Runescape - Taking a Break

I’ve had an active membership with Runescape for a few years now, but I think it’s about time to take a break.

I started back in 2018 with a three month bronze premier club. That taste of membership got me wanting more. In 2019 and every year since, I have maintained membership with the gold premier club option. That’s half a decade of sustained membership. I haven’t kept membership this long since the very first time I actually paid for Runescape way back around 2007.

For a while, I played enough to justify premier club each year. My metric was whether I could play enough to make enough money to afford bonds for next year’s membership. I haven’t paid REAL money for Runescape since I canceled my monthly membership back in 2013. I was able to make enough in-game currency to buy membership that way.

Over the years, a few things happened. Bonds got exponentially more expensive. What used to be 14 million coins is currently 114 million coins (as of April). That’s way more money that I have to make before I can even maintain a membership. Plus, I stopped playing as much. Not only have I been playing console games more frequently, but Runescape just started feeling like a chore. I was playing to make money, to play, to make money, ad nauseam. Somewhere along the line, I stopped having fun.



Over Christmas break of 2023, I basically didn’t play at all. I spent most of the month of December with a sinus infection that just made me feel terrible, so the last thing I wanted to do was log in EVERY SINGLE DAY to play a game I didn’t really want to bother with anyway. When I felt decent, I wanted to spend that time with my family while they were on break from school.

After Christmas, I tried to make a point to start playing more. Everyone else went back to school and my steroid cleared up the sinus infection. That break of a few weeks made me realize just how much of a chore the daily tasks were, though. Going a few weeks without them, I didn’t want to go back to the obligation. It’s one thing to play a game because I enjoy it. It’s another thing to play simply because I want the weekly reward of playing daily.

FOMO (fear of missing out) was a big reason I kept playing. With all of the unique cosmetics available during each event, I had to at least play enough to get those. And when they intentionally stagger these events every few months, you're never too far off from another event and another set of cosmetics.

The limited availability of cosmetics was an effective motivator until it wasn't. After Christmas, I just decided I didn't care anymore. It wasn't a conscious decision. I didn't one day say that I was done playing. I just didn't play for a day. That day turned into a week. That week turned into about 40 days without logging in. I didn't have that compulsion to do my daily tasks and fully complete events anymore.

This came at a rather unfortunate time, as I had just recently bought another year of premier club. Each year around November, Jagex offers premier club. It’s only available until roughly the end of the year, and once you buy one tier, the other tiers are unavailable. Bronze gives you three months, silver gives six, and gold gives a full year. If you’re going to play consistently, gold is the only tier that makes sense. Since I had a running trend of buying gold premier club for five years, why not make it six?

I'm a very big advocate against sunk cost fallacy. Once the money is spent, it's gone. I resolved to play as much as I felt comfortable playing, since I already had another full year of membership, but there was nothing to be done about the bonds already invested. Sure, that equates to roughly a Benjamin if I bought premier club with money, and probably a few hundred for the bonds I used instead of cash, but what could I do? I had membership, and you can’t exactly sell that. May as well enjoy it.

As of 2024-05-03 at 11:28am.

I'm resigned to the fact that I'll miss out on events and new content for a while. Once my membership ends, I can play or not play as much as I want without fear of wasting money. Eventually, I'll probably be interested enough to do premier club again, but I think some time to lose that feeling of a chore will be nice. I’m beyond saying that I’ll never play again. It’s inevitable, one day I’ll miss playing and really dig in with some new skill or content. Until then, I’ll play when I feel like it and I’ll ignore it for a few weeks when I don’t.