RuneScape's battle system operated on a rock-paper-scissors'triangle' of melee, magic, and ranged attacks - each best way to make money on osrs with power over among the other two however a weakness towards the other (for example, ranged attacks did little damage against melee-based enemies but the equipment by rangers used had extra resistance to magical damage), however in reality this meant skirmishes were little more than a struggle involving two stat-weighted random number generators. When two players with identical stats and gear came face-to-face, luck was the deciding factor of who would go down . Whilst on the surface of it there was little input a player could actually have in proceedings - beyond eating the occasional piece of food to restore health - this simplistic system actually spawned some amazing opportunities for creativity and ability. The battle was'tick' established, meaning that a speedy finger on a mouse might allow the participant to switch out an whole set of gear before the next attack animation and harm calculation began. This became a popular tactic in PvP, as two or three corners of the battle triangle could be utilised to maximum effect - nearing the production of countless over-edited'hybridding' montages on YouTube, usually merged with Linkin Park.

The game's PvP element - also called player-killing (often shortened to PKing) - became hugely popular, largely as a result of first simplicity of the combat system but also its potential to get a player's skill and precise timing to tilt the balance. The game's developers - Jagex (a shortening of the organization's unique slogan'Java Game Pros' - until it had been afterwards unofficially changed to the somewhat forced'About the Game Experience) were pleased to enable the match's meta to shape itself, further afield the arrangement of RuneScape's PvP combat with its die-hard players. Jagex were not afraid to make new items that unbalanced the meta, together with the player-driven economy having full control upon picking a product's worth based on its own performance. An entire stock market emerged inside the game depending upon the transaction of items, together with little more indication of an item's value than that which someone was willing to cover it in the moment.

That was, until the first This Website of Jagex's hugely unpopular changes came, and also the game's downturn - in the opinion of many - started.