Are you classic flavour or new and improved?

There aren’t many games that can say they’ve broken new records after being around for 18 years but Jagex’s RuneScape is now in that elusive cub. Along with some new record breaking figures, Jagex has also started laying out some plans it has for the year ahead in RuneScape.

It’s no random stroke of luck that’s seen Jagex celebrating a surge of new players for RuneScape that’s seen around 5 million new players coming aboard. After RuneScape Classic became available for mobile and tablet, the nifty little MMORPG has attracted a slew of new players – most likely many of whom had already played the game.

But it wasn’t the only milestone the British developer was celebrating. The company also released news that the entire RuneScape franchise had reached the highest number of paid members in its history, something that’s led the franchise to pass over the $1 billion mark over its whole lifetime of the franchise. Jagex CEO, Phil Mansell, said that the latest figures are the consequence of the trust the developers have cultivated in its community, saying that “the more we listen to, engage with, and empower the community the more if fosters a true connection; with each other and with the games.”

And Jagex is already laying out a handful of updates as to what’s on the way in 2019. In a new update video, we got a hanful of news about a totally reworked mining and smithing system. The big news about the update is that rocks will no longer disappear once you’ve mined everything out of them, meaning you can basically get everything you need in one go. It also means that metals and ores will require the same level to mine them as it does to fashion armour out of them, something that the dev team said should’ve happened a long time ago.

The Hati Wolf even will be returning in January too, offering players new melle weapons and you’ll be able to gather the entire wolf weapon set on your own, rather than having to rely on someone to help you, as was the case in previous events.

These are only a handful of the updates that Jagex confirmed were in the works, and they’ve said that more updates will be confirmed throughout the year, so be sure to check back soon when we have more!