‘Old School RuneScape’ has biggest ever weekend – 12 years after it launched

It looks like Old School RuneScape is more popular than ever after the classic massively multiplayer online game had its busiest ever weekend.

• READ MORE: How farming in ‘Old School RuneScape’ fixed my morning misery

Old School RuneScape launched in 2013 and is based on the 2007 version of RuneScape, before the controversial RuneScape 3 update. The classic MMO has seen renewed interest in recent years and this weekend, the record for highest number of concurrent players was broken.

According to player tracker misplaceditems, 240,756 players were logged on at the same time at 7:30pm yesterday (August 3). Taking to social media shortly afterwards, the official Old School RuneScape account confirmed that on Sunday, the game “broke our peak player count”.

Thank you all for playing Old School RuneScape.
Today we broke our peak player count pic.twitter.com/wimaT9DbQW

— Old School RuneScape (@OldSchoolRS) August 3, 2025

The previous peak was set at the end of last year during a limited-time League event. However there were no special events taking place this weekend, which makes the record even more impressive.

Last month, developers Jagex opened up 18 new worlds to try and keep up with Old School RuneScape’s popularity with more planned in the “near future” alongside the new skill sailing.

Speaking about the game’s growing popularity, one fan wrote: “Old School RuneScape has some of the most incredible updates over the last few years. Multiple times they’ve gone back and viewed things from a newer player experience and made changes.That success is a result of years of genuine passion for the game, making it the highest quality it can be while at the same time, microtransaction free.”

240,000!!!! all time highest player count after launching 12 years ago, we just keep reaching new heights…

OSRS proving to be the greatest MMORPG of all time pic.twitter.com/JDjpjgI2wd

— Ian / PureSpam (@ianspam) August 3, 2025

“This is unrivalled in the gaming world. There’s a few games that actually listen to player input but OSRS is on another planet,” added another. “There’s just something about OSRS  that is so fun. The way everything is interconnected. The fact I can do something super sweaty and intensive, or go do another activity like Woodcutting and just relax and not pay attention, yet it’s still benefiting my account massively for when I decide to more actively play it, is great,” wrote a third.

Last year it was confirmed a major graphics update was coming to Old School RuneScape. “At its core, HD Mode has always been about keeping Old School RuneScape’s unique visual identity safe, while embracing the enhanced graphical features players have come to expect from their games,” explained a blog post at the time. According to a RuneScape mod, the early stages of this update should begin rolling out soon.

Meanwhile the RuneScape 3 team are currently trying to win back the trust of their playerbase after a number of game-changing microtransactions were added to the MMO.

In other news, horror fans are worried about the upcoming Silent Hill f after developers said the combat was inspired by the popularity of “more difficult action games” such as Elden Ring.

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