Old School RuneScape is experiencing a surge in popularity — the latest high point for the ever-resilient MMO that’s built on a vintage version of another MMO. Jagex’s nostalgic hit recently hit 200,000 concurrent players, sparking talk of a "Platinum Age" in a highlighted post on the game’s Reddit forum, complete with responses from the development team.

Marking the milestone beyond the previously celebrated Golden Age, Reddit user darkerwar6 wrote in a July 20 post: "Honestly, huge thanks to all the WoW players for bringing attention to this game I’ve cherished for years. And massive props to the J-mods for consistently improving the game every single week over the past 12 years!"

This peak of 200,000 players arrives just days before the launch of a major OSRS update introducing "the final chapter of the Varlamore trilogy," and follows a wave of exposure driven by World of Warcraft streamers and fans who’ve temporarily migrated to OSRS this summer.

World of Warcraft isn’t struggling by any means — rather, OSRS has simply become a trendy destination among WoW content creators and their communities, which appears to have significantly boosted player numbers.

"200k on a regular Sunday night — the Sailing release is going to be insane," commented Reddit user Stone-J, referencing the upcoming Sailing skill, which will mark the first new skill added to OSRS since the game’s inception.

Right now, OSRS has 186,398 players online — still an impressive number by any standard.

Today on Twitter, the official OSRS account shared a heartfelt message from the developers: "We are incredibly thankful for all the support you’ve shown us. There are so many fantastic games out there, and it means everything that so many of you continue to choose OSRS.

"We believe there’s even more to come, and we hope you’ll keep collaborating with us on future content and celebrating launches like Varlamore: The Final Dawn (in TWO days)!"

Elsewhere, Jagex confirmed that "player counts are surging," prompting the company to "expand our live infrastructure accordingly!" As a result, several new worlds — essentially game servers, though smaller and more flexible than traditional MMO servers — have been added in both the US and UK to handle the growing player base and balance server populations.

"Thank you for being a part of this incredible growth," the studio shared.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, mainline RuneScape continues to lag well behind its retro counterpart. In response, Jagex appears to be shifting focus, with new CEO Jon Bellamy stating, "The era of a compromised RuneScape 3 is coming to a close."

MMO streamer reveals he passed on a $5,000 WoW offer to keep playing Old School RuneScape, fan proclaims “RuneScape won the MMO war” — only for a dev to gently reply: “You can love both games”

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