Please note that there will be spoilers here, as I will be talking a bit about Sliske’s Endgame (and several other quests). If you haven’t done that quest yet, I advise you go do it. If you don’t have the stats to do that quest, I advise you get them. If you’re thinking: “shut up, Alex, nobody tells me what to do”, then you probably shouldn’t be on the internet.

After the sixth age began with the death of Guthix and the return of the Gods, we were presented with the potential for chaos. We expected Saradomin to battle against Zamorak, Bandos to personally smash the Cave Goblins, and Armadyl to reclaim his staff and start delivering all the justice. Oh yeah, and maybe the desert Gods make a comeback too, but they’ve kind of always been there, so no big deal.

Enter Sliske with a quest called Missing, Presumed Death, which despite the seemingly innocent story and plot, served as a pivotal way to steer the future quest lines. It starts off a whole new quest-line where he obtains the Stone of Jas and offers it to the being that kills the most Gods. Or Godlike things. Thus prompting the creation of World Events, a couple of holiday events, and starting off the Sixth Age questline.

And now it’s over. Sliske’s Endgame has come and gone (at least for me), and with that, the series reached its conclusion (and possibly the age itself, I’m not sure to that extent).

But Runescape is not going to just end like that. When one story ends, another begins.

Fortunately, this time we don’t have to wait until an obscurely-named quest that seemingly has nothing to do with the storyline comes out of nowhere to bring us back on track. … which I thought was actually kind of brilliant. They also did this for the V quest. Yeah, it’s sad that we didn’t really get the kind of quest we were expecting, but a quest with a surprise twist with an even more surprising plot is always exciting.

This time, though, it sounds like the content team is trying to keep these quests a bit more of a surprise. And thank goodness, too. I purposely avoid watching the “upcoming-content” videos in fear that they’ll spoil the quests to come or make them not nearly as powerful story-wise. They did it with a few of the quests in the Sliske storyline; during Runefest, they only subtly advertised Nomad’s Elegy with a picture, and purposely withheld information about Kindred Spirits altogether. This was good, because it didn’t give us time to overhype ourselves with expectation if we didn’t know what was coming.

So what’s next?

Well, the most powerful artifact on Gielinor, the Stone of Jas, has been destroyed, but now we’ve got its creator up and about, telling us to prove ourselves to the others as they awaken or they wipe everybody out. Scary!

We’ve got Zaros revealing his true colors; he wasn’t really trying to become an Elder Gods to stand for mortal-kind; he saw the position as his birthright. After being denied it, he got considerably cheesed off and left vowing revenge. By the sounds of things, he’s going to try to properly create life to prove himself.

We’ve got the dragonkin running around, presumably either freed from the Stone’s hold, or forcibly tasked with reassembling it. Either way, they might be thinking much more clearly now, and we know them well to be beasts of destruction.

The Gods are no longer tasked with killing each other (though they weren’t really super-good at that anyways), meaning they are now able to get on with their own agendas. Goodness knows what’s going to happen when they start doing stuff to appease their own desires. I can at least foresee a big battle against the White Knights and the Kinshra. And what about the desert Gods (besides Icthlarin)? … well, actually they’re kind of their own series, but with the upcoming return of Menaphos, who’s to say they won’t make a comeback.

Even you, the player, are no longer fully in control (I’ll be kind and not completely spoil this one). Will this be resolved in a single quest where you dive into the structure of your very soul, or will it linger as a parasite that makes future quests infinitely more difficult than they need to be.

With such a dynamic change to the upcoming quests’ storyline, it almost feels like we’re going to start playing Runescape 4. But without the super-improved graphics. Instead, we get a lot of extra content. Which is really all we need at this point.

Until next time,

Cheers, cannoneers!