Runescape 3.0 brings in nearly half a million players

Runescape is the world's most successful, long running, free to play MMO and it's just had another big influx of players as it rolls over to its official third iteration. Along with 100,000 players that returned to the game upon the news of the new engine being implemented, over 300,000 new accounts have been made.

In total, these new players have helped existing users rack up an impressive 600,000 hours of gameplay per day since Runescape 3.0 was introduced. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2NVY2mFv_0′]

Runescape is perhaps so impressive, because of its early adoption of the idea of in-browser gaming on an epic scale. While much of the online world was dominated by flash games that offered several minutes or perhaps a couple of hours of gameplay, Runescape has always been a massively expansive world to explore and game in, despite the crude graphics.

However, as the latest trailer showcases, the aesthetics of the game have come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, culminating in a game that is legitimately pretty in the contemporary gaming environment.

As Eurogamer points out, Jagex's MMO holds the record for the largest MMO ever made, though part of that is because of its decade plus long career. In all its iterations, it's garnered over 220 million player accounts.

KitGuru Says: I imagine my 15 year old self is all excited right now. Wonder if my account still works…

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