Pausing Project Zanaris & What's Next?

Let's talk about Project Zanaris and the future of Old School.

We've got an important update regarding Project Zanaris for you today.

After careful consideration, we've decided to pause work on Zanaris indefinitely. We're committed to delivering the best possible Old School RuneScape experience. With a renewed focus and continued support from our incredible team, we're excited to keep making OSRS even better for everyone.

We understand that feelings around the project were mixed, and many of the concerns raised were fair. The truth is, there are other areas of the core Old School experience that deserve more attention right now. While Zanaris was ambitious and innovative, it wouldn't have met expectations until much later in development. Rather than stretch our focus, we want to prioritise the things that matter most to you today.

We're committed to transparency, and we believe that focusing on core gameplay, infrastructure, and services will have the most meaningful impact. Our goal is to address your immediate concerns, build a stronger foundation, and pave the way for a better Old School experience overall.

The incredible talent behind the project have been redistributed across Jagex or directly moved to Old School to help with ongoing improvements and exciting new initiatives.

Here’s some of the ways the talent and technology from Zanaris will directly benefit OSRS in the future:

• Faster, More Creative Events & Content Ideas: The Zanaris team had lots of new gameplay ideas and incredible concepts for events and features. Rather than shelving these, we’ll explore how we can introduce some of these innovations through carefully curated temporary worlds. This means we can give you fresh experiences without impacting the OSRS core you love.
• Improved Server Infrastructure: We’ll be using the cloud server technology developed for Zanaris to enhance our existing game worlds. This means greater reliability during peak periods.
• Wider Region Support: We're exploring options to bring an improved service to underserved regions outside our core world locations (UK, US, Germany, Australia).
• More Engaging Customisation: Zanaris brought us many customisation options that can now be introduced to main OSRS worlds or special event servers. These improvements will allow us to create more exciting time limited events and experimental content for you to enjoy.
• Strengthening the Roadmap: Members of the Zanaris team will be actively contributing to key initiatives on the OSRS roadmap, helping to enhance major content and support the game's long-term development.

While Project Zanaris itself has paused, the spirit behind it to empower you to explore unique, experimental content is alive and well. Many of you have asked for ways to experience fresh gameplay ideas without impacting the main game. We’re excited to progress this idea in a different form.

Rather than custom player-hosted worlds, we're exploring the prospect of delivering more Community Events. These would be special, time limited events similar to how DMM and Leagues operate to safely explore and enjoy entirely new types of gameplay and concepts. This could even be a space where you can trial new content before it potentially makes its way into the main game via the usual polling system. You'll play a crucial role in these experiments as it's your feedback that will help us shape the future of OSRS.

We want to take inspiration from the amazing things you’re already doing. This community is one of the most creative and inspiring out there, and we’re committed to supporting what makes it so special.

Got an idea for a future Community Event? Whether it’s an epic PvP tournament, the return of King of the Skill, a creative twist on existing content, or something completely new and original. We're ready to listen.

We're not afraid to try new things, and we remain committed to working directly with you to find the ideas that resonate most. Speaking of those ideas, you can visit the OSRS Discord and share what you'd like to see in a new forum section: #jagex-community-events.

Finally, Thank You!

We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to Project Zanaris. Your discussions, feedback, and passion helped shape our direction moving forward. We're confident this change will ultimately strengthen OSRS, adding immediate value, better services, and exciting new experiences.

As Project Zanaris steps back through a fairy ring, let's look forward to what's coming next! Thank you for your continued support.

You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.

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