Roughly 5,000 hours of RuneScape have left me with several memories that I hope to hold in my brain until my heart eventually stops beating, and one of the clearest is a fascination with the MMO's otherworldly map, long defined by mysterious black squares signifying unexplored or upcoming content. What could possibly be hiding there, and what could one day fill the gaps? We no longer have to wonder. With the recent release of the final chunk of Varlamore, Old School RuneScape has filled out the entire world map for the first time in, technically, 21 years.
The RuneScape I remember was RuneScape 2, released in March 2004 and eventually resurrected as Old School RuneScape in February 2013, while RuneScape 3 branched off following a radical combat update dubbed Evolution of Combat. So while it's been through the wringer, this map is technically over two decades old.
The OSRS wiki has archives of maps dating back to 2007 iterations, and while there are unofficial future-facing variants pulled from cache files that still have black squares, today's in-game map is clean and pristine. One of the previous biggest map changes was recorded in September 2018, with a conspicuous cluster of northern tundra finally filled in shortly after some eastern coastline, while in April 2022, a massive section of southern desert was revealed for the first time.
In what's instantly become one of the hottest posts of the new expansion, Reddit user nicknamerror observes that, "For the first time in OSRS' history, the world map is black-square free." From the swampy shores of Morytania to the newly expanded fields of Varlamore, with myriad islands like the iconic Lunar Isle and Fremennik Isles filling in the oceans, OSRS is finally one complete world.
This is, genuinely, a big deal, and it's been poetically timed with a recent concurrent player high that saw OSRS clear 200,000 players on a random afternoon. The wave of players was seemingly partly stoked by an influx of World of Warcraft players and streamers who've pounced on the game this summer.
"This on top of recent record breaking player numbers? Enough to make a grown man cry," a reply from user Arctt reads.
"This scratches something in my brain just right. Love to see it," adds Nickn753.
"It bewilders me how large this map actually is and yet almost every square foot of it is jam packed with things to explore, see, or do," says Read1390.
The OSRS map will likely see more black squares in the future – the whole map consists of "chunks," hence the blocky margins and ridges – if only through the oceanic expansion brought on by the release of a planned, seafaring skill fittingly called Sailing, but for now it's void-free for the first time. As many WoW players have been discovering, OSRS is still one of the best and biggest sandboxes in games, not just in the MMO space, so the timing on this map milestone and major update couldn't be better.
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