OSRS Becomes the MMO With the Most Number of Accounts Created in 2022

Over 320 million OSRS accounts have been created from RuneScape’s original launch to 2022.

OSRS is one of the oldest MMOs out there. With the official launch of RuneScape 3 in 2013 and a shared membership between them, OSRS has quickly drawn a lot of popularity from players around the globe. Because of its tremendous popularity, the game has been a playground both for OSRS GP sellers and bot farms alike and has one of the most extended black markets for trading its in-game currency: OSRS gold.

Furthermore, it is not even illegal to swap one of the game currencies for the other. This means that you can freely trade the gold you have in RuneScape 3 for OSRS GP and vice versa, and if you get membership in one game, you will have it for both games, provided that you use the same credentials to log in to both Runescape 3 and OSRS. This can be handy if you enjoy both games or just get tired of the grind in one of them and want to play the other without starting from scratch. However, Jagex doesn’t offer any official solution, so swapping your OSRS gold will always be at your own risk.

Where’s the Evidence?

There are a few websites out there that speculate regarding MMO populations and activity. However, only a few companies give official data regarding their population; hence, it is virtually impossible to create an accurate ranking. What we do know from official sources is what popular titles have revealed. World of Warcraft reached over 100 million created accounts in 2014, while Final Fantasy XIV reached 25 million in 2021.

Steam Charts

Steam charts can be helpful for the active population of games. They are highly accurate, but they must manage to comprise all of the players from games with a different client besides the steam client, like the case of Old School RuneScape or Albion Online. This is because only a fragment of the total population will log in through Steam. This leaves out quite a big and variable chunk of the active players. Not to mention that you can only play a few MMOs through Steam altogether.

OSRS Multiple Accounts

Even though the statement that Old School RuneScape is the game with the most created accounts cannot be officially contradicted, one needs to account for the fact that the number of accounts created doesn’t by far equal the number of unique players.

Games such as World of Warcraft allow you to create multiple characters within the same account, and you can have a variety of up to 50 different characters. Unless you want to multi-box, there is no reason to create a different account if you have reached the cap limit. This is different for Old School RuneScape, where you have one account, one character, and access to both RuneScape 3 and Old School RuneScape with the same credentials.

Returning Players 

If you’ve been part of the Old School community long enough, you must have certainly heard that no one quits RuneScape. This is because the community is formed of various types of players who might, for whatever reason, stop. Playing for a certain period to then either come back on their mains or start a new character. Another way to look at this is that most OSRS players are highly dedicated to the game and have spent hundreds of hours in the grind. Some have had their accounts stolen or even permanently banned, but they still return to the grind.

Bots

Other speculations have stated that since there have been many bot farms in the scene of Old School, they have inflated the accounts numbers to at least a certain extent. Those who have taken such things to extremes do not know how bot farms operate and fail to understand that most of the accounts used for high-level bot farming have been legit accounts that got sold to the bot farm owners who then use them for the specific purpose of farming OSRS GP. Many of the old accounts have been hacked or otherwise illicitly obtained. And many of them do get permanently banned and taken out of the game. The amount of low-level bot OSRS accounts for sale that doesn’t get banned is negligible at best.

To Sum it Up

Regardless of the claim that Old School RuneScape has the largest number of accounts ever created, peaking at over 320 million individual accounts. You need to consider more, such as the number of characters per account and the need for more official data regarding the population from other game companies. All in all, the game that presumably has the largest amount of accounts and its currency remains extremely relevant in the scene of MMOs. And this can lead to behavior such as trading OSRS accounts for sale, OSRS gold trading, or bot farming.