This past Monday was the Labor Day holiday (and a long weekend) for those of us living in the US of A, and it seems as if a significant number of residents in the country presumably spent some of that holiday time in Old School RuneScape, as one Redditor shared a player concurrency of over 160K people online at once.
For those who aren’t immediately familiar, the player count is pasted loud and proud right at the front of the MMORPG’s home page, so it was hard to miss. The mass of players in Gielinor at once is a noteworthy one not just because of the number but also because there’s no special event worlds open, on top of the fact that Jagex plans to raise the MMORPG’s subscription price. If players were hoping to send a message about that fee hike, well, they sure did send a message Jagex will like to hear.
Reaction to this news has been pretty varied, from surprise to armchair analysis to in-jokes about activity, alongside the usual low-hanging fruit grabs about most of those players being bots. The population of RuneScape has seen a surge of its own with an average of over 20K over a whole month, but it would seem as if there’s no school like the Old School.
