Torn, the multiplatform crime RPG, unveils 21 years worth of sinister stats

• Torn, the crime-themed text-based RPG, is celebrating 21 years
• Follow up on our interview with the dev team and dive into some sinister stats
• How many dollars have been nicked, and how many asses have been kicked? Find out now!

While flashy graphics and new, innovative systems have always been popular in online gaming (remember when RuneScape and Ultima Online were the apex of the genre?), there's something to be said for the longevity of the text RPG. And considering Torn has been going for 21 years, there's some serious time under the hood.

You may remember last week we interviewed some key members of Torn's development team, going into the history of this crime-themed RPG. Challenging players to steal, maim and destroy in a virtual city, all communicated via text, Torn has remained immensely popular with a devoted playerbase.

Now, Torn has revealed some sinister stats to celebrate. With a whopping 1200+ players still active who joined back in 2003, a collective 12,627 years of player experience, and a collective 410,888,359 assaults committed. Oh, and 12% of those attacks were targeted towards the groin in case you were wondering.

In the plums

I suppose there's something to be said for any RPG that lets you run up, kick someone in the crown jewels and then leg it. But as silly as it may seem, these and other stats (a total of $44 trillion of in-game cash has been mugged) are indicative of the popularity of this long-running release.

Certainly, while the folks at Torn are content to humblebrag about their popularity in an age of raytracing, it's not unwarranted. But it also demonstrates how much the world of gaming has changed in the meantime.

So here's to many more years of crime, or perhaps, something new on the horizon? We'll have to wait and see.

But in the meantime, there's a whole host of great role-playing experiences out there on mobile. Why not dig into our list of the best mobile RPGs on Android for some of our top picks?