Games

OSRS has a good community, it attracts a lot of autistic and queer people. at the same time it also has a lot of chuds because it's literally the original RETVRN game. they also start sectarian turf wars on votes if they don't get enough treats or think "the other side" got more treats or they got the treats but it's not RETVRN enough and destroys their hecking nostalgia. it's a shrinking part of the fanbase but they are still there, ruining falador every pride event which i think has been cancelled but i haven't been able to play recently.

I normally don't vibe with fantasy games (and a good chunk of fantasy in general) because the need for enemies to fight usually means you have the whole evil fantasy races trope - ex. elves are your allies, goblins are your enemies, w.e. OSRS is one of the few games that I feel gets around it, in a very funny way - the game treats attacking random "Man" NPCs as a fundamentally equal act to attacking random "Goblin" NPCs, generally taking the perspective that the player adventurer is in-universe an amoral power-hungry cretin with no social sense, and unlike all the isekai slop isn't trying to flatter them for it.

My friend who plays rs3 says that osrs had a chuddier fanbase

Wildly swings. (At least from my experience, starting in ~2006 up until ~1.5 years ago.)

Most of the "Jmods" (devs/admins) are decentish usually. Not too outwardly shitty at least. Had pride stuff and stood by it when they got criticism. (Sadly didn't push in last year's pride event when their new owners told them to axe it.) Did a woke patch where they smoothed over some of the things that were questionable or bad. (Ex: A quest involving middle-eastern coded peoples had everyone named "Ali" as a joke. You're looking for a prince named "Ali" and everyone in a town conspires to be THE Ali you're looking for. After the patch, characters in the town would "revert" to their 'real' name after finishing the quest.)

A few (bad) weirdos and creeps over the years;, their communication varies wildly (going from being very open to stupidly hostile for little reason); they've had to deal with being british and being fantasy. But overall OK.

The players are usually pretty decent to be around if you're fairly chill and have a decently strong sense of humor. Like, lots of stoners and (good) weirdos. Some MMO classics like people picking moderately crude names, general anti-social behavior and grifting, being so bored they start acting horny over a tree. But usually not extremely bad. Sometimes though they pull up and do some shit. Lots of people stuck acting both 15 and 35.

There isn't a culture of "help the noob" ingame, but people generally love to see people doing weird or un-optimal stuff. Lots of resources developed outside the game. Things get documented pretty quickly so it was fairly easy to stay moderately up to date with some of the meta and discussions. (Ex: I made like 10m (a modest but decent amount) off of flipping items because I'd read the reddit and kept up with some market trends/upcoming updates.)

RS definitely isn't unproblematic, but for being a near 30 year old british fantasy mmo, its MUCH better then you'd expect. Heck, you can change gender and the makeover mage changes to be the opposite of your gender (not exactly omega levels of 'woke', but I remember it being fairly casual and chill about the character too.) A quest even forced you to become a female (if male). A free (optional) reversal was offered too. (I think the quest might have changed at some point semi-recently to not force a gender swap.)

TLDR: Runescape is a land of contrasts.