You know, I’ve never really gotten into any MMO before, mostly because the whole thing seems so intimidating. As a complete MMO newbie it’s tough to know where to start, and that is even more true for MMOs that have been around for a long time and are already extremely established. Well “been around a long time" is sort of an understatement for RuneScape, which has been around in some form or another for more than 20 years. It comes in two different flavors: regular RuneScape, which is pretty much the game after 20 years of progression and evolution; and then Old School RuneScape which is, well, a more old-school style of the game modeled after how RuneScape was circa 2007.
Anyway, being around for so long and all, RuneScape as a whole has just celebrated crossing the 300 million accounts mark. Pretty impressive! But now we’re back to that whole thing about how an MMO, especially one that’s been around for literal decades and has multiple hundreds of millions of players, can be kind of intimidating to get into as a fresh player.
Well RuneScape developer Jagex has something of a solution to this sort of problem. In celebration of hitting that 300 million players mark, they’ll soon be launching something called Fresh Start Worlds on both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape. These are special limited time worlds where everyone who joins can create a fresh new character and that means everyone starts on the same level playing field. The Fresh Start Worlds will have their own economy, items, events, and more that are separate from the main RuneScape progression.
Fresh Start Worlds will operate a bit differently between RuneScape proper and Old School RuneScape. In RuneScape proper there will be accelerated character progression so all the new players will be able to level up at a decent pace, and then at any point during the 4-month Fresh Start Worlds event players can take their leveled up new character back into the regular RuneScape world with all their newly-earned goodies. This event will kick off in RuneScape on September 12th.
For Old School RuneScape, its Fresh Start World won’t feature accelerated progression, and instead of 4 months the event will run for 6 months. You won’t be able to take your new Fresh Start character into the regular game before the event is over, however, and instead you’ll play out the entire 6 month event and then that character will be transferred into the regular game automatically to continue living a long and happy virtual life.
Jagex is positioning the Fresh Start World events as great jumping off points for brand new players, but also a great reason for previous players who have lapsed to jump back in and re-experience the fun of both RuneScape games on a level playing field. I’m pretty psyched on the whole thing and I think I’ll use it as an excuse to try and get into my first ever MMO. If you want to check it out as well, both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape are available on PC, iOS, and Android devices and you can find links to all of them on the game’s website.
