OSRS players have not been "stuck with low quality graphics". The appeal of that version of the game is as a whole. It was not just "the version without the one later change that wasn't liked". It was the version before the general change in approach.

The big problem with the "HD" version was that it was inconsistent. They couldn't update the whole world at once (or chose not to) so they updated it in bits, and those bits often felt really out of place compared to the much more cohesive older style.

>2009 still predates many of the wild changes Jagex made that eventually morphed into RS3. Some would be nice to have in OSRS (mining/smithing was rehauled in a nice way, some new skills that OSRS players wish they had like Dungeoneering are missing --- but changes like "Evolution of Combat"[1] was a breaking point for many). My understanding is that if they had found the source code circa 2009, Jagex would have used that and OSRS players would have enjoyed HD on day one.

Dungeoneering was a (pretty good) minigame forced into the mould of a (pretty bad) skill for essentially no reason. The mining/smithing rework was very recent and not at all good for the game.

Contrary to the popular belief of people like you (who seem to be the dominant voice on social media), the desire in the first place for "2007scape" did not originate with JaGEx. It came from a website very similar to this one, which aimed to recreate a 2005 or 2006 version of the game. JaGEx saw this desire and found the oldest copy of the RS2 source code they could. It isn't that they would have gone later if they could have. They would have gone earlier if they could have. Even 2007 was the beginning of the end for the game. It was when it started to morph further towards what it is like today: a wholly unlikable game, the players of which are obsessed with grinding to the maximum level in every skill. That's not how people played before they added the level 99 skillcapes in 2006.

>Jagex has done a good job with OSRS, running it with just a few people and heavily relying on community feedback in the form of polling content updates.

This was true for the first few years but clearly isn't true today. They add a lot of content to the game now.

>If something does not pass majority opinion, it is not added to the game. They've added multiple new quests, areas, and skilling options under this model, to the point where OSRS is quite distinct from its circa-2007 seed. One thing they can't seem to get consensus on though is a new skill - every attempt I'm aware of has been downvoted by the community, seemingly for reasons similar to "it would devalue my investment in X skill".

This is evidence that the game is nothing like it was in 2007. Back then, people loved new skills and the idea of "devaluing my investment" just didn't exist. The awful "xp waste"/"grind" mentality of players today is what has driven a lot of players away from the game. It's this sort of mentality where you cannot have a valid opinion on the game unless you're at "endgame" and have basically maximum levels in every skill. That is a World of Warcraft/Everquest-style mentality. "The game starts at endgame". "The game is about raiding and killing bosses". Just not what RS was originally about at all.

Frankly they've changed the game so much since the 2014 revival of "2007"-scape that it is more different today than RS3 was from 2007scape in 2014. And not for the better.