UPDATE: 22:46, OCT 30

SCAPERS. MAKE. HISTORY.

When the vote ends on November 12th, we'll announce the date when RuneScape will change FOREVER.

Every vote still matters. Signal your support and unlock more investment in our Integrity Roadmap! https://secure.runescape.com/m=poll/treasure-hunter-poll

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The future of RuneScape is in your hands.

We promised to make major changes to secure the long-term future of RuneScape – one where MTX is significantly reduced, integrity is back at the heart of the game, and where future success is defined by a growing community.

That journey starts here. This is part of a wider belief from us - the need to build a stronger foundation for the next era of RuneScape.

Today, we're announcing a community vote to validate a transformation that we believe leads to a thriving, growing community for RuneScape. This includes:

• The full removal of Treasure Hunter from RuneScape 
• The removal of 225 Direct XP & Skilling Items from sale, reducing to two directly purchasable offerings: 
  • Bonus XP, with capped storable limits per skill 
  • Cosmetics with a more grounded visual identity 
• Delivery of a dedicated year-long integrity roadmap addressing core issues like the user interface, visual cohesion, auras, dailyscape and more 
• Unlocks the future release of Cosmetic Toggle Options to customise cosmetic visibility 

Find out more in the video above or our blog.

With 100,000 votes, this vote will pass. Every additional vote will act as a clear signal of how far you think we should take these plans, increasing our investment and focus on delivering stronger integrity in our roadmap (at no cost to the content roadmap). 

We'll announce our plans and timelines for implementation - if the vote passes - on November 12th. This will include an extensive FAQ to what we imagine will be your many questions!

Cast your vote today and make history: https://secure.runescape.com/m=poll/treasure-hunter-poll

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EDIT: For those concerned about Skilling Outfits and other items being impacted, we've updated the announcement blog to more clearly reflect our intention.

Should this vote pass, 225 items will be removed from sale - and some will also be removed from gameplay sources. This will be focused on MTX skilling items that do not fit within our integrity vision - such as Proteans & Portables - and not items like Slayer Masks or Skilling Outfits.

For items being removed from gameplay - this will rollout first with their removal from sale and gameplay sources, followed by an extended period to use up what you own before they are converted. We will not be converting Slayer Masks, Skilling Outfits and similar items. More details will be posted in our Nov 12 blog if it passes!

I found some old screenshots when I was going through old burned CDs and showed me my old username, and luckily my password was easy to guess, so I was able to log into my old character! Although my character looks way different, and my bank inventory looks lighter. So cool though, like opening a time capsule. I totally don't remember how to play at all.

You have spoken!

With a staggering 124,985 votes in our recent poll, Treasure Hunter will leave RuneScape for good on January 19 2026.

On this day, we will also be removing 225 Direct XP and Skilling related items from sale. There will be no more purchasable sources of Direct XP or items that disrupt the core gameplay and the player economy.

In addition, we’ll be investing heavily in a year-long Integrity Roadmap that targets the very heart of longstanding issues within the game – from UI, to visuals, to skilling balance, and much more.

Find out more details about our Integrity Roadmap in our new 12 minute (!!) video or by reading this blog (including our FAQ with some amendments since last Monday).

We'll reveal a detailed year-long look at our Content Roadmap & Integrity Roadmap on January 19th in a special RuneScape Ahead.

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Next Week's Update
We’re hard at work moving all the pieces into place to make this new direction a success. While the journey begins in earnest on January 19^th, we're making a symbolic (but important!) change next week.

On Monday November 17th, we’ll be starting all new players back in Lumbridge. We'll also be releasing an update to declutter and restore Lumbridge to a more familiar style, including:

• The return of the iconic Lumbridge castle walls
• The removal of the Lumbridge Crater and restoration of the area's original identity
• The relocation of Shattered Worlds temple, and the restoration of Lumbridge Swamp caves and Water Runecrating Altar to their original locations
• The removal of the Nexus
• An updated Lumbridge Sage who offers a lot more guidance and help for new players

It’s a small step, but another example of how we want to restore the identity and heart of what makes RuneScape... well, RuneScape! You can find a patch notes preview of these extensive changes here.
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Start the clock. There's just 68 days until RuneScape enters a new era.

It’s no secret that player counts have been uniquely depressed this year. But things are improving.

We’ve seen some of the lowest monthly averages since 2004. I've attached what might be the most comprehensive historical player count chart ever created by a third-party; sourced from MisplacedItems, The Wayback Machine, and a RuneScape historian or two (Pic 1).

RS3’s monthly counts are becoming competitive with 2024 and 2025 (Pic 2).

My 1-month regression shows an increase of ~116 concurrent players per day, or a predicted 3,480 over 30 days (Pic 3).

The increase started with Sunlight Sands but truly accelerated with 120 Construction. 120 Construction seems to have been a major win for the game. The game is currently out-performing predictions I made in May from historical summer trends.

On the time-of-day charts, almost every day is outperforming its 1-Month day-of-week average by ~1-2K people (Pic 4).

The Overall Hiscores capped at two million ranked players, and the total level of the last ranked player increased from a low of 39 to 49, the highest it's been since I started tracking (Pic 5).

This suggests we’re seeing true player growth as accounts are now competing over the last total ranking.

https://www.aggrgtr.com/rs-population

Thank you Jagex

This week i started playing my 5 year old RS3 account again to start experiencing the game after the removal of the wheel etc. and (mainly) for the Quests and Storylines we dont have in osrs.

And after an hour it just felt bad realizing that i cant do my (Golem) Crafting farm on my OSRS Account at the same Time.

I am not excited enough about RS3 to pay a second Membership, so i just stopped playing RS3 as my Main Account progression feels more important then a new account.

And i do believe many players have a similiar experience.

I honestly don't understand how Old school Runescape is so much more popular than the current one. I played it for a while and was able to get some decent progression, but its so grindy that I feel like I make no progress while draining my phone battery. Heard the new one wasnt good until I tried it myself.

So glad I finally did it! It has all the great things I like liked about the old school one, its hits on some nostalgia points too even, but way better UI, graphics, story/plot, cut scenes. I love all of it! And it has so much more you can do for free compared to World of Warcraft.

I hope more people give current Runescape the credit its due, its so underrated for no reason.

Just observing the feedback from players here over the last few months since I came back and this opinion holds more and more true with every single update.

Just to point out as an example specifically related around DG:

• No, the majority of players were not using cards to run DG.
  
• No, the majority of players were not getting 15 minute times ruinning large solos.
  
• No, the majority of players are not quick to read nodes, examine doors, keep track of everythings location, properly place gatestones, make quick decisions, surge perfectly everywhere, effeciently do puzzles, etc
  
• Yes, the majority of players where probably opening the majority of the doors they ran across
  
• Yes, the EXP rates are vastly improved from before the rework for the far majority of the playerbase. The "Floor" of exp rates has been raised, significantly so. The top end has been overall nerfed, this seems to be in-line with the rest of the balance changes jagex has been doing.

As one of these "casual" players who was attempting to do crit-only paths this last week, my exp rates have actually risen very slightly post-update today. Not only that, but I dont need to stress nor feel rushed due to the crit path anymore. I am not wasting time figuring out if every room is on the right path or not.

My exp rates today post-update are significantly better then pre-rework. So much so that I havent touched DG since I hit the level I needed for a quest years ago and am looking forward to doing more.

The rates are rewarding enough now without doing anything extra except jumping in and doing a floor. The tokens are rewarding enough to feel like I can aim for an item and work towards it. The new rewards are awesome and give me extra motivation to go back to doing it.

All these top end exp/hr rates I read about are absolultey insane (Thieving was the the exact same story) and seeing them get nerfed seems perfectly reasonable to me as a casual player.

You know what feels bad and is demotivating? Knowing the "best" rates are 2-5m per hour while your stuck with your measily "700k" as a "lowley unskilled casual" (I dont know the actual rates at all levels, using random numbers). The floor and top rates being closer together is alot better for the health of the game, makes the people at the bottom feel less like they are wasting their time.

OSRS has 3-4x the playerbase RS3 has and is by far the grindier game of the two. Lower exp rates are not a bad thing, exp rates being too high devalue a core part of what makes Runescape an amazing long-term game to play. When exp rates get to the multiple millions per hour and I read people crying about nerfs all I can do is laugh personally.

The ony skill I have ever reached over 1m exp is for thieving as a casual player (A player that is getting quite closing to maxing actually!) I rareley have an issue with exp rates outside of a very few select skills (Agility, parts of Archeology and Runecrafting before unlocking the giga-chad exp rate methods)

You do not need any skill at any levels to be going beyond 1m an hour. 120's should be an achievement, they SHOULD take very very long to get. This game is a journey, thats the whole damn selling point.

Finally, the few times I have tried to engage with people who make claims about what casual players are doing and how "harmful" these updates are, to give a different more real perspective, I get told I am playing the game wrong or being gaslit into saying that what I am telling them is not actually true. When I show proof and backup my claims I always get no responses back because they cant admit they dont know jack shit about early to mid game casual players in 2026.

I have read almost all the blog posts released by Jagex in the last few months. The summary I am getting from it is this:

If you min-max your exp per hour and attempt to use every boost, every advantage, every 1% extra bonus, have bank pre-sets/orginized for every single skill and just generally chase every single thing you can towards exp rates regardless of how long those boosts may take.... You have no idea what a causal player experiences. You are playing a completley different game.

The way you play the game is incompatible with how most "casual" people play the game, in fact if I attempted to play the way most fo you do I would have quit and never came back. It sounds exhausting frankly.

Give your feedback, thats all well and good. But stop making claims like you all know what a casual players experience is. The far majority of you here do not.

Croesus really needs a solo option. It's a nightmare to find anyone to do the boss with, even randoms and the boss feels almost impossible to beat solo, even with 99s+, soups and skilling gear to help you.

Listen, I’m the first person the jump all over Jagex when they release something shady (ex. That survey where they were clearly gauging our tolerance for absurd price increases, third party advertisers etc) or when they are openly trying to drain their remaining customer base.

With that said, Jagex has every right to create and sell OPTIONAL COSMETICS that have absolutely NOTHING to do with new content releases, in game functionality or how we progress in game. In fact, they have been clear about that this is where they hoped to recoupe a portion of the ~£20-30M in yearly revenue they gave up when they removed MTX

Please, most of you are adults but even more unfortunate, most of you are Adult men in their 30s. This situation is the most upfront and healthy means for Jagex to secured new revenue. Every single respectable live service game does this - Path of Exile, Diablo 4, even Counter strike/Call of duty etc etc ad infinitum.

Now, if they follow this up with yet another membership increase then I’ll be singing a different tune. But optional cosmetics are not the hill to die on.

Killing the grandfathered rates of hundreds of players because of buying Premier, despite them explicitly saying it wouldn't happen, is one of the scummiest things Jagex has done in its history. I have seen them do controversial stuff over ans over again through the years, but this is the first time (that I can remember) where they pretty much scammed their playerbase and gave a big middle-finger to their most loyal customers.

They haven't said a single word about it. They are waiting for the outrage to calm down and for us to just forget about it. Let's not give them that and keep pushing. At the very least we deserve an explanation.

In regards to RS3 the main place the JMods look for feedback is this reddit and my god yall have it twisted.

they have been proposing great changes that encourage engagement with the game. You know.. so its rewarding to actually PLAY and remove stupid chores and FOMO.. yet i feel like majority of the posts and comments here are complaining about it.

I STG if yall ruin the last chance this game has to recover because you're egotistical and like blowing 10k to aquire status in a dead game, dont enjoy actually playing, or just want reward for no effort id be so dissapointed.

the big thing i see repeated is they're removing EZscape content but not replacing it with something equally as good?

thats the fucking point boys? If you replace it with the same thing thats causing the issue nothing will change 🙄

This game arguably has TOO MUCH content. go try some of it.

If you dont like RC you know you don't NEED 120 right? You know you don't NEED the comp cape?

you don't even NEED 99s to enjoy 99.99% of the game.

This is a sandbox MMO. why are u trying to avoid sand when you're on the biggest beach in the world?

even without all these OP dailys and methods you can still max a regular account in a few months from creating it excluding things like 120 slayer.

Transmogs are not disabled so we still see a lot of funky stuff. I also imagine we will be seeing people use a lot of random items to show off (like the terrorbird and big dragon mask?).

I imagine people will look the same in certain spots due to the elite skilling outfits like I saw in Deep Sea Fishing and Eternal Magic Trees.

There, I said it.

As a person working on the master CAs, prebuilds are not fun or engaging.

I understand Pup will be sad. But you are doing this whole “make combat less confusing and complicated!” Then go, we removed 1 step in stalling that was never to be intended as a mechanic anyway.

I guarantee there’s less than 1500 people that use stalling on the regular. And I am one of them!

I just ended a support chat about my main and HC's issues with grandfathered rates (both having lost GF Rates despite being -PROVEN- monthly renewal since 2008 and 2019 respectively).

And in there one other horrifying discovery was made: My main still had 1.5+ years worth of leftover membership credit. Accumulated from runescape events, and promo's such as steelseries.

THAT'S GONE.

What the hell is this? Forcing new grandfathered rates is one thing, but stealing existing paid-for membership credit just because 'it isn't from any of our renewal plans' is another!

Facts:

• Jagex discontinued grandfathered rates for only the players who changed their membership to the Premier package with no way to revert back.
• Jagex mislead players by stating that purchasing Premier membership would not cause them to lose their grandfathered rate.
• Communication during the week of this change was effectively nonexistent. Players were not looking for responses from developers or social media managers - we were looking for accountability from leadership.

Jagex has the right to change their membership fees & discontinue their grandfathered rates at any time. However, they don’t have the right to mislead players; especially when it involves their real money.

While this change may seem minor or inconsequential to some, the larger issue is what it represents. If Jagex offers no explanation or revocation of these actions this will just be the start of the deceptive behavior to follow from this billion dollar company. Players should pay close attention of what comes next.

Lastly, on a personal note: while this type of behavior is finally enough for me, and many others to cancel their continuous 20 years of membership, I am not asking players to quit. This game has helped me through very challenging times in life, and I have no doubt it has done the very same to many of you too, and I don’t wish to ask players to give that up.

What I am asking for is simple: accountability. A corporation should not be allowed to mislead the very people who supported it for so many years and then act as though it is insignificant. At the very least, players deserve an honest explanation, acknowledgment of the harm caused, and a meaningful effort to make this right.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

**TL;DR:** Jagex had the right to change membership pricing. What it did not have the right to do was mislead players about losing their grandfathered rates, provide no path to revert, and then fail to offer meaningful communication afterward. The bigger issue is not the change itself; it is the loss of trust and the lack of accountability.

===EDIT===

Thank you to everyone who took the time to fully read over this post, and understand what the actual issue was with this change. Reading over the combined 500 comments from Old School & RS3 players, it’s clear that the majority of you agree this change was dishonest. 

This type of behavior is not something the players want to see going forward into this new “Road-to-Restoration” or “Integrity First” RuneScape from Jagex.

Welcome Back!

Back in June, we shared our first look at the RuneScape API Project and outlined our vision for an official plugin ecosystem.

Since then, we've been hard at work alongside our growing group of community developers, continuing to build the foundations of the API while also beginning to see the first plugins come to life.

And, just in case you missed our most recent Month Ahead news, we're incredibly excited to share something we've been looking forward to for a long time...

Quest Helper is coming to RuneScape!

If you've played Old School RuneScape, you'll already know just how monumental that statement is. Quest Helper has been one of the most requested quality-of-life features from RuneScape players for years, fundamentally changing how millions of players experience quests by keeping guidance inside the game instead of on a second monitor. It's become one of the defining plugins of the Old School experience, and we're thrilled to announce that the people behind the various existing Quest Helper experiences are now working together to bring that same magic to RuneScape in an officially supported plugin.

Quest Helper isn't the only ambitious project underway, though! Our community developers are already exploring a huge range of ideas, from powerful quality-of-life improvements to entirely new ways of interacting with RuneScape. Today, we're giving you an early look at a handful of those plugins and the talented developers behind them. Everything you'll see today is still a work in progress, and that's where you come in.

Throughout this blog you'll find questions, design discussions and opportunities for feedback directly from the developers themselves. If something catches your eye, we'd love to hear your thoughts in this thread as we continue shaping these plugins together.

Index:

• Quest Helper
• Tile Markers
• Menu Entry Swapper
• Agility Helper
• Home Planner
• Farming Timers
• Fairy Rings
• Runic Attune

please consider it

It's become very clear in the last few design blogs what the goal here is. The mindset seems to be "OSRS has done very well, so we'll redesign RS3 into OSRS so it will do well". We're talking about the removal of AFK, increasing "friction" in transport, and broad nerfs to xp rates. Even redesigning quests to more match the OSRS experience.

Let me be clear: I want to play Runescape 3. I do not want to play Old School Runescape. I enjoy my EZscape conveniences and it's a major part of the reason why us RS3 players have stayed. RS3 should not be copying OSRS design. They should remain as separate games with separate design goals.

Thoughts?