Project Zanaris Paused Indefinitely — What It Means for Old School & the RSPS Scene

Jagex has announced that Project Zanaris, the long-teased “community servers” initiative for Old School RuneScape, is on hold with no set return date. The decision, published in an official news post on June 3 2025, cites mixed community sentiment and a renewed focus on core game infrastructure.

🗓️ Timeline of Key Events

• September 2024 — Reveal at RuneFest. Jagex unveils Project Zanaris as a way for players to spin up bespoke OSRS worlds with custom rule-sets.
• October–December 2024 — Monthly dev blogs. Iterative updates outline cloud-hosted worlds, save-state transfers, and experimental PvP toggles.
• 03 June 2025 — Pause announced. Jagex freezes all work on Zanaris, reallocating the team to main-game content and infrastructure projects.

🔍 Why Pull the Plug?

• Community split. Player polls and subreddit threads showed concern over fragmenting the OSRS player base and poll system.
• Technical distraction. Engineers building cloud server tech and customisation pipelines are now redirected to stabilise existing worlds and broaden region coverage.
• Resource reshuffle. Staff attached to Zanaris have been “redistributed across Jagex” following an internal restructuring.

🌐 Immediate Impact on Private Server Ambitions

Zanaris represented the first official private-server framework: legitimate, Jagex-hosted and compliant with the game’s economy. Its pause leaves a vacuum that unofficial RSPS operators will inevitably try to fill. Expect:

• Renewed hype cycles around “Zanaris-style” community servers from independent devs.
• Higher legal scrutiny as third-party projects market themselves on abandoned Zanaris features.
• Player caution following recent security scares (e.g., Impact.GG client drama). Safety checks remain paramount.

🚀 What Happens to the Tech?

Jagex confirms that cloud-hosting code, customisation tooling, and event concepts born inside Zanaris will be folded into Old School’s live roadmap. Early beneficiaries include:

• Temporary event worlds. Faster spin-ups for leagues, DMM-style tournaments, and experimental PvM modifiers.
• Improved regional servers. Underserved areas may receive lower-latency worlds as cloud prototypes mature.
• Backend resilience. Load-balancing tech designed for Zanaris will bolster peak-time stability.

💬 Community Reaction

Reaction is mixed. Creators who built entire content series around prospective custom worlds expressed disappointment, while PvP clans welcomed a renewed focus on core balance. Industry commentators note that Jagex’s transparency—pausing early rather than shipping an under-baked feature—may earn goodwill in the long run.

🔮 Outlook

For now, Zanaris enters the fairy ring and vanishes. Whether it returns depends on player priorities and Jagex’s success in strengthening OSRS’s backbone. Until then, the door is wide open for independent RSPS developers to iterate—but without official protection, players should exercise the usual caution.

Have insider information about Project Zanaris or any other RSPS story? Message chanston_runelist on Discord. Confidential tips help keep the community informed.