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Why are more gamers than ever playing the 2000s classic RuneScape?
Why are more gamers than ever playing the 2000s classic RuneScape?
Imagine calling your friends, ordering a pizza, and opening up RuneScape on your PC.
A lot of people around my age might read those words and be instantly thrown back to the days of dial-up internet, MSN Messenger and Napster.
But before you instinctively type the letters "a/s/l" on your keyboard, get this - for a lot of people, this is hardly the stuff of distant memories.
In 2025 RuneScape - the online game where players can go on quests with their friends which first launched way back in 2001 - saw an influx of players.
Its number of paid members grew to "well over a million" according to the company, an increase of 30% compared to the start of the year.
Many millions more play for free, and the firm saw a historic milestone in 2025 - with a whopping 240,000 logging in at the same time, the most simultaneous players in the game's 25-year history.
To put that into context, at the time of writing, only three games available on the online store Steam have more current players.
Of course, that high was a peak rather than a constant - it currently stands at around 175,000 - but it shows just how much people have shown an interest in returning to the medieval land of Gielinor.
Back in the 2000s, RuneScape made a name for itself as an early massively multiplayer online (MMO) game which could be played in a web browser without downloading anything to your computer.
It grew rapidly through word-of-mouth thanks in part to its mix of social interaction, accessible gameplay and humour.
Twenty five years after it first came out, it is now two different games.
There's RuneScape (which fans often refer to as RS3), a modern take on the classic game.
Then there's Old School RuneScape, which looks and feels like the original - perhaps because it began with a snapshot of the game exactly as it was in 2007, and has since grown with new areas, characters and things to do.
And over the two-and-a-half decades since its initial launch online, the game has fallen behind other MMOs. It's estimated that World of Warcraft is played by more than a million people every day, while Final Fantasy XIV is up there, too.
But the game's maker Jagex has not forgotten its roots.
"There's a term called 'RuneScapiness' which is a little bit hard to nail down," game designer Molly Mason told the BBC.
"But I think part of that at least is the British humour that's reflected in our games.
The Monty Pythonesque, that type of stuff.
She said she believed the game was drawing people in because it's "community-oriented" - something the studio's new boss Jon Bellamy agreed with as he comes to the end of his first year in charge.
A player himself, he has made several big changes since taking the role in March.
"I came in like many players of 20 years would and thought, what are the things that I'd really just love to tackle," he said.
Those changes include trying to deal with the cheaters and "bots" - machines pretending to be players to level up characters without effort - and doing something almost unthinkable in modern games.
RuneScape players were given a vote on whether to get rid of many of its in-game purchases - something often annoying for gamers, but a big revenue stream for developers.
Unsurprisingly, gamers overwhelmingly voted to ditch the mechanic, and it has certainly bought the new boss a lot of goodwill.
"This is what actually investing into the game's growth looks like," one anonymous fan said on Reddit, with another describing the management team with a fire emoji.
But while fans may be happy, it is not without risk.
"This comes with real financial ramifications," Jon said.
But with a 10-year or 15-year view for the business and for the game, my gut says this is totally the right thing to do.
The bet that we're taking is beginning with the removal of microtransactions and then more than a year's worth of integrity-based upgrades.
These sorts of moves have brought players to the game, with Jon saying Old School RuneScape was "the fastest-growing MMO in the world right now", something even he felt was "bizarre" given the game is two decades old.
The updates include a lot of things fans have asked for, such as improving the user interface, making combat more consistent, and removing systems that make people feel pressured to log in every day.
The players I spoke to were excited by the changes.
"The player base are very vocal with what we want and what we don't want," said Megan, who streams the game to her 20,000 followers on Twitch.
They listen to us and I think that's why it's so successful still, because it's not just a game that is made for us - it's kind of a game that's made with us.
But she said the thing that brings people back is the other players.
"You can just meet so many like minded people and you feel like you already know them because you share such a passion that you both have," she said.
I know a lot of people that have met their husband, their wife through RuneScape - one of my best friends moved from Australia to be with her boyfriend in England and they've been together for 12 years.
She was not the only person I spoke to who told me this kind of story.
Ryan, known as The RS Guy to his 80,000 subscribers on YouTube, said he met his wife through the game.
"It's funny because that's such a commonplace thing in RuneScape," he said - adding both of the people who edit his videos met their partners through the game too.
"I understand how crazy that sounds to someone outside of that world.
For me, we started off our relationship by playing RuneScape together every day for a good year, and then we started dating, we got engaged and yeah, now we're married.
Ryan plays RS3 - a more modern take on the online game which has better graphics and more features.
He said he thinks people are coming back to it because it isn't perfect - but rather it has "grown up" alongside its players.
"It's gone through its ups, it's gone through its downs," he said.
"It almost feels a little bit like the relationship someone may have with a family member.
Even when you're at odds with the game, you have so many years of experience and so many moments in time to fall back on that were that were pleasant, core memories or were foundational - possibly even to your development as a person.
And that relationship is, at least to Molly, at the heart of why people keep coming back.
"This is the game that's been with people for decades," she said.
"We have a phrase for RuneScape saying you never quit, you just take a break - the game will always be there for you, your character will always be there for you.
I think all of those reasons kind of added together make RuneScape what it is today.
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Source: BBC
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