Remember that the younger players are also major part of osrs’ future. Instead of  buy RuneScape goldmaintaining the nostalgia age players currently playing, I’d imagine that the aim for jagex would be to increase their playerbase. Specially when something like toggleable HD images could bring lots of new players (ik it is tougher for prospective content etc.) without making current playerbase to disappear. During Corona I have seen alot of new people playing who’ve chosen up RuneScape game on mobile, so I would imagine the playerbase keeps getting less of”actual 2007 gamers” as the period continues.. Like someone else pointed out new players combine for RuneScape gameplay and somewhat unique grindy accomplishments gameplay, but I doubt that everyone picked RuneScape game because they discovered images attractive.

Younger players are a significant part of Jagex’s future, but not necessarily OSRS. What’s now RS3 was supposed to be a sport that may retain current players as they got older through quality updates that were consistent, and earn new/younger gamers since they added images. What ended up happening is that they made OSRS win back some of the players and to try they had dropped through design decisions in the game. They did not expect it to be really powerful, or come anywhere near outpacing the main game.

RS3 doesn’t appear that successful at bringing brand new players, although where OSRS is powerful as it fills a market of bringing gamers they are currently in an awkward spot. By attempting to make massive changes to OSRS geared towards younger, brand new players that they might end up killing the niche that’s currently making OSRS successful now. A lot of people don’t consider the images or OSRS poor, just retro/nostagic, and many don’t need them changed. They’re also very significant to the branding/identity of osrs.

If you start changing the images you eliminate the capability to promote OSRS and RS3 as two separate products to new players. Describing OSRS as snapshot of RuneScape match from where it was at in 2007 but using new upgrades that are in accordance with the design philosophy of the time is relatively easy to describe to people not familiar with RuneScape match, but the gap between it and RS3 becomes cloudy real fast when you make graphics changes.

Every single new piece of content requires the job out of a graphics standpoint to release, meaning slower upgrades, and in certain instances some updates potentially becoming cost prohibitive. RuneScape game will become more costly and time consuming for Jagex to grow, so you can have graphics that will not be up to rs2007 gold par with contemporary games, or even matches from a decade ago.