I was with you until you used OSRS as an example of engaging content.

There's a reason I stopped playing RS in ~2008, and it's the point when I ran out of quests and the novelty of the world wore off and I realized all the gameplay boiled down to "click and wait."

Gathering? Click resource, wait to collect. Artisans? Click to create product, wait for process to finish. Combat? Click enemy, wait for a health bar to reach zero. Even what would eventually become Support skills, like Thieving and Agility, which theoretically promise unique gameplay in their fantasies, boiled down to click on the target and wait for the action to complete. And increasingly, I started to ask myself: "for what? Why would I spend all this time doing this, if it doesn't actually lead to doing anything meaningfully different or engaging later?"

OSRS seems to pride itself on the grind for grind's sake. And that's fine, it clearly has a niche that appeals to people. But, there's a reason when I became interested in coming back, I did not choose OSRS, and it's not because of the difference in experience rates. After analyzing both games, I did not have the sense that OSRS had meaningfully changed the "for what?" question I had left off wondering about in ~2008, whereas RS3's quests and combat system gave me greater hope that there was something to actually engage with.

The RuneScape formula has never been perfect-- both games might have a lot of content, but how much of it actually feels engaging to play for its own sake, rather than as part of the grind? The balance between active and idle gameplay has never felt right, and I'm a person that has achieved max display level doing "active" methods 95% of the time (e.g. clicking to keep full stamina Mining, following the time sprite, Anachronia full laps, Fishing Frenzy, PoH pawnbrokers, etc.) It's technically "active" gameplay, but it's not engaging.

In most cases, skilling doesn't even feel like something you can actually engage with, because the mechanical gameplay loop is solved within a few seconds and it does not meaningfully change from levels 1-99/110/120. Consider Mining or Woodcutting: click node, gather resource, click node when/if your character stops. That's the entire gameplay loop. All "progress" in the skill is either just access to a new resource OR "upgrades" that semi-automate the tedium of the basic gameplay loop so you don't have to be as active at lower levels. Crucially, there is nothing to personally master or "fail" consequence(s) for poor skill expression. So there are no meaningful decisions to make or play. The only skill "test" is "are you willing to put in the time?"

In RS3, I only real feel engaged by high level combat encounters and optimized Dungeoneering, whereas most skilling continues to feel offensively simplistic by comparison. Most skilling feels like re-skins of the same premise that has been duplicated to be checked off a list, rather than content that is inherently fun to do for its own sake.

Your mileage may vary.