Old School RuneScape

"RuneScape" redirects here. For other uses, see RuneScape (disambiguation).

For mobile version of the game, see Old School RuneScape Mobile.

Old School RuneScape
Developer		Jagex Ltd.
Publisher		Jagex Ltd.
Designers		Various (See article)
Engine		RuneTek 3
Release dates		22 February 2013 (Main game) 31 October 2018 (mobile)
Genre		Fantasy MMORPG
Ratings		• 16 by PEGI • MA15+ by ACB • Not rated by ESRB
Platforms		Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS
Requirements		1.5 GHz Processor, 256 MB RAM, 128 MB 3D Graphics Card
Input		Computer (Standard inputs): Keyboard & Mouse Computer (Optional): Touch-screen (requires a touchscreen monitor or laptop screen) Mobile: Touch
Website		https://oldschool.runescape.com

Old School RuneScape is Jagex's official term for a previous version of the RuneScape game that was introduced from the August 2007 Archive of RuneScape, a backup of the RuneScape source code as it had been on 10 August 2007. It is also commonly referred to as OSRS or 2007scape.

This version of the game was announced in a news post on 13 February 2013, which was followed by the opening of a poll to determine community interest on 15 February 2013. The poll, which ended 1 March 2013, decided, among other things, whether an additional membership fee would be charged for access to the game.

The poll ended at 00:00 UTC on Friday 1 March 2013 with the final tally of votes at 449,351. Although 500,000 votes were needed to allow no additional membership fee, Jagex stated that the first six months of Old School RuneScape will not have any additional charge. It has since remained open without any additional charge. Currently, Old School RuneScape is running both free-to-play and pay-to-play servers, and players can create new F2P accounts for free without having to pay for membership.

Despite it having originally been stated that servers would take one to two months to be opened following a successful poll, on 22 February 2013 as part of an Early Access scheme, Jagex opened over 50 Old School RuneScape servers and gave a month of free Old School RuneScape membership credit to it to all of those who had voted in the poll. The game quickly saw player counts equalling those of RuneScape.

Old School RuneScape works similarly to RuneScape Classic in that players can use their main accounts to access both games. However, any accomplishments, such as stats, items and quests, are separate and non-transferable. All players, regardless of achievements in other versions of the game, begin Old School RuneScape on Tutorial Island with a new character.

Old School RuneScape is rated 16 by the Pan European Game Information committee, and MA15+ by the Australian Classification Board. While Old School RuneScape is not rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the equivalent rating would be Teen.

History and release

2007 servers of RuneScape were originally announced in early 2013. Jagex allowed players to vote for Old School RuneScape on a referendum, promising a set of features for every vote mark level reached. The servers were based on a backup of RuneScape that was created on 10 August 2007.

Levels

Old School RuneScape was in four different levels, each with increasing vote requirements. The amount of votes can be seen on the official vote page. Regardless of the outcome, any voter will get a free month of Old School RuneScape game time. Although the vote count only reached 449,351 and not 500,000, Jagex decided not to charge the additional fee of five USD for the first six months (excluding the free month); however, on 7 June 2013, they announced that OSRS is here to stay and there will be no additional fee.

Features	Number of votes
	Level 0	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
	0 - 49,999	50,000 - 249,999	250,000 - 499,999	500,000 - 749,999	750,000 +
Server launch?	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Open to free players?	No	No	No	No	Yes
Level of on-going development	No	No	Yes - Small team	Yes - Additional dedicated development team
Additional membership cost (approx.)	No	Yes - $15	Yes - $5	No - No extra membership fee
Level of maintenance	No	Yes - Critical only	Yes - Basic	Yes - Weekly
Anti-bot/Anti-gold farming upgrade	No	No	Possible	Yes	Yes
Regular membership polls to decide new content	No	No	No	Yes	Yes

Note: The green shading in the table above only shows the vote mark reached on 1 March 2013 and the features that would have been given according to that vote mark. There have been many changes since the poll ended; click here to view them.

Level 1

The first level requires 50,000 votes, and is the absolute minimum amount of votes required to guarantee the Old School RuneScape release.

• $15 additional membership fee
• No game updates or bug fixes
• Critical maintenance only

Level 2

The second level requires 250,000 votes.

• $5 additional membership fee
• No major updates, only critical bug fixes
• Small development team
• Possibility of modern-day anti-bot technology over time, if needed

Level 3

The third level requires 500,000 votes.

• Free with current membership
• Some content updates, anti-bot technology added if necessary
• Maintenance will be done on a regular basis

Level 4

The fourth level requires 750,000 votes.

• No additional membership fee. Free portion of the game will be open for everyone.
• Content updates will be decided upon by regular polls.
• Modern anti-bot technology added if necessary
• Large development team for continuous maintenance

Features introduced

The following table shows the features that were introduced into OSRS. Jagex allowed other features from the 500,000 vote mark to be introduced in the game.

Features	Number of votes
	Level 0	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
	0 - 49,999	50,000 - 249,999	250,000 - 499,999	500,000 - 749,999	750,000 +
Server launch?	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Open to free players?	No	No	No	No	Yes
Level of on-going development	No	No	Yes - Small team	Yes - Additional dedicated development team
Additional membership cost (approx)	No	Yes - $15	Yes - $5	No - No extra membership fee
Level of maintenance	No	Yes	Yes - Basic	Yes - Weekly
Anti-bot/Anti-gold farming upgrade	No	No	Possible	Yes	Yes
Regular membership polls to decide new content	No	No	No	Yes	Yes

Core differences between OSRS and RS3

• Players must be aged 13 or over to play Old School RuneScape.
• Old School has tick-based combat that is mediated exclusively with weapons, armours, and prayers rather than Evolution of Combat, which makes use of abilities.
• Graphics are basic, with no texture packs to enhance models.
  • The official Java game client also does not make use of GPU processing, using CPU only. However, the newer official Steam/C++ client does take advantage of the GPU.
• The latest quest from the original game is King's Ransom. Later quests are developed separately. Land of the Goblins, The Path of Glouphrie, and Defender of Varrock were all backported at a later date with minor tweaks to keep them consistent with Old School RuneScape's established story.
• Aside from membership bonds, there are no Jagex microtransactions, such as Squeal of Fortune, Treasure Hunter, or Solomon's General Store.
• There is no Summoning, Dungeoneering, Divination, Invention, Archaeology, or Necromancy skill.
• A number of minigames do not exist; however, there are some minigames unique to Old School.
• Items that have been previously discontinued still exist. There also exist items that were never available before, such as beach boxing gloves and black partyhats.

Content

Most new content in the game is decided by Jagex-run polls based on player feedback obtained from social media such as Twitter/X and Reddit. Players must have at a total level of at least 280 in Old School RuneScape to be eligible to vote in these polls. In order for a poll to be successful, it must be supported by 70% of the votes. Players could vote on Old School RuneScape's poll page on the official website (prior to this features' removal) and currently vote in-game via poll booths that are located in every bank, or via the account management community tab.

After initially remaining largely identical to the original 2007 version for the first few months after launch (save for minor bug fixes and quality of life changes), the God Wars Dungeon and the Nightmare Zone were introduced as the first major updates for Old School (the former was present in the archive, the latter was the game's first entirely original content update). In the years since, new quests (Monkey Madness II, Dragon Slayer II, the Great Kourend quest series), areas (Kebos Lowlands, Ver Sinhaza, Weiss), and skilling updates (Rooftop Agility, Aerial fishing, the Motherlode Mine) have gradually transformed Old School into a unique game separate and distinct from the "vanilla" version. The game world is thus in a unique position of containing updates from 2001-2007 and from 2013 to the present, with low-resolution locations like Lumbridge and Ardougne existing alongside more modern-looking locations like Mount Karuulm and Fossil Island.

Some quest series that have remained incomplete in Old School RuneScape have also been continued, having a diverged path from its RuneScape storyline, such as A Taste of Hope and Song of the Elves. As Old School RuneScape is an alternate take of the RuneScape universe, key events within the quest's storyline remain the same, but the circumstances in which those events occur may differ from RuneScape's timeline. For example, in A Taste of Hope, the player faces and kills Ranis Drakan, while in RuneScape's quest The Branches of Darkmeyer, it is Vanescula Drakan who kills him.

Holiday items

Holiday items were first introduced into the game during the 2013 Rare Drops event, where holiday items dropped randomly around the world, similar to the original holiday item drops. Each world only had one item spawned at a time in location chosen randomly from a predetermined list. Items stayed visible for 30 minutes or until they were picked up, at which point they would randomly respawn again. The first drop was held in the first week of June. Players could also obtain holiday items by killing a Jagex Moderator.

Later on, all holiday items from previous events were rewarded in bulk for completion of the corresponding holiday events (players completing an Easter event would receive all holiday items from previous Easter holiday events). This also included newly added holiday items unique to Old School—e.g. the rainbow partyhat.

Trivia

• When Old School RuneScape was initially released, uncleaned herbs were grimy even though on the 10th of August 2007, uncleaned herbs were still unidentified. This was intentionally done by Jagex to prevent players from scamming. Unidentified herbs were reinstated on the 25 February 2013. However, with the introduction of the Grand Exchange in Old School RuneScape, grimy herbs were reinstated to allow previously unidentified herbs to be listed on the Grand Exchange.
• On Day 1, the Old School Servers hit 50,000 online players after being up for only four (4) hours. During peak times, player count has been seen to rise up to 85,247. However, during off-peak, the count has dwindled to as low as 3,566. The current highest peak player number of 205,251 was obtained on 19 November 2023. The current lowest players was on 8 August 2013.
• On January 25 2015, Mod Mat K held a "special discussion" about F2P for OSRS, and it was announced that permanent free-to-play would come to the game if membership bonds were introduced. It was polled the following week, and passed by 85.9%. F2P worlds were later made available on February 19 2015, in celebration of Old School's 2nd Birthday.