. Why have more of them not obtained max XP? A lot of the same skilling methods are available. If 51 people have done it, why not more? I think the answer is that on OSRS, being max XP is not the endgame like it is on RS3.

However, from what I have read, maxing in general is becoming more of the endgame for OSRS. So I would hypothesize that as that becomes more true, we are likely to see the same arguments on OSRS about how the game has gotten too easy.

2.The Value of AFK

Mod Hooli has said AFK is a valuable reward himself.

Mod Hooli (Nov. 12, 2025)

We hear you - definitely not the plan to only deliver AFK skilling! We just understand the lack of AFK methods in some skills contributes to why MTX items were so valued and helped keep the game be accessible for some. It doesn't mean those solutions need to be the only way we offer skilling updates, or that they have to be the best / most potent options. 120 Thieving's Heists are very active. We also have some other active skilling stuff in the works for next year too. Definitely not either or!

Source

Mod Hooli (Nov. 12, 2025)

We're not doubling down on it, so much as understanding some players valued MTX as they offered a way to skill that was less intensive. It doesn't mean introducing AFK options that are potent or best. We have some cool active skilling stuff in the works - Heists for Thieving 120 being one of those - and more to come next year.

Source

I cannot find a reason to disagree with what Mod Hooli has said. But maybe instead of removing those things entirely, there should be options for portables and AFKable protean packs, maybe through Invention or something else, that people can obtain.

Maybe what Jagex should do is make a new skill called Support. You get XP by using your XP to make XP packages for other players. XP is taken away from your account, and other people can use your XP so that they can get XP themselves. 😂

3.Mod Breezy on Fun

This comment from Mod Breezy about fun is so wrong that I think he should be reprimanded.

This gets into the psychology of motivation, such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which I do not want to get into at that level of detail here. But I do want to talk about some of the more consequential research worth noting involving video games.

Mod Breezy (Feb. 7, 2026)

In game design the paradox of "fun" is that fun comes from challenge. Any game you've ever played is about overcoming an arbitrary challenge which no one has asked you to complete. You do it because you want to. Be it Tetris or Elden Ring, the overcoming of obstacles and the opportunity to learn, strategise, and master mechanics and gameplay to overcome those challenges is what = fun. Where those things become too easy / the challenge is minimised is actually where fun deteriorates. Game design is all about getting that balance right. I'm with you, we're not trying to suddenly turn everything to a bore, but where we're at with RS in 2026 is years of bandaiding things through things like dailyscape, unlimited grindy events, and even in the past MTX. We've got a long road ahead of us in getting things back in place, but we want to get it into a place where it feels damn good to have earned your way through it.

Source

There is no research directly supporting a simple claim that fun comes from challenge. None. The closest might be goal-setting theory from Locke and Latham, but that is about performance, not fun. You could also point to Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory, but flow is not fun from challenge. Flow is when challenge and skill are both high and in balance, and that is a mental state. A mental state is also not fun.

Research on gaming and challenge contradicts what Mod Breezy said directly. Corcos argues that players are more likely to have a positive experience when they are enjoyably challenged, meaning the challenge itself has to feel pleasant. A 2023 meta-analysis on video game enjoyment found that game difficulty did not show a significant overall effect on enjoyment.

A better way to frame this is that players enjoy games when they perceive that they are confident, in control, progressing, efficient, and connected with something they value (Deci and Ryan). The belief that you can succeed at the thing in front of you is also important (Bandura). These principles have been applied to video games for decades (Przybylski, Rigby, and Ryan). Other researchers found that feeling like your actions affect the game world is an important point of game enjoyment (Klimmt, Hartmann, and Frey).

People have fun playing games and keep playing games because the games tell them they are succeeding, improving, and making progress, not because challenging content itself is magically fun. Fun is less about challenge and more about successfully progressing through that challenge and receiving positive feedback.

So to Mod Breezy's comment that when things become too easy, they are no longer fun, I say it is not that they are too easy. It is that there is no perception of progressing, improving, or reward. This is not the same thing as challenge. I am talking about a perception, which could even be a lie.

In Summary

Jagex should hire psychology consultants who understand how to survey and elicit feedback from the player base.

Surveys should not be a petition on whether people want something where signing up is an affirmation. They should allow people to say no.

Jagex should do better at de-emphasizing feedback from bad actors who just want to ruin someone else's game experience. I think it is obvious at this point that people who voted to get rid of MTX did not show up to RS3 after it was removed.

Many of the changes Jagex has made so far in the Road to Restoration are actually positive, I think. Jagex has simplified content and made things easier to understand. There are still many, many things needed in that category. However, the majority of people already playing RS3 want to AFK. They want the game to be a second-monitor game. And Jagex is running them off just like Jagex ran off PKers back in the day.

If Jagex loses another 25 to 30% of the player base for RS3, is there really going to be anyone left when people start noticing?

If Jagex wants a serious solution, it needs to fix low-level content. The game needs to be cool for low levels and needs to be a fun experience. I have been playing an Ironman on low-level content for the past two weeks, and there is hardly anyone at low-level locations, even on high-pop worlds.