One of the oldest active MMOs just had its longest server outage ever

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Old School Runescape was down for a total of 17 hours

Runescape
(Image credit: Jagex)

Old School Runescape just had its longest-ever server outage which lasted a whopping 17 hours. 

As chronicled on the game's official Twitter account, Old School Runescape had a server outage that lasted from around 9AM (GMT) on November 22 until approximately 2AM (GMT) on November 23. In total, OSRS was having issues for around 17 hours, making this the longest-ever outage for the game. 

Things started when the Twitter account shared that players had reported not being able to log into the game (at 8:52AM GMT). Over the next few hours, this turned into a multi-part Twitter thread where the game's developer Jagex shared updates with fans who were eager to get back into the long-running MMO. By almost 11:30AM (GMT) it was revealed that the issue was due to an active issue at the game's data centre. 

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By the time it had reached 6PM (GMT), Jagex put out an official statement explaining the situation: "An external data center provider experienced a site-wide issue which resulted in a full downtime of services housed there," which includes Old School Runescape. The statement also told fans that the team is "discussing appropriate make good options for you," since this outage would have an impact on players' in-game gains. 

Thankfully, by 2AM (GMT) on the 23rd, Jagex had announced that Old School Runescape was back up and running. This didn't come without any consequences though as due to the issue at the Data Centre, the game update that was supposed to roll today has since been delayed and will now be merged with next week's update instead.

Some good news to come out of the ordeal though is that the majority of Old School Runescape players were fairly understanding about the whole thing. With some even going as far as sending photos of their dogs to the team to keep the morale up. There were still some though that completely lost their minds over the thought of not being able to play Old School Runescape for a while.

If you need a backup game to play if the OSRS servers ever go out again, take a look at our best MMORPGs list.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.