Old School RuneScape's new Varlamore update introduced the MMO's population to a gentle giant called the Gemstone Crab, and it didn't take long for players to start following this crab as if it were some sort of benevolent god. They've already mocked up quasi-religious dogma and it's barely been a week.
I asked OSRS design director Kieren Charles, better known as Mod Kieren, about the budding crab cult, and it seemed to me that he'd been slightly caught off guard by the overwhelmingly zealous response to the crab, but at the same time this outcome isn't far off from developer Jagex's plan.
The genius of the gemstone crab is that it takes the longstanding OSRS tradition of crabbing, or training combat stats by attacking harmless crab enemies, and turns it into a social event.
It's a petri dish of MMO culture. Previously, you'd have to compete for limited crab spawns, but the Gemstone Crab is eternal and welcoming. It deals next to no damage to the people attacking it – though some players have found a way to die to it, earning cheers so loud you'd think the onlookers were in the Roman Colosseum – and it has infinite health. A zillion people can fight it forever, making for great AFK training. All you have to do is quickly follow it to new areas every 10 minutes.
"It has been awesome to see the love the crab's gotten, and the key thing behind that is making the game more social-friendly," Charles says. "Crabbing has always been a thing. You go all the way back 20 years ago, people were using rock crabs in Rellekka. We've added sand crabs. We've got Fossil Island crabs. And people AFK on them as a standard training method."
Charles says the idea for a unifying crab boss actually came from OSRS players themselves. "The community suggested, 'What if we had some uber, big boss crab that you could actually do with your friends?' Basically, that was the root of it. We were just like, 'Actually, that's perfect.' When you go to do sand crabs, you've got to hop worlds maybe 10, 20 times, depending on how busy it is, to find an empty spot. It's competitive. Other people can annoy you. Other people can get in your way.
"The Gemstone Crab is the opposite. You go there, you can be alongside other people. You can play the game together. You're not actually in a team, but you're playing the game together. You can chat, and I think that makes a big difference, and it makes it more welcoming, right? The experience for everybody involved is better not hopping worlds. It just works so well. And so, who knows, maybe this is a sign [for] more of these sort of social little bosses.
"I'm a big believer in making this game more social and less competitive, with respect to having to hop for the same resources and so on, which is just annoying, at the end of the day."
Some members of the crab faithful have expressed hopes that an exceedingly rare pet for the Gemstone Crab might be added. I put the idea to Charles, and he said there are no current plans, but "I wouldn't rule it out forever."
"As you say, people are practically forming a religion out of this crab. Maybe we'll have to give in to the community demands and give them what they want, which is a little cute gemstone crab to follow them. But yeah, who knows?
"There's no plans at the minute, and generally, pets are prestigious, so we try not to give too many of them out. They're these super rare drops from various, normally boss content and some skilling content. So we want to be cautious, because we don't want to flood the game with too many easy-to-get pets. And at the end of the day, Gemstone Crab, we can make it super rare, but realistically, getting it is merely a job of just AFKing it long enough, so we'll have to keep that in mind."
Since the Gemstone Crab's release, the official OSRS social accounts have taken to announcing updates on how many Hardcore Ironmen – who lose their status after one death – the crab has killed, all while the crowd cheers for blood. Charles reckons this is becoming something of a status symbol, because like me, he can't imagine how you die to this thing unintentionally.
"I feel like people want the cult status of dying to the crab to some extent. They have to have done it intentionally. I can't believe that somebody's gone there and taken the very dangerous one damage it deals out and are dying to it. But it is quite funny. Every time somebody else dies, we're talking about it on our internal channels, because it's just quite a funny thing. Oh, the Gemstone Crab's taken another life. And it's funny.
"It resonates with our players as well when we put out social content on it. This is the whole thing with the crab, right? It's just become this big phenomenon. Whether it's hardcores dying or whatever. I love it."
