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Old School RuneScape is having a moment – the latest in a series of moments for the inexhaustible MMO based on an older version of another MMO. Developer Jagex's retro masterwork recently cracked 200,000 players, prompting the declaration of a "Platinum Age" in a top post on the game's Reddit community and earning several comments from the devs themselves.
Celebrating the surpassing of the Golden Age celebrated in many previous posts, Reddit user darkerwar6 wrote in a July 20 Reddit post: "Honestly thanks to all the WoW players for showing off this game I've loved for so long. Also thanks to the J-mods for just making this game better week after week for the last 12 years!"
This 200,000 player peak has come days before the release of a major OSRS update adding "the final chapter of the Varlamore trilogy," and on the heels of weeks of publicity from World of Warcraft streamers and players who've flocked to the game for a bit of an MMO summer migration.
WoW isn't in dire condition or anything; playing OSRS just became a recent trend among WoW content creators and their audiences, and it seems to have played some part in pumping the population to the moon.
"200k on a regular Sunday evening, Sailing release is going to be wild," reads a top Reddit reply from user Stone-J, referring to the upcoming-ish release of the Sailing skill, the first new skill to come to OSRS since its release.
OSRS currently 'only' has 186,398 people playing, but that's still a ton.
On Twitter today, the official OSRS account shared a message from the devs. "We are immensely grateful for all of the support we're being shown. There are loads of amazing games out there and it means the world to us that so many of you are choosing to play OSRS.
"We think there's lots more to look forward to, and we hope you'll continue to work with us on upcoming content together and celebrate new launches like Varlamore: The Final Dawn (in TWO days)!"
Elsewhere, Jagex noted that "player numbers are booming," so it's "expanded our live infrastructure to match!" As such, OSRS has added a few new US and UK worlds – basically servers, but relatively small and highly, readily interchangeable unlike big servers in some MMOs – to accommodate the influx of players and help distribute populations evenly.
"Thank you for being part of this amazing growth," the studio concludes.
On the opposite side of the fence, with mainline RuneScape trailing far behind its old-school sibling, Jagex has apparently decided it's time to clean up, with new CEO Jon Bellamy declaring, "The era of a tainted RuneScape 3 is coming to an end."
