Developers at Jagex have discussed how easy and hard mode servers would work in Old School RuneScape and say that although nothing is concrete just yet, the addition is “more likely” to be added over several other modes that were being explored.
Last month, Jagex sent out a questionnaire asking about several theoretical game modes for Old School RuneScape – including modes with no Grand Exchange, permanent Deadman, as well as easy and hard mode servers. Out of all the modes polled, the concept of easy and hard mode servers proved the most popular amongst players.
“It’s somewhat similar to Leagues, which is another way to experience Old School differently,” associate design director Kieren Charles tells NME. “That went down pretty darn popularly in the survey and the anecdotal social stuff we saw on Reddit and Twitter and so on. It kind of sparked [our] imagination to think ‘how could we make Old School easier, how could we make Old School harder? – and in an interesting way?’”
“If we do go forward with that idea in the future, the difficulty shouldn’t be tedious – it should be actual expanded challenge. It’s easier to say just make the skill take longer to grind, make things more expensive, but that’s not interesting. The really key thing with this is the challenge – make it harder, make boss fights feel more significant and a bigger challenge to overcome. While in easy mode, little frustrations like your inventory mode being only 28 slots? Let’s expand that, let’s give you a lot more spots or access the bank in more places, or whatever else we could come up with to make the game feel quite different. I really do like the idea – it surprised me that it came out so popular in the survey amongst other ideas.”
However, Charles noted that “there’s nothing concrete yet” – so easy and hard mode servers are not confirmed for Old School RuneScape just yet. With that being said, Charles explained that Jagex is keen to continue exploring new game modes.
“Our core belief is that we want to innovate – we do want to keep creating these different experiences for Old School – but we don’t want to rush them all out. There’s no point in us releasing one every single month because that would be overburdening for players and we don’t want to distract too much from […] that core Old School game. Based on [easy and hard modes] being quite popular it’s probably more likely it’ll be that than Merchant mode if we do another one in the future, but nothing’s concrete right now.”
Easy and hard mode servers were discussed as part of an interview about the pros and cons of Old School RuneScape‘s polling system.
In other gaming news, Immortality has been delayed by a month to ensure it is “as polished as possible”.
