Old School RuneScape is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Jagex. The game was released on 22 February 2013. When Old School RuneScape launched, it began as an August 2007 version of the game RuneScape, which was highly popular prior to the launch of RuneScape 3. The game has since received engine improvements, new content, and quality of life updates largely decided by the community via in-game polls. Despite originally having a smaller development team and a slower update schedule relative to RuneScape, Old School RuneScape is now the more popular version of the game, with an all time record of 157,000 concurrent players. A mobile version for Android and iOS was released in October 2018.
Gameplay
Old School RuneScape is an MMORPG with adventure elements. It features a persistent world in which players can interact with each other and the environment. The basic mechanics are largely the same as RuneScape on 10 August 2007. The player controls a single (human) character and can interact with NPCs, objects, and entities in the game world by left-clicking or right-clicking and selecting an option from the object's right-click context menu. Users can gain experience points (XP) and level up individual skills, making their playable character more powerful in various ways.
There is a large selection of skills, grouped mainly between three different categories: combat, gathering, and artisan. Combat skills, which are Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Magic, Prayer, and Hitpoints, allow the player to defeat enemy monsters or other players in certain circumstances. The gathering skills, which include Mining, Fishing, and Woodcutting, allow the player to gather in game resources to use or sell. The artisan skills include skills such as Cooking, Crafting, Fletching and Smithing. The input mechanics are primarily point-and-click. The game runs on a tick-based system where the game state refreshes every 600 milliseconds.
Post-release features
Features that were not released until after 2007 that exist in RuneScape have since been released to Old School RuneScape. These include areas such as the God Wars Dungeon and the Soul Wars minigame. One of the more helpful features is a button that allows players to search or look up information about items and entities on the game's wiki.
Content exclusive to Old School RuneScape has also been added, such as the areas of Fossil Island and Great Kourend, minigames such as The Inferno and the Volcanic Mine, quests such as Dragon Slayer II and Song of the Elves, bosses such as the Nightmare of Ashihama, and skilling activities such as Rooftop Agility and Forestry. Players can obtain pets from killing certain bosses or skilling that follow them around the game world. Skilled players can complete difficult raids such as the Chambers of Xeric, the Theatre of Blood, and the Tombs of Amascut. Players can also join clans to socialize with other players.
Old School RuneScape also offers an "Ironman" game mode, where players are restricted to being entirely self-sufficient. Ironman mode players are completely barred from trading with other players, picking up items dropped by other players, picking up items dropped by monsters killed by other players, buying items sold to stores by other players, and picking up items dropped by players they've killed in certain PvP situations. First introduced in October 2014, Ironman Mode is often considered one of the most difficult ways to play the game, as many late-game items are only obtainable as a rare drop from high level bosses. Although these accounts can still use all the game's chat features, the game mode is often touted as a "single-player" experience due to the necessity of solo gathering and exploration for progression. In addition to the normal Ironman mode, two other variants exist: "Ultimate Ironman Mode" that cannot use the in-game banks and a "Hardcore Ironman Mode" that converts into a normal Ironman account after experiencing an "unsafe" death for the first time.