Server Shutdowns

[Nero]

From what I can tell the 'Bot Nuke' went off pretty well, however most of us are noticing large scale desertion of worlds, especially F2P servers. I'm just curious if anyone thinks Jagex will be closing some of the higher numbered worlds so as to consolidate the lowered number of players. It's sort of a taboo thing though, as it has always been one of the first steps taken with a dying game.

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

[Singh]

Depends on if people are actually using them or not. And also the cost of running those severs

[Agen]

From what I can tell the 'Bot Nuke' went off pretty well, however most of us are noticing large scale desertion of worlds, especially F2P servers. I'm just curious if anyone thinks Jagex will be closing some of the higher numbered worlds so as to consolidate the lowered number of players. It's sort of a taboo thing though, as it has always been one of the first steps taken with a dying game.

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

I wouldn't be against it. Membership costs are basically what goes towards the server upkeep and if there isn't enough people to fill the servers then close some up and save us money :D. Not likely they'll drop the price though ):

[brunokiller]

Yep, all but a few f2p servers are under 100 players, most under 50.

 

I assume there were more bots than we had thought..

[Randox]

Wow, that's super empty. I had no idea that it would be that bad.

 

It is kinda a sign of a dying game though. It would send a really bad signal. I guess it will depend on if things pick up over the next few weeks. I doubt Jagex will make a move to quickly. Having a bunch of 2000 capacity servers with only a couple hundred people would look easily as bad as shutting some of them down.

 

Starting to get an idea of why the marketing team has become so extreme lately. We might need a bit of an infusion of fresh blood.

[BiJay]

As I play on the german servers I always wondered why we have 3 F2P worlds as one almost never exceeds 200 players. They didn't get rid of one so maybe they won't as well with the english ones. I wouldn't be mad if they do tough, there would be still enough place for the players.

[brunokiller]

They haven't lost that much anyways. By far all of those bots were f2p (yews, ess etc). P2P worlds haven't changed much except for obvious botting worlds such as lrc and soul wars.

 

They will end up making more money soon with a clean f2p game that encourages paying for membership coupled with reduced server costs if they decide to shut down a few.

[NukeMarine]

Well, assuming they can keep a handle on this botting issue, sounds like a great time to convert some of those member servers into their own isolated group. I've suggested it before, but these servers will let you play your character with fresh stats and bank sort of like when you log onto RSC for the first time. It's still regular RS, but the economy is isolated to only those servers and updates with a two week lag. Might interest people to try their hand on new servers where they're not competing with legacy problems (botted supplies, rares, bugs).

 

Barring things that actually draw in member players, Jagex might try some underhanded tactics to boost revenue. The extra XP for "member recommendation" was obvious though I don't know how it's working. I can imagine them allowing people to essential buy a mule account ie double bank space. Seeing that they have the ability to instance monster areas like Frost Dragons, it's likely they'll even sell higher level membership that grants access to instanced locations instead of competing with regular member accounts.

 

We'll see what the future brings. They bought a lot of good will with recent high level updates and this initial nuke attack, time to see if they can keep it.

[DarkDude]

Well, assuming they can keep a handle on this botting issue, sounds like a great time to convert some of those member servers into their own isolated group. I've suggested it before, but these servers will let you play your character with fresh stats and bank sort of like when you log onto RSC for the first time. It's still regular RS, but the economy is isolated to only those servers and updates with a two week lag. Might interest people to try their hand on new servers where they're not competing with legacy problems (botted supplies, rares, bugs).

 

Barring things that actually draw in member players, Jagex might try some underhanded tactics to boost revenue. The extra XP for "member recommendation" was obvious though I don't know how it's working. I can imagine them allowing people to essential buy a mule account ie double bank space. Seeing that they have the ability to instance monster areas like Frost Dragons, it's likely they'll even sell higher level membership that grants access to instanced locations instead of competing with regular member accounts.

 

We'll see what the future brings. They bought a lot of good will with recent high level updates and this initial nuke attack, time to see if they can keep it.

 

I absolutely love this idea and have suggested it before (made a topic about it on here years ago now :P). Would be really really interesting to see the economy grow from scratch. Having a world where things such as sharks would be hard to come by for a long time would just be an interesting dynamic. Would be a lot of "DIY" playing going on especially at the start and would in my opinion bring a whole new feel to the game.

[Will H]

It's only a sign of a dying game of legitimate players are leaving.

What I'm hoping is that Jagex gets a lot of money from court settlements, or even winning court cases, reinvests in the game, then goes for a massive advertising campaign for a 'bot-free' RuneScape.

 

Then, reopen the servers. Profit.

[The_Fray]

Well the f2p game was decimated by bots up to the point where very few areas were bot free. All the mines were filled with bots, all the trees had bots, essence bots, rc bots, bots at many of the training locations. As bad the bots affected p2p, they hit f2p a lot harder. I am guessing the legit players decided to either become a member or end up quitting as the f2p game was unplayable.

[J35u5_M4]

If we can keep bots off like we are right now, then yes, some servers shutting down would be nice

[Dusk Souls]

Right now many of the f2p worlds have less than 100 players at the moment...

[tngunsmoke]

Even with the lowered population on most worlds, lag was horrendous last night. Just goes to prove that it wasn't all related to server load.

[hatebringer]

Even with the lowered population on most worlds, lag was horrendous last night. Just goes to prove that it wasn't all related to server load.

 

Honestly all the lag has really started with me since the nuke yesterday. I don't know if it was because the required step up to java 1.6 or not, but it has been laggy very much recently to me.

 

And towards the server close, I highly doubt many servers will close if at all, although I do see the f2p servers just amazingly empty and really does make me wonder.. this bot issue was amazingly horrid and alot worse than i thought if more than 80% of f2p were bots and stopped playing thats just too much.

[Excels]

Theory: Due to clusterflutterer's approach of holding a reference to every single object, it torpedoes effective memory management by Java. RS now must explicitly nullify object references. This confuses the garbage collection algorithms Java uses, forcing it to resort to the old graph-tracing Stop the World garbage collections.

 

I really hate the fact I can't get on rs reliably atm. Not only can't I invest in the market, but I can't do some self-learning by having my JVM print out advanced GC info :(

[wormy]

We will have to wait at least a month, depending on how the Jagex rents the servers, for the contract to expire. I would expect to see some consolidation.

[Nero]

Yup, server 'consolidations'.

 

 

Hi all,

 

Now that the dust has settled from breaking the bots, weve taken the opportunity to re-organise the RuneScape game worlds to ensure a better spread of the playing population.

 

Breaking the bots caused an expected drop in free-playing activity due to millions of gold farmers no longer being in the game, so we have removed a number of free game worlds. While we were at it, we also made a smaller amount of changes to the member worlds, which will make grouping for popular ingame activities as easy as possible. Additionally, those of you in Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Spain, Norway, Poland and Sweden may notice that free-to-play worlds previously specific to your countries have been consolidated in to new, European worlds. Those of you previously making your homes on those worlds will still have a place to play, as well as the chance to interact more easily with other communities from across Europe.

 

Rest assured that weve carefully considered the number and location of the servers which are no longer being used, so you shouldnt notice any increased server-side lag or difficulties logging in at peak times. Theres plenty of room for everyone to log on, with space to spare for new players too.

 

If you have any questions about this, please visit our technical forums, or submit a technical query.

 

The RuneScape Team

[Sly_Wizard]

I'm mad. Jagex converted W98 into a f2p server. <_<

 

Why? F2p doesn't need any more worlds.

[gems]

I'm mad. Jagex converted W98 into a f2p server. <_<

 

Why? F2p doesn't need any more worlds.

 

F2p does need a rated clan wars world though.

 

But why make 105 from f2p to p2p and 98 from p2p to f2p? Couldnt they have moved rated clan wars to be 105 and made 98 the p2p finland world?

[wormy]

hahaha nero well said, or was that what Jagex actually stated?

[Nero]

hahaha nero well said, or was that what Jagex actually stated?

It was a JMod quote from the forums.

[Krampell]

I'm mad. Jagex converted W98 into a f2p server. <_<

 

Why? F2p doesn't need any more worlds.

Be happy they didn't make world 99 f2p :P

[Saradomin_Mage]

Worlds 60 and 71 becoming f2p worlds.

 

OH THE HORROR!

 

Bad enough that they already took 144 down :P

[Kaida23]

I wonder if merging/removing/reassigning these worlds had contributed to all the login problems we were having. I had left my character on a world that no longer exists and couldn't log in past the lobby until the fix last night.

 

Was she lost in some unknowable limbo tormented by the angry spirits of banned players, bots and forgotten accounts? :ohnoes: No wonder everything I tried to do was so laggy, poor Kaida has been psychologically scarred and will need years of therapy. :lol: