OSRS Update: Bounty Hunter Worlds Removal and PVP Overhaul

Devs know when particular game content is being exploited by players. This certainly rings true with Jagex when it comes to RuneScape and OSRS. To remedy that, they tweaked a few things, and the content that was once exploited by players for OSRS gold finally becomes balanced. The same principle, however, doesn’t apply to Bounty Hunter worlds. For now, and hopefully not forever, they will be closed.

The Anticipated Return

Bounty Hunter is a mini-game that can be found in the Wilderness levels. By participating in it, you’ll see an interface that will show you which of your fellow participants have to kill your target. When you do so, you get bonus points if you’re holding a mysterious emblem. This item, which is sold by the Emblem Trader, gains EXP every time you kill a player that also has a mysterious emblem.

However, some people managed to find a way to make lots of OSRS gold out of it. Jagex claims that these players “abuse its mechanics to generate GP in excess of the amounts available via legitimate methods.” For some reason, Jagex thought that it’s a potentially game-breaking problem, saying that this particular form of content “undermines other game content and the overall integrity of the game”, and their solution is to do away with it. Thus, worlds 318 and 319 have already been closed off.

Already Waiting

Thankfully, this is only temporary, as Jagex has said that it’ll be back after a few months. The development will start in February, so it’s not going to be anytime soon, but better later than never! So, for those who make Old School RuneScape gold through Bounty Hunter, they’ll have to find a different way until it makes its much-awaited return. And even then, it’s unlikely to be the same Bounty Hunter mini-game like before, so this might not be the same gold mine it used to be.

As for those that want or need the exclusive protection items from Bounty Hunter and PVP, Jagex will be offering other ways to obtain them. While this is definitely a good thing for those that believe these items are must-haves, this could also be used to make money by those who were exploiting the Bounty Hunter mini-game in the first place. Hopefully, that would no longer be the case and Jagex would be able to come up with something to make sure it won’t get exploited the second time around.

One Huge Change

Amid the removal of the rather popular mini-game is a much bigger game aspect that Jagex has been planning an overhaul for quite some time now: the entire PVP mechanics. In fact, aside from players being able to make potentially game-changing amounts of cash, this is the reason OSRS Bounty Hunter is making a short leave from the game.

According to Jagex, “our goal is to determine a long-term vision for PvP games. Rather than move from one release to the next, we want a clear direction for the next few years that will inform how we design content moving forward.”

From that statement, we can infer that rather than constant but directionless changes to the PVP world, they are going to have one huge plan that spans for months. Hopefully, what they’re trying to hatch would be good in the long run, as PVP is a huge part of the game updates. Heck, some players stay in Old School RuneScape simply because of it!

In OSRS, something as seemingly small as removing a mini-game can make such a huge change, especially for people that have been making money – both in-game and in real life – off this method. But more important than that is the revamp of an entire body of content, which will hopefully improve it.