Jagex announces official Old School Runescape private servers, because the grind can always get grindier

I fear and respect Old School Runescape players. As someone who has a long history with MMOs and live-service games, I've stomached plenty of grind over the years. But the OSRS player doesn't merely tolerate grind—they relish in it, willing to devote themselves to the near-ascetic self-denial of killing a mole for 8 months. And soon, there will be grinds to endure that we haven't even begun to imagine. Over the weekend, Jagex announced Project Zanaris, the studio's name for customized OSRS community-run servers, where players will be able to design the parameters for the Runescape grind themselves.

Essentially, Project Zanaris will offer officially-supported OSRS private servers. The community server project is still in its early stages, but Jagex said players will be able to host their own version of Old School Runescape where they can «tweak different elements to create a brand-new gameplay experience.» For example, Jagex said community server hosts might make all NPCs deal more damage, set a server-wide Ultimate Ironman mode, or enable PvP in every area.

A community server browser will let players search and filter public servers, and server owners can gate access to specific groups of players. Jagex said it'll eventually provide moderation tools for community server owners, but doesn't have specific details to share yet for how those tools will work. «We know how important it is for server owners to protect and maintain their servers,» Jagex said.

The studio also said it's «looking into» letting players copy their characters from the OSRS main game to community servers, but only as a one-way process. Otherwise, players could just set up private servers where they've juiced the drop rates on high-end items to bring back over to the main game. Anathema to OSRS, in other words.

As for how much running a community server will cost you, Jagex is «still working out the full cost breakdown,» but it says hosting a server will vary in price based on player cap. «There