Player is 19,100 hours and 8 years in MMORPG

The MMORPG Runescape (Steam) is known for its badass community. But what one player posted on reddit now commanded the respect of even the most die-hard fans: YouTuber Devious has spent 19,100 hours agonizing through all four of the MMORPG’s “Iron Man” modes. But there were also some snappy questions about what the man was doing with his life.

You have to know this in order to understand what he has achieved:

Each of these modes makes Runescape harder because it cuts out certain features of how to otherwise get items and make the game easier:

Player sets himself an extremely tough task – then sits at it for 19,217 hours

What did the man do?? Reddit user and YouTuber Devious (104,000 subscriptions) maxed out 4 Ironman characters in the 4 variants described.

“Maximum” in OldSchrool Runescape means: He has leveled all of the characters’ skills to 99: That’s harder and more complex than just reaching the maximum level in another game.

It took him 19,217 hours to go through all 4 modes and max out the characters. He did that in eight and a half years, he says:

That he managed to max out characters in all 4 Iron Man modes is widely considered an incredible achievement. As something that requires an incredible amount of effort and dedication and that not even the creators foresaw.

The post received over 10,000 upvotes on reddit and more than 1,000 comments:

This is what the player says: In an interview with Gamsradar, Devious says:

I played casual when I was a kid. Never maxed an account in R3, but have a lot of 99s. When Oldschrool Runescape came out I was grinding pretty hard. I was one of the first 10 people to get 99 in Smithing after the game released, and was in the top 200 for Slayers.

But it didn’t really take off for him until Iron Man was added to old-school Runescape.

He had set out to be the first to max out all 3 solo variants, but narrowly lost the race.

When the “group variant” came out, he wanted to do it again and went through with it.

What took him the longest to do? In fact, it took Devious the longest for the “simplest” mode, the standard Iron Man.

He says it was because everything was new back then and Runescape was a lot harder than it is today:

To get 99 runecrafting you had to kill 10,000 Zulrah bosses to get 1 million Pure Essence and then you used the essence to forge lava runes up to 99. That alone was totally insane compared to how it is today, today you can just do runecrafting minigames.

A lot of recognition, but also biting attacks: “Sad and pathetic”

How are people reacting? On reddit, many are enthusiastic and impressed by the performance. But there are also some caustic comments. There is talk of bots or multi-accounts.

And there are also personal attacks. It resonates: Whoever plays like that, their life must simply be much worse than their own.

The player himself shows some reddit posts on twitter attacking him saying he has “0 personal contacts” – “would never take a shower” and the like. One reddit user even wrote that it was “sad and pathetic.”

Player says: He plays even more shooters than MMORPGs

Others also ask: How can the man afford to put so much time into an MMORPG? What does he do for a living?

Devious says: He is a professional YouTuber, so he gets his income. He also takes part in various e-sports tournaments (via esportearnings). He plays even more shooters than MMORPGs: he’s spent around 15,000 hours on Counter-Strike alone since 2004.

After being attacked that his life sucks, he says he has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, no debt, over $100,000 in the bank and is his own boss, picks his own hours and leaves twice the week out with friends.

But then he also writes self-deprecatingly: A life? No, he didn’t.

And yes, he knows that if he had done a “standard job” in those 19,100 hours, he could have made more money in that time.

But that’s obviously not his point.

Strange things happen in Runescape:

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