RuneScape has been around longer than most of its influx of new players have been alive. Launched in 2001, it evolved over time to update its graphics and gameplay, eventually becoming what most people remember as RuneScape. This period of time, between 2004 and 2007, is what some players class as the game’s best era. Eventually, the game changed again multiple times, and in 2013, with an overhauled look and new combat system, it became RuneScape 3.
However, the game had lost what some players came for. The rather simplistic gameplay of that “golden age” from the classic style was missed. Sometime before Jagex, the company behind RuneScape, announced that they’d found an archived version of the game dating to 2007, there was a private server draining some of the dwindling player base.
Eventually, after running a poll, Jagex went all in on running two versions of RuneScape side-by-side. Old School RuneScape was as people mostly remembered it from 2007, and it’s since been updated as any other massively multiplayer online (MMO) game would be.
What people weren’t expecting was that this year, there’d be a sudden explosion of interest around the game. Streamers known for playing World of Warcraft and other modern fare were migrating over to the British MMO. The game has now hit nearly peak numbers, inches away from December 2024’s 231,719 players, with over 220,000 players in-game at the same time.
Why are people coming to Old School RuneScape in 2025?
So why are people coming back or starting Old School RuneScape now? I spoke to Alex Darvill McSweeney, the lead product marketing manager for Old School RuneScape. When I asked about his point of view, it is partially thanks to streamers migrating:
“You’ve got all of these creators playing the same game at the same time without being paid for it, and they’re all having a great time.
“That’s making their viewers look at Old School in a different way, whereas before they might have seen our graphics and looked elsewhere, now they’re thinking, ‘maybe there’s more to this, I should check it out.”
Combing through clips from streamers and talking to players alike, there are a lot of running themes.
Players are desperate not to be left behind, just because they log off
Annie Fuchsia, a Twitch streamer with over 500,000 followers, elaborates why World of Warcraft (WoW) players in particular appear to be gravitating towards the game. In a clipped video from one of her broadcasts, she said:
“A lot of people who have played a lot of WoW have gotten used to how WoW is and assume that every MMO is the same.
“But from what I can tell already… is that there isn’t [the fear of missing out] and your progress matters and is valuable.
“And I think a lot of people who play WoW have missed that.”
World of Warcraft runs on a seasonal basis, effectively resetting players by releasing more gear or items that outdo the previous season. It leaves players in a constant state of chasing the dragon, which can lead to massive burnout. This is especially so with particular items that have a rare drop rate, which can take hours of redoing the same content over and over again, only to log off and return sometime later to none of it mattering.
In RuneScape, if you log off one day and decide to return months or years later, your progress is as good as it was then versus when you return. Earning that rare armor won’t leave you blindsided if you decide to take a break.
Items from 2005 are still relevant 20 years later
I spoke to some players on Bluesky and Reddit, with one user, Prudent-Durian, echoing that thought:
“Your progress and gear are permanent and stay relevant even if you decide to take a break.
“It baffled me when I saw people recommend Barrows gear as something to get, and when I went to Google when it was released, I found out that this gear is all the way from 2005.
“If you used 2-month-old gear in WoW, you wouldn’t find any raid parties for yourself since all of them would kick you out for being dead weight.
“The fact that something from 2005 is still as reliable and a core part of progression in the game is just mind-blowing to someone who is used to stuff getting outdated in just months.”
You don’t “quit” RuneScape
Major fan Ingus Wraith on Bluesky also brought up progress. Over a few messages, they outlined their “three core reasons” for playing Old School RuneScape, with one of them being “Incremental gains”:
“Whether I play for 10 minutes or until the 6-hour ‘nerd log’, I’m making progress. Progress which will still be legitimate progress next week, in a month’s time, in a year’s time.”
It’s something that RuneScape developers are acutely aware of. McSweeney said:
“I think the main thing they’ve settled on is how we approach progression. We try to design new content with a goal of not devaluing the older stuff, and that applies to weapons and armour, boss fights, and even whole areas.
“You Don’t Quit RuneScape, You Just Take Breaks” is something our community has been saying for years and years, and if you put the game down and then come back a year later, you should find that everything you have or know is still relevant, but there’s heaps of new stuff to enjoy.”
So why does RuneScape, despite its age, and looking at similarly old MMOs, continue to persist? One user on Bluesky, Peyote, said that it was their “forever game”:
“I’m a regular player. I really enjoy the pace of the game, mostly; it’s something you can really set for yourself, and drift from one activity to the other.
“I also really love the quest design- quests tend to be fun puzzles with good writing. I enjoy a lot of the lore of the setting, and the stories tend to be very nice.”
Get on that hamster wheel and spin
McSweeney also believes that the game’s core loop and open freedom to tackle the game how you want is paramount to the experience. When you start the game, outside of the initial tutorial area and some mild direction, Old School RuneScape leaves things up to you:
“I think… the game is there to be played however you want to play it. I think it’s accurate to say that there’s a low skill floor, which doesn’t require all that much concentration to progress things like Woodcutting or Fishing skills, whilst there’s an incredibly high skill ceiling for things like endgame PvP or PvE, and then all sorts of content in-between.”
Of course, there’s a mobile version of the game, which Wraith points out is one of their key reasons for playing. The mobile version of the game is a little finicky, but as the entire game is played with a mouse, it’s an easy transition. McSweeney adds:
“Couple that with the fact that you can experience the game properly on mobile and tablet, without any of the usual negative stuff you might associate with mobile gaming, and then just pick up where you left off when you’re at home on your desktop.”
Community above all in OSRS
Outside of its new adoptees, McSweeney believes it’s not only that “timeless adventure” feeling the game brings, but the community, too. Old School RuneScape runs on a polling system, and if a proposed feature or idea gets shot down by the community, it’s taken behind the shed:
“This is all content that has been pitched in great detail to players; they got to vote on it (quite literally a Yes or No vote!), and then we make it playable.”
One of those features, sailing, is still on the horizon, planned for later in 2025. It was introduced in 2023 via a poll and won with 71.9% of the vote. It was shown earlier this year, with players hotly anticipating it. McSweeney continues:
“I can’t not mention the content creators who have been putting out amazing stuff for years now. Bias aside, I really think the content creation scene for OSRS is unrivalled by any game.
“The streamers are really helping to instill that willingness to try Old School RuneScape, to look beyond the graphics or the “isn’t that the game from middle school?” mindset.
“I’ve had messages from old friends who have always been reluctant to try OSRS but are now giving it a go, having seen all these streamers, finally!”
He name-drops the Swampletics or the reality competition style Gielinor Games as recommendations to seek out, which he says “no other games compare” to the creativity the userbase comes up with.
It’s something that Ingus Wraith concurred with, citing the community itself as one of the “three core reasons” that they play the game.
Old School RuneScape is in yet another boom period, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down at the time of writing. Servers are overrun with players, with the game struggling to keep up in some areas. McSweeney, who has admittedly been playing the game for “donkey’s years, since 2004”, thinks it’s the “best feeling in the world” seeing the game explode in popularity once again.
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