Inspired by the history of games that are RS games of Jagex, it'll be a massive waste of RS gold cash, and will be discontinued within 1-2 decades. If you wonder RS3 development has slowed to a crawl, then this is the reason. I frankly think this might be make or break for Jagex, but I'm just being cynical. I believe that it's pretty undeniable that RS3 is on the decrease, given that the content droughts and frequency of events like DXP to try and retain some amount of player activity. OSRS includes a limited lifespan its playerbase exists almost exclusively because of nostalgia.

I'd be curious how many OSRS players had never played RuneScape prior to trying OSRS; definitely a few due to the simple fact that it's become a bit of a cultural phenomenon/icon but it can't be many. I imagine interest in a 13 year really grind-heavy, mostly obsolete old MMORPG running on a 20 year old spaghetti powered engine isn't very high among younger viewers that didn't grow up playing RuneScape to start with. Some sort of RuneScape Remastered or enlarged MMO set in the RuneScape world could be RuneScape's only hope. You're absolutely right about Jagex handling of every other game they've ever produced, so I optimistic.

Look at player counts games like cod, or steam amounts. Runescape generally has 20kish players online. Thats 24/7, many games dream of numbers like that. Just the games that are complete have more players. Can it be less than it'd sure, is it close to death? Not even near it. If you produce a match you hope is has even a fraction of the players. Look at wolcenthey had like 75k players around the first day and they didn't even envision or prepare that many players so the servers took a shit. Today Runescape averages less than 2k gamers.

Such as they used to in the rpg and mmo facet of this marketplace, there are to many games now times to encourage huge numbers. Shooters that they come and go every year and always haveCS holds players. RS3 includes a solid 20-30k on pretty much at any given time. With upward of 45k at peaks. It would be somewhere in the mid to low 20's on steam graphs in rank, if we are comparing to steam charts. Which is really a good spot to be in contemplating that is where a lot of the more popular games place on steam graphs such as final dream and ESO.

My guess is that it's likely to be an entirely new and different MMO rather than remastering the very old code we play today, I do not think that they think that it's worth to remaster RuneScape in fear of it being ineffective and result in loss of gamers. Brand recognition is the best marketing tool there is, especially when it's one with the quantity of nostalgia which Runescape brings to so a lot of people. The rumours of RuneScape: Remastered are that it is a completely new game which shares some lore out of RuneScape, but could be set somewhat later in the timeline and OSRS Gold For Sale have an entirely new world (possibly sharing a few of the same areas as the recent RuneScape, but rebuilt from the earth without the grid system and other constraints of the old engine).