Thoughts on Lost City (2004scape)
Lost City (aka 2004scape) is an open source RuneScape private server that almost completely recreated the 18 May 2004 version of the game (build 225). I first found out about it through the Protoweb.
I was once obsessed by RuneScape preservation. It always bothered me how this game relies on servers to exist. Back in 2021 and 2022, I tried to document every interaction in RuneScape 3. I quickly gave up due to the humongous nature of the task.
Although I must admit that I have zero nostalgia for the 2004 era (I started in 2009), this project certainly got my attention. It should also be noted that I used to talk a lot with the lead developer (Pazaz), so do not expect this review to be unbiased.
The main goal of Lost City is preserving the 2004 version of the game. As such, most of the content has been recreated. As the writing of this, I believe that only 2 quest and a ranging minigame remains to be implemented. This is a stark contrast with most private servers that do not bother implementing any content aside from skilling and bossing.
This server exists thanks to someone finding old game files through the RuneScape Archive project . If you ever played RuneScape before, I would strongly recommend checking this project as you may have lost media on an old computer.
One of the most impressive thing about Lost City is how they replicated RuneScript - the custom programming language that RuneScape was made with. It is hard to convey how insane of an accomplishment this is. For the record, RuneScape source code was never leaked, although some devs do post some snippets of code occasionally. I have zero idea how they managed to replicate the cursed game engine based using such limited knowledge.
As to support this project, I played it for a bit (mostly during alpha 2). This version of RuneScape is quite different from the one I am used to. There is no Grand Exchange, you need to sell items you make to NPCs or other players. There are aggressive random events which certainly make the game more lively. Everything you do has way more weight to it than in later versions of the game.
Trying to kill a random event with some friends.
My favorite thing about Lost City is how many social interactions I had in-game. I spent hours just chatting to random players I stumbled upon in-games. It was quite addicting.
One thing that made me a bit sad is how this project was originally compatible with older browsers (which was why it was advertised on the Protoweb). Pazaz told me that he had to rewrite the game's client and break retrocompatibility due to people using contemporary botting tools to cheat in-game. This reminds me how most problems in the world come from people interacting with others. This is most prominent when it comes to technology that is connected to the internet. It's a shame how there are always people ruining others' fun.
Something that greatly surprised me was how popular this server was. I believe that historically, RuneScape was most popular in December 2006. As such, one might assume that most people are satisfied with the existence of Oldschool RuneScape (based on a 2007 version). I expected 2004 to be very niche year. Yet this project is surprisingly very popular.
Tutorial Island rats during release day (screenshot by Jeffrey in the Discord).
Lost City entered its beta stage on 01 February 2025. There was a peak of 340 players, which was way more than I expected. Going through Tutorial Island with 100+ players was certainly an experience. The section where you need to kill rats was an absolute nightmare to go through as monsters can only be attacked by one person at a time. It was still fun though.
So yeah, overall this is one of the best RuneScape private server to exist as the writing of this. It's only equal is OpenRSC. I am glad that a decent open source RuneScape 2 server now exists as this pretty much makes the game eternal.
The game can be played in a modern web browsers from this website. The GitHub repository for this project can be found here.
Written by manpaint on 03 February 2025.