This past weekend saw Jagex host its 2024 Winter Summit event for Old School RuneScape, which dropped a ton of reveals for fans of the elder statesman MMORPG that run all the way through the spring and summer seasons.
Leading off the Summit’s updates are revised and returned classic quests While Guthrix Sleeps and Defender of Varrock, with the former being a remake featuring new quest steps and rewards and the latter a backported version that promises “a little Old School spice” that won’t start players off in the Wilderness.
Speaking of the Wilderness, it’s likewise seeing an update that’s designed around bringing in lower-level players into the PvP zone. Most of this will focus around a chaos temple, where chaos druids and undead pirates clash and players are invited to hunt these foes and one another for rewards.
Obviously new things are on deck for 2024 as well, most of which will be focused on the new Varlamore area and quest line, the first part of which will start in March. This first taste of the region will open up new quests to explore, as well as open access to the Fortis Colosseum, a dangerous underground region, and the Hunters Guild.
Finally of major note is the Jagex’s plan for the Sailing skill’s development, which now has a roadmap of steps the studio will be taking to bring the skill online to players. The roadmap chronicles the course of four phases of feature development interspersed with a tech alpha and two open betas that will be available for players through 2024, along with player contests to design icons and islands. Exact dates for testing will be announced later.
In addition to all of these upcoming features, the summit confirmed several returning events, announced the 2024 Deadman mode’s return in the summer with bigger breaches and the return of sigils, the official launch of an HD mode and plugin API for the game’s launcher, and plenty of physical merch. And of course, there are multiple poll questions to gauge player interest in the addition of many of the planned updates. In short, there is a whole lot on tap for the first half of OSRS’s year, so fans will probably want to look through the synopsis as well as the roadmaps below.
