It's very easy to look at RuneScape Reignited's announcement blog or fancy trailer and assume it's a new upgraded version of the classic game—it certainly walks and talks like one, not dissimilar to the upcoming World of Warcraft: Forever. "Begin the journey anew with a year of restoration changes paving your path," et cetera. But it's actually a new character type in the existing RS3, and existing players aren't all convinced it'll be good for the MMO.
In fact, some of them have wheeled out the dragon-headed cannons for one of those Falador riots. People have gotten their yuks in: on X, PhosaniNex posted, "All 100 RS3 players in attendance for the final riot to end all riots, what a sight."
Nice little riot on w2 tonightfrom r/runescape
So, what is a Reignited character? Well, they'll all begin play with no progress and share an isolated economy, but they'll be able to play on existing worlds or new, Reignited-exclusive ones. Reignited and regular players can hang out together and form a clan, but they can't fight the same bosses or trade with one another. A dev blog states there will be no new updates exclusive to these new characters, and once you've selected a character type you can't switch.
In other words, it's sort of like creating an Ironman character, but not quite as lonely. While the announcement page promises the chance to play without unpopular systems like Treasure Hunter, that move away from microtransactions was actually announced at the start of this year. Rather than an overhaul unto itself, this seems more like a push to get new people trying RS3 without the fear of being 20 years behind on everything.
But for those who never left the game for OSRS, Dragonwilds, or even one of those non-RuneScape games, it feels like something that could split up the playerbase more—and while Jagex stated in the above dev blog that neither veteran or Reignited characters will be favored, some aren't convinced their progress will matter the same way anymore.
"What does everyone that has spent 1000s of hours gain by making a new account? Does this make all previous progress worthless," Reddit user RiquaaLz posted on the game's subreddit. "It's already very hard to find enough players to do group content, this is just going to fragment the player base even more." That thread has around 1,500 upvotes currently. "I am not starting over bruh this game is waaaay too grindy for that," reads a comment from Last-Horror9563.
The response is interesting to behold, personally, as someone who hasn't spent much time in the true, original RuneScape since it looked like the game people now call Old School RuneScape on Miniclip. A fresh start certainly sounds appealing to me, though I'm not sure the state of the leaderboards or the Grand Exchange are what have kept me from trying RS3 all these years. Whether this gambit will resuscitate RS3 as RS4 looms and OSRS continues to pile on new features, time will tell.
