u/callofdoodie97

I went to Rampage Open Air yesterday, Saturday, and before I say anything else: I had a blast. Good vibes, great community as always, and overall an awesome time.

That being said, as a Belgian, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing Rampage from its humble beginnings in Trix and watching it grow into Lotto Arena and Sportpaleis. For me, Rampage has always been about the music, the people, and also the insane light shows.

Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, but when the Dome was the mainstage, it felt like they were able to create bigger and better light shows because it kind of resembled an indoor venue. With the new mainstage, I found the lighting to be a bit lacking overall. I barely noticed any lasers, unless I somehow completely missed them.

With the big Ferris wheel in the background, I can imagine it’s difficult to use a lot of lasers there, since you’d always risk hitting people in the eyes. Maybe there are also regulations around it, like planes or other safety rules. I don’t know. But overall, I was a bit disappointed with the new mainstage production.

At the same time, this does remind me a bit of Rampage’s “humble” beginnings again. Rampage itself is obviously not small anymore, but the Open Air festival hasn’t been around for that long yet. There’s still a lot of room for improvement each year, and I’m sure they’ll keep growing bigger and better.

However, I do think they should consider increasing the overall venue size. I actually like Rampage being a somewhat smaller festival, but this year it felt like several stages were too cramped. When you were standing in front of the Storm stage, you were getting blasted by dubstep from Storm and DnB from the mainstage at the same time. The Storm stage itself also felt too small, so standing inside wasn’t always a pleasant option either.

To me, it feels like the festival is starting to struggle a bit with its own success. It probably needs a bigger venue or at least more space between stages in the coming years. And if they want to keep expanding the mainstage as well, they’ll need more room anyway.

Again, don’t get me wrong: I had a great time, as always, and I’ll definitely keep coming back to watch Rampage grow year after year. I just hope they take some notes from this edition, because there’s still a lot of potential to make Open Air even better.

Yes messenger is down. Zuckerberg will fix it.

Very recently, I made a post here asking for the community’s opinion on whether I should make a main account or an Ironman account. Since maxing my main and not really feeling the grind toward 120s, I decided to jump in and make an Ironman based on the feedback, and I have to say, I’m loving it so far.

What really stands out immediately is just how f’ing good the Mining & Smithing rework is for this game. Compared to OSRS, where Smithing is basically pointless for most of the game, since you need 99 just to make a rune platebody, RS3’s progression feels so much more natural and smooth. It’s great to know that you can actually acquire some very good armour throughout the whole game, from early to mid to endgame, just by using the skills you train.

Since I’ve also been an endgame player in RuneScape for a very, very long time, it’s such a breath of fresh air to do all the new early to midgame content this game has to offer. It’s stuff I would not even consider doing on my main.

On top of that, with the removal of TH, the ability to use the classic UI layout, the toggle for cosmetics, the upcoming player avatar update, and so much more, I’m genuinely hyped for this game again.

The more I play, the more I wonder why RS3 is so much less popular than OSRS. Of course, the game needs time to heal, and a lot of damage has been done. But at its core, this is an awesome game, with so many QoL updates that OSRS does not have. It makes RS3 a very pleasant and cosy game to play, whether you’re actively playing or just AFKing.

To wrap this up, I just want to say that I really hope this game gets an influx of new players soon. The Road to Restoration will help with that massively, but I also think Jagex needs to focus on making the early game a little clearer. I can completely understand how overwhelming this game can be for newcomers.

Anyway, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. I’m really looking forward to what the future holds for this game.