TL;DR: Permanently muted 10 years ago for being a degenerate. 100% deserved at the time. Carried into osrs ironman as a shadowmute. Didn't realize until fairly late. Asking for amnesty because no longer the same idiot moron kid. RSN: Gigantium

I used to play runescape up until around 2017 (rs3) when I finally decided to quit. I had two accounts which were my main and an f2p range pure (the account in question) that I rarely went on as I played my main more. On the main I had tried oldschool when it came out and played maybe 10 hours but ultimately decided I really didn't want to start over again.

Now for a couple years I have really been enjoying osrs youtube series and was finally inspired to start playing when 117 HD came out. I still don't like starting over since I had done a lot of this before, but in my mind the idea of playing ironman along with playing in HD sounded like a different enough experience to warrant a new journey. I log in to my main account in osrs and realize I have played on it before so it could not become an ironman. So I just use my other account. It's from actual 2007 too so it added to the nostalgia.

Fast forward to the end of my first month of osrs membership. I am doing the shield of arrav quest and join the FC to find a partner. Everyone is looking for a phoenix gang member so I was in luck. For about 15 minutes I get increasingly frustrated as nobody responds to me and it hits me. Oh yeah.. wasn't this account muted? I go to my account page on the site and confirm that I was permanently muted (unappealable). But then why was I able to type? Turns out that mutes in osrs are shadowmutes, where you can chat normally but nothing gets through to others. At this point I realize I had been chatting with players that couldn't see my text for almost a month.

Telling someone that they have a cool username or fashionscape. Gzing a level up. Responding to someones compliment on my gear choice. None of it had been seen by anyone. I had 8m xp at this point and the reason it took me so long to realize was because in rs3 you simply wouldn't be able to chat if you were muted. Had I realized sooner, I would have created a new account instead. I felt like I had been punished for having a bad memory, which felt awful. I reached out to support on twitter, mentioning that it is unappealable, but I get a seemingly automated response telling me to appeal. I reach out again a month later but this time I am told nothing could be done. I try again another month later and the same response. Others tell me to keep trying or go to reddit so here I am.

Third month of membership and 26m xp in at this point. Maybe I should have started over as soon as I found out but I figured I am an ironman and I don't need to chat with others, so I just kept playing. This thought process was heavy copium however, since every time I encounter player interaction I get very saddened that I am unable to participate or respond. Feels like I have exhausted other options now and just want to know whether or not to stay hopeful that I could get unmuted. Will likely continue playing casually regardless of the outcome.