Today, Jagex announced that its live version of original RuneScape, called Old School RuneScape, is getting a new game mode that will be familiar to fans of other MMORPGs: hardcore mode.
In hardcore, you only get one life. Once you die, your character is dead, and the only way you can keep playing is by starting a new character. Everything else is the same, including future content and updates to Old School RuneScape.
When characters die in hardcore OSRS, the Grim Reaper appears and offers the player a choice. They can either fully reset their progress and start over from level 1, or they can keep everything they’ve done and move their character into the main game to keep playing outside of hardcore. All items that are not considered “items kept on death” will be lost.
To access hardcore, just boot up OSRS: hardcore is present as a new type of realm you can make a character on. The mode is available today across all platforms: PC, iOS, and Android. As someone who has died an awful lot in RuneScape over the years, I’m interested to see how this impacts the experience. Suddenly, it’s far more risky to wander into high-level areas to chop wood, or to head down to the scorpion pit to mine ore. The trailer even depicts cows and low-level goblins as a concern.
RuneScape is following in the footsteps of World of Warcraft here, which added hardcore servers to World of Warcraft: Classic back in 2023. This game mode works roughly the same as RuneScape‘s version: game’s the same, no revival on death, can transfer to other realms after you die. These servers have been a massive hit among the Classic community, so much so they’re coming to World of Warcraft: Forever sometime after launch as well. Funnily enough, Forever also launches on November 4, though it won’t have hardcore right away. It’s a busy week in the MMOs.
