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Old School RuneScape diehards have set yet another impressive MMO record, with a gang of players becoming the first five-man team to max out all of their accounts in the game's Group Ironman mode, almost two years after the mode's release.
Reddit user and team member iDrunk announced the achievement on the Old School RuneScape subreddit this week. The team in question, 4guys1denny, also includes: Dennys Dad, Dennys Fat, LostAfterMax, and *sigh* Boobs Mom. All five players are now total level 2,277, meaning they've reached the max level of 99 in all of the MMO's 23 skills. Group Ironman was added to OSRS on October 6, 2021, meaning this team's beaten the two-year mark by just days.
First 5-man GIM team to max! from r/2007scape
The official Group Ironman hiscores prove their achievement, and also confirm the group's Prestige status, meaning all five members have been in it from day one with no roster changes. New members can join OSRS Ironman groups after they're formed, but they won't be Prestiged and, as an account integrity measure, will face trade limitations for some time.
This is not the first Group Ironman team in all of OSRS to max, only the first five-player group. At the time of writing, six two-man teams have maxed along with one three-man. No four-player groups have maxed yet, and the second-place five-player group currently has four maxed members and one player who's 55 levels behind and presumably being hounded on a regular basis.
OSRS is one of the few MMOs with an official Ironman mode which prevents you from trading with other players in any way. You have to earn and obtain all of your items yourself, completely changing the way you approach skills and combat, and requiring you to experience a wider range of content instead of focusing on whatever gets you the most money that you can use to buy other things. For this reason, it's become a popular way to play the old-but-modernized MMO, as it totally changes your perspective on the game.
Group Ironman shakes things up by letting you trade with others, but only the players in your group. Members all share resources but, as evidenced by these rankings, have to train their stats independently. This creates a fascinating dynamic where different members can contribute to different goals simultaneously, preparing and sharing supplies and equipment.
Every Group Ironman team is like a crew of survivors stranded on an island. Somebody will go hunt for food (in this metaphor, perhaps by literally training the Hunter skill, or for actual food, more likely Fishing) while somebody else builds a hut (training Construction). Meanwhile, two other members might be out exploring in search of new opportunities (completing quests to unlock area-specific resources), with the fifth member farming a boss to get duplicate drops to share with their teammates (maybe there's infinitely respawning lions on this island, I don't know).
The thing that blows my mind here is that 4guys1denny is not only the first of all the four- and five-player groups to max, they're also Prestiged. I cannot imagine consistently playing the same game with the same people for years on end, and for hundreds or thousands of hours at that. That's D&D campaign-level coordination. Meanwhile, I immediately abandoned the idea of running a Baldur's Gate 3 campaign with my friend group because we can't keep any sort of schedule, and that game's a water bucket compared to the ocean of OSRS.
Earlier this year, OSRS had to be pulled offline after players started crashing everyone's game with a 14-year-old tradition.
