Sheep from Old School RuneScape / RuneScape 2

omg, I’m so glad that somebody else sees what Jagex did to Zamorak too — I feel like I’m driving myself crazy getting upset about how bad the retcons are because nobody else seems notice or care! :|

Thank you for showing me I’m not the only one so I can stop gaslighting myself into thinking I’m just being unreasonably bitter… (I totally still am.)

You're absolutely not alone in your realization there. If you feel like you've noticed the whiplash that is character 'progression' in RuneScape, chances are it's absolutely there, and also good on you for keeping your eyes peeled and either doing certain quests back to back or reading dialogue transcripts from time to time. The reason most people either don't notice or don't agree with you is because the mods sitting down in the RS discord lore channels are doing a phenomenal job shrugging and going "Eeeeeh you're wrong, we totally didn't do that" or "Agree to disagree" whenever someone brings up the slightest inconsistencies instead of owning it and committing to being better at consistent writing.

I firmly believe that Jagex as a company as well as any of their lore teams never had a character sheet for any NPC in the game whatsoever. Not having a character's logical end goal written down is acceptable - growth, change and development are great things. The problems start where you can clearly tell they don't have the key traits or values that characters believe in discussed or written down anywhere. Their way of 'developing' characters is giving them 180s from one extreme to the next, while always using 'this is the only way!' as justification, whether it's Kerapac or the young god of the week. They also seem to have a weird liking for showing that their current 'fav' is good by demonizing and vilifying other characters, which is bizarre because you can be a 2/10 writer and still be more than adequate at making your favs likeable without having to go the Jagex route and bash another character to make yours look good (The complete bastardization of EVERYONE to make Saradomin look good in comparison was about as subtle as a Barrelchest in a WG's house). Zamorak specifically is such a baffling case. Going from 'the world is worse with Zaros in it, and if no one will remove him, I will', to having a borderline panic attack on his knees clutching the stone of Jas like a stabilizing support wall while the other gods were grilling him about killing Zaros (which, come on, you KNOW Saradomin totally wanted to do and would've if he could!) before nuking Forinthry partially out of the panic and confusion of being cornered like that, to winning the lower classes of Infernus their freedom because damnit they deserve to fight for their right to live, to perfecting the philosophy of wanting to fight to improve your life to this... uh... defeatist attitude? out of nowhere? Sending Khazard to steal an ancient artifact that could turn the tide of a war currently at a stalemate because we're all doomed and there's no sense trying? What? and destroying it because if he's not achieved victory over the Elder threat himself, none of us deserve to fight? Since when? Has he become Zaros's Legatus Maximus by quitting the moment things didn't go his way in combat? Obviously not. So why turn the one character with burning ambition and a will to live glowing as brightly as a newborn star into this sadsack that has to ruin it for everyone else if he can't get his way? Because you want to build Saradomin up as righteous? Because Armadyl deserves more screentime? Because you want him out of the way for when you bastardize Seren next quest before quickly coming back to grill him again? Clearly someone at Jagex ran out of ideas on who to character-assassinate next. And clearly not enough people have told that person to think it through.

Zamorak's not even the only one it happened to, y'know? Remember Kerapac? You know, Kerapac, who in OoaK is the bright, reasonable, genius scientist gritting his teeth through chronic pain to give a fighting chance to others he believe were affected by the selfishness of gods or fate, while respecting others' agency enough not to force them either way (Remember the whole 'Hey Hannibus, if you wanna sacrifice yourself for a chance and a shot in the dark, go for it, but no pressure either way' thing? I do. I remember. I remember that Kerapac before he got ripped away from us and replaced with a lunatic). Then, 2 quests down the line, he controls the needle and time itself and is an extremist who won't listen to reason whatsoever? What was it he said? 'I'm giving you a chance to say goodbye to your loved ones, be happy and take it?' something along those lines? Dude, you control time itself, you have a shadow anima device to force a non-interaction clause from the elders if you play it correctly, and the best you can give us is "It's my way or the highway and if you want any say or rights, f you", when an amicable solution that would've been preferable is "I'll rewind time for a few weeks while you evacuate everyone through the world gate so I can kill the elders in peace and you can return whenever I'm done fighting them if the planet survives" - Kerapac still gets to be reasonable, WG still gets to refuse because no other world has the biome to accommodate all species and factions on the planet, also putting them so close to eachother will just escalate old conflicts immediately and whatnot... But no. Let's make the enslaved guy battling chronic pain the monster while implying he's a monster specifically because he thinks the eldritch horrors enslaving his species deserve consequences. Why not. Oh wait. I'll tell you why not. Maybe because if you don't have anything new, helpful, or carefully nuanced to say about a heavy subject, you shouldn't touch the heavy subject.