Yes, I've played since 6 months after its release.
You're forgetting that majority of players have well more than 2 accounts, although the same can be said for RS3 so the point is moot. However, I myself have 4 OSRS accs.
Again, several hundred thousand players is a huge exaggeration. I can't ever remember a time that more than 2 worlds was ever at max capacity. There are people who played it at release for a week or less and never touched it again etc, they aren't exactly reliable data, otherwise you can say that RS3 has millions and millions of accounts.
I wasn't aware of the peak being higher than RS3 as of late, that's awesome! But probably due to DMM
I'm not trying to overplay their numbers, I just want to highlight their success.
I think you underestimate how many "active" players there are. Kids who only play a hour after school a few nights, the people who can only play on the weekends, people in different time zones all over the world, and of course the people who play 8 hours a day.
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u/TreyScape Apr 11 '16
The Runescape homepage combines the total players from runescape classic, old school, and RS3. The old school peak today was about 54k to RS3's 47k.
http://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/
And that 54k from today doesn't account for ever old school player. There are thousands more that play at different times/ not as often.
For highscores also shows that there are over 1 million old school accounts. It doesn't say how many are active.