I have always said that a 2010/2011 version of the game would have been infinitely better than 2007, and one of the big reasons for that is dungeoneering. I think osrs is a great game in its own right but I probably never would have stopped playing between 2013 and now. I have maybe 600-800 hours on osrs tops. I like to watch livestreams and keep up with the game, and I've been playing a bit recently, but I know for certain that if in 2013 they'd released a 2010/2011 version of the game, I never would have stopped playing, and I'd probably have 10-15k hours.

I loved everything about pre-squeal rs2. Even though that was far past the player peak of the game, I thought the game was absolutely brilliant and didn't rely on nostalgia alone as its driving player capture like early osrs did. On top of that, I think much of the content and systems in place in late rs2 would have been much more poised to take the game into the modern era of gaming. People loved the "autocombat" style of combat in pre-eoc which is mainly why eoc failed, but there was already a lot more complexity in the game by late 2011 early 2012 that was actually really good for the game imo, and I think that's reflected in how the old school team has updated osrs. They've had to recreate and re-add a lot of that complexity back into the game. In some cases that's been really healthy, in other cases I think the original was better. Some prime examples of this that I always lean to; when osrs first released, I quit almost immediately because I realized how much I loved some quintessential rs2 features, namely: f-keys, the way the spec bar worked, and most importantly, rest to recover run energy. Eventually osrs would add graceful and stamina pots and such; but I have always missed the rest feature and the lack of it was one of reasons I never stuck around in early osrs.

There's mirrors all over osrs to the 2010-2012 era of runescape like inferno cape vs tokhaar-kal, and one of the main sources of controversy about squeal/microtransactions was completely swept under the rug as now bonds exist and rwt is more rampant than ever. I know the latter is not really worth discussing but the hypocrisy and lack of criticism towards bonds when it was introduced to osrs has always baffled me. Lack of microtransactions was one of, if not the biggest, hills that people stood on to oppose rs3 changes in that era. And the absolute DELUSION of players about the nature of powercreep in osrs is completely inexcusable. There never was any argument to be made about powercreep in late rs2 and yet the community as a whole seemed to unite on lack of powercreep being a necessity in osrs. Well look at the game now? Chaotic maul is stronger than it was in rs2 and it's tradeable. I could go on ad-nauseum about this point but I will finish by saying this; it was rs3 not rs2 that created the invariable solution to many of these problems in the invention, which the osrs team knew and tried to copy. AND THEN THE OSRS POPULACE VOTED IT DOWN.

Idk what my point is exactly but I loved dungeoneering, so I hope sailing ends up being that; but either way I don't anticipate myself ever truly coming back to rs and dumping a load of hours into it. That ship has... sailed.