Jagex reccently announced that there MMO has 200 million accounts, they released in a press release the following.

"if RuneScape were a country it would be the 5th largest population in the world."

Now I haven't played Runescape in a while and I bet that a lot of those accounts are inactive, but even so thats a hell of a lot of people.

I would bet that most of those are inactive. When I started playing just about every server had between 1700 and 2000 players (the max number of players in a server). You would pick a server from somewhere that it was the middle of the night (around 700 players) so that there wouldn't be as much competition at the mines. The last time I checked only 3 servers were nearing full and most were around 300 players. I wonder if they count gold sellers accounts because those have always been a problem.

Oh man I still remember playing Runescape for hours on end. Good times.

Yeah, most of those are probably inactive. My Runescape account is probably one of those 200 million even though I haven't touched the game in approximately 7 years now.

And it still sucks, my little brother started playing when he was 11, he's 17 now and still goes back to it sometimes. Also, who cares.

Whatever I have like 4 inactive accounts. Runescape was dumb.

I came into this thread, to say how those accounts are all probably owned by 12 year olds, or all inactive.

But you know what...

Good for them. They where one of the first Free to Play games, and have found a way to make money by creating something. I dont know. They must be doing something right if they have been around for so long. I remember playing Runescape when I was 12, and that was more then 10 years ago.

I had a Runescape account years ago. I remember really hating that game.

@Dagbiker said:

I came into this thread, to say how those accounts are all probably owned by 12 year olds, or all inactive.

But you know what...

Good for them. They where one of the first Free to Play games, and have found a way to make money by creating something. I dont know. They must be doing something right if they have been around for so long. I remember playing Runescape when I was 12, and that was more then 10 years ago.

I've always liked the people behind Runescape, they are a company that you image are just a bunch of laid back guys instead of a bunch of suits.

The game is a non-stop boring grind with horrific 'gameplay' by any standards. You do get quite a lot for a F2P game but everything in the game is a chore, there's absolutely no convenience to any of the mechanics in the game.

I played it for short period of time before guild wars 1 was released. After that it was impossible to imagine going back to Runescape ever, and that was 7 years ago!

nice going. i've played much more than my fair share of runescape. while i probably wouldn't like it now, 7 years ago that game was the shit, especially because all my friends played it.

@Hizang: Yah, I had that impression too.

Yeah, they must be counting all accounts ever. Even my account which I made 5+ years ago and played for 2 hours.

I talked to a young dude who was in to this. Mainly because he couldn't afford to play WoW. He would grind for hours and hours to get a new cape (or something). Fascinating. The fact that it is played through the browser surely helps those big numbers. Kids playing from school and what not.

LOL
LOL
LOL
LOL
IF YOU LOVE ME YOU'LL BREAK MY NECK IN MY SLEEp

They're definitely accounting for every one account created.

I wonder how many accounts were created for exploitative purposes or simply for someone who wanted to start over. I used to have an account, but apparently it's been compromised and my intention to reexamine Runescape after several of years of forgetting about it was met with the inability to log in or even recover my account. I remember having a second account for the purposes of experimenting with a certain pvp style, but yeah.

Man I used to sink so many hours into that game and at some point even had a premium account. I'm sort of glad I did, though, because it exhausted my ability to pick up an MMO and ever since I haven't been addicted to single MMO.

I saw a Runescape advert on TV the other day and it blew my mind that it was on there.

@Hizang said:

I've always liked the people behind Runescape, they are a company that you image are just a bunch of laid back guys instead of a bunch of suits.

Yeah, they've won a bunch of awards for 'Top 100 places to work for' plus others http://www.jagex.com/careers/jagex/awards

3 of them are mine and they're all inactive, if that means anything.

Runescape is fucking awesome. I have a level 117, but I have barely played (just on and off here and there) since around 2007. I've been thinking about playing again for a month or so.

Runescape was awesome. When I was 13. There are so many free to play MMO's out there now that you'd have to be crazy to want to play Runescape.

People still play Runescape?

Good for them I guess, I've only watched my brother play for a few minutes and it looked terrible.

@Hizang said:

I've always liked the people behind Runescape, they are a company that you image are just a bunch of laid back guys instead of a bunch of suits.

Yeah, they've won a bunch of awards for 'Top 100 places to work for' plus others http://www.jagex.com/careers/jagex/awards

I don't like the game but this is good for them, they've been around long enough to deserve it.

I remember playing this way back in, like, 2004 or 2005. It was alright but I got Guild Wars a little bit later around that time and there was no going back from that ish.

@Daiphyer: I think their business model relies on 12 year olds telling each other how cool this free game on the internet is.

I played Runescape for about 15 minutes total, that was 8 years ago. Still that's kinda impressive

That's a lot of fish.

My favorite part of that game was the self-sufficiency you could reach. It was like playing an RPG version of Settlers.

I'd go fish, chop trees to get wood, use the wood to make a camp fire, cook the fish, use that fish to heal me in dungeons where I went to mine (fighting monsters and getting gold at the same time), so that I could go smelt the ores to make new armor... I liked that game. I think I only had 1 more quest to finish, and I'd have been done with all of them.

I remember one of the later patches screwing over the trade system though... Have they fixed that? Would be nice to hand over my stuff to someone who's still playing. Doubt Rune equipment is still okay these days though :)

I can account for maybe 10 of those 200 million. I used to love this game, its too bad it sucks so much, cause some of the quests are really interesting.

I found the game itself quite funny, good sense of humor.

@Hizang said:

I found the game itself quite funny, good sense of humor.

That's a good point. Thinking back on it, I really took that for granted. I was so absorbed in trivial things like grinding and questing to level up...

Probably made like five accounts, never more than an hour on any of them.

Had some friends who were really into it though, and the school filters didn't block it.

200 million since launch.

which is not the same as 200 million current accounts.

more than half are bots

Ten lols per second, you guys.

Glad that's over.

@SargeGulp: It's not over, Runescape still exsists. I'd wager its going to be around for a long time, they will probably only announce Runescape 2 when World of Warcraft 2 gets announced.

@SargeGulp: It's not over, Runescape still exsists. I'd wager its going to be around for a long time, they will probably only announce Runescape 2 when World of Warcraft 2 gets announced.

@ajamafalous: Oh right, forgot about Runescape classic, well then Runescape 3.