MMO dev watches in horror and awe as thousands of players dogpile 16-year-old minigame, break the game to farm XP, and get addicted to fruit

In a demonstration of the social engineering that you only get in MMOs, thousands of Old School RuneScape players – because of course it's OSRS players – have rediscovered an ancient minigame and independently repurposed it as a community event that only works thanks to animalistic strength-in-numbers tactics and a severe addiction to "sq'irk" fruits. 

On February 12, 2007, RuneScape developer Jagex released a new minigame for the Thieving skill. It was called the Sorceress' Garden, and in a nutshell, it involved hiding from elemental guards and infiltrating the titular garden in order to steal and juice fruits called sq'irks. 

The garden was added years before RuneScape was split into the mainline MMO and the later-revived retro version now known as OSRS – or, rather fittingly, 2007scape on the official subreddit. The minigame has gone virtually unchanged for 16 years, but that didn't stop OSRS players from randomly dogpiling it so hard that entire game worlds have buckled. 

It's hard to say exactly when it was discovered, but in the past few days, a new method of cheesing Sorceress' Garden began to circulate. Players worked out that if there are enough people in the minigame, the aforementioned guards can't actually catch everyone they see, letting the lucky few totally ignore the stealth part and walk right up to the sq'irks, drastically speeding up those Thieving XP gains. With enough people, 'the lucky few' become 'the lucky most everyone,' incentivizing coordinated groups frequently called "masses" in OSRS. 

Initial reports exaggeratedly claimed that this method could yield upwards of 250,000 or even 400,000 Thieving XP per hour with minimal input. Pretty much all you'd have to do is click the sq'irks and roll the dice on the guard AI. That's a lot of XP for such a simple method, especially for a notoriously tedious skill. 

The maximum realistic XP rate has since been calculated around 200,000 XP per hour, which is still good, and that's been more than enough to keep the sq'irk train going. That said, the real payout for most players has been the nostalgic camaraderie of the whole thing, which harkens back to the innocent days that OSRS is, by its very design, trying to emulate and preserve. 

"Even though it's only 150k+ XP/hr (which is very solid but not broken), I found it super fun and social," writes Reddit user fastAndBIG. "Never enjoyed Thieving so much, much less spam clicky than traditional methods." 

"Sorceress' Garden mass event feels like the old days," adds a red-hot post from RSN_Kabutops. "So many people mindlessly running around the map. The people spouting random nonsense in chat. The arguing, the compliments, the chaos. Yes, it's pretty good XP, but it's actually kinda fun. Even though it's the same clicking over and over. The socialization in 523 feels like it's straight out of 2005. Most fun I've had skilling in a long time." 

The funniest part to me is the culture that's sprung up around sq'irkin' almost overnight. Successful sq'irk thieves have been deemed free runners, while the unfortunate players caught by the guards are called – with all due respect, reverence, and gratitude – sacrificial lambs. Some players reckon your connection quality affects your chance of getting caught, but the conversations on how to avoid becoming a sacrificial lamb all sound like old wives' tales to me. Either way, I'm pretty sure this is how cults get started, folks. 

Behold: hundreds of players pouring one out for NihilisticSleepyBear, who seemingly can't steal a sq'irk to save their life.  

OSRS players jointly decided that world 523 would be the home of the sq'irk mass, albeit with some pushback from players campaigning for a world ending with 51 on account of the Storm Area 51-esque energy of the stampede. Since OSRS worlds cap at 2,000 players, 524 has become an overflow world in the face of the event's popularity. 

I speak no hyperbole when I say thousands of players are likely workin' for the sq'irkin' right now, no doubt as Jagex watches in bemused horror at the monster they've inadvertently created. Players are already praying that the minigame, which isn't even the best Thieving method in ideal conditions and, unlike other methods, doesn't generate any money, isn't nerfed in some way. Players crave the sq'irk, Jagex. Let 'em have it. 

Even the OSRS community had a hard time digesting this secretly horrifying, 21,840-hour screenshot that one player used to jump-scare the Reddit.