Growing up, I was an avid player of the MMO Runescape. Thinking back I must have racked up well over 1000 hours playing, whether it be killing goblins outside of Lumbridge or standing outside Varrock west bank trying to sell off loot from my travels.What I didn't consider when I was younger though, was the amount of lessons in real life I was getting from the game.
So over the last 20 hours or so I've been searching the internet looking for people with similar experiences and telling stories of how their time in Runescape has benefited them in real life, here's some of the information I've found.
1. Typing
One of the most common benefits I've seen is that people have become incredibly well adapt to using there keyboard and I can certainly relate to this one. All those hours spent outside Varrock west bank, typing over and over "Selling green D hide - 500gp" has burnt the layout of a keyboard so far into my memory that someone who has been studying Typography for the last 10 years would have a hard time keeping up.
Believe it or not this is actually a very important skill to have in the common workplace as so much of our time is spent on computers, typing out information. It's also quite common for Office based roles to have a minimum 'Words per Minute' when applying.
2. If it's too good to be true... It probably is
Anyone that's played this game for a few hours will have experience with Scammers. They were and still are such a nuisance in the community that people are still losing millions of GP to them every day (huh.. kind of similar to real life then?).
When we were younger the idea of getting our cool new rune armour trimmed with gold was absolutely thrilling. So when we saw that shady looking guy stood at varrock centre saying "Free armour Trimming" for the first time, it was just too tempting to pass up. This would be the moment in many peoples Runescape careers where they learnt, Don't trust anyone.
3. Supply and Demand
Runescape has been Plagued with Bots since the game was Runescape Classic , but as much as we all hated them, they taught us all a very valuable lesson;- Supply and demand of products.
Because of the amount of slimy players using Automated programs to gather resources to sell to other players, The market was incredibly screwed. This became super obvious when Jagex went on their infamous 'Bot Hunts' which would in turn cause the prices of certain resources to sky rocket.
Players also learnt the importance of early adoption. When new items were released they would often be worth an incredibly bloated amount, those that managed to get this loot early on were lucky enough to get rewarded.
Thanks for reading. There are tonnes more points I could have put on this list, Runescape was such a popular game back in the day and is slowly gaining more fans even today. As a think you for reading, I'll leave you with a bit of nostalia.
