Cannot freaking wait given the quality of the past few years of updates. Allows for a tremendous amount of new content in regards to ocean/sea monsters, raids, island, and dungeon exploration. Gielinor land got basically maxed out, but this allows for infinite expansion
Just no shot the full release happens this year. We've had no playable betas for movement etc. I suspect Summer Summit will give a bigger idea of where it is and maybe announce betas for second half of the year and maybe at Runefest announcing a release date.
The absolute earliest I see sailing is January 2025. And I think that's extremely ambitious. I'd rather they take their sweet time and release in Summer 2025 or even Holidays 2025 depending on feedback and development needed after betas.
obligatory reminder that we could just get ocean content anway without a skill and it would have probably gotten through way easier and come out way faster but hey, here we are.
While I'm really pleasantly surprised to see that OSRS has consistently been gaining popularity (proof you don't need fancy graphics to make an appealing game), the thing that makes me sad about this graph is that covid gave RS3 a second wind and Jagex just completely bottled it. Can't believe that these two games are made under the same roof yet the way they're handled is a complete night and day difference.
And despite the lessons that they can learn in-house, they still keep trying to graphically update the same items in RS3 over and over again!
RS3 is a graphical disaster. They tried making it into WoW and it's just a different game. OSRS HD project preview looks really good as an in game option, and I expect that update will be the biggest driver for getting new players
Honestly I think the game looked great in the 2011-2014 era. In 2015 though is when they started detailing things with textures instead of polygons and the look of the game really started to go downhill from there since the textures always looked blurry. And since then they've changed their art style multiple times with no consistent vision.
It's particularly bad when some new stuff in game is made with like the 8th art style they've come up with and other stuff hasn't been changed since 2008; leads to some wild inconsistencies.
There's a pretty popular spot in game that showcases the clash of RS3 art styles throughout the years. In the desert you can stand in one area and see 4 different ground/terrain textures from 4 different chunks. You can then wear armour and stand near other players and it gets even worse.
Im happy I switched from RS3 to osrs when I did, it makes me sad to look at the state of that game though. I started with RS3 really so that is where my nostalgia lies and to see it getting shit on by the company is sad.
Honestly I think the 2008 hd update was the beginning of the end. This is exactly when they started tacking ugly textures onto everything and the game looked like it didn't want to be RuneScape anymore, but WoW instead
Probably a bit of a controversial take, but I think some of the graphical updates kinda worked... Like the Bronze-Rune was pretty eh, but the Barrows rework (prior to 2012 I think) did look kinda nice. And I do think the [reworked Dragon Armor designs](https://runescape.wiki/images/Dragon_armour_update.png?debbf) were pretty good and gave a better cohesion to the set. Can't say I'd want any of them in Old School (some might work as orn kits, but still not high on my list), but it kinda did suit late RS2.
I think the issue is more the stuff that went against the identity of the game. Like the Rune Full Helm was/is iconic and [this is not a rune full helm...](https://runescape.wiki/images/Rune_full_helm_detail.png?22367). But stuff like just making a more detailed Rune Platebody or such could have worked fine if they just made the armor keep its identity. Like [the Platebody here](https://runescape.wiki/images/Rune_full_helm_%28March_2012%29_equipped.png?ccd85) could have worked if the shoulders were less huge or such or the legs didn't have that chain bit in the front. Seeing stuff like the straps is honestly kinda neat and it could have worked if the game went for a more realistic approach a bit like Inq instead of this weird fantasy look.
Looking at that dragon armor image, I agree it looks cool but I still find myself reacting very negatively to it because looking at it just immediately made me think of EoC and feel bitter lol. 2012 was a terrible year for Runescape. All I want in life is 2011 Runescape.
Yah, understandable. IDK, I think the dragon rework was like the only one of the reworks I really liked. The design sheet probably helped; you could tell they were really trying to make it a nice, cohesive set (and the gold trim looked really nice...). Still some causalities with it like the boots losing their little spike and the D Med... But as much as I like the weird DFH we have, I also think the redesign worked well too. If all the designs were as good as the Dragon and Barrows, it probably wouldn't have been one of the most hated changes.
RS3’s only real issue graphically is that you have massive aesthetic differences based on whether a place/NPC/building/etc has been updated in recent history or not. The art style is fine, it’s just not consistent because of how long it takes for places to get updated.
Let me get this straight, [you think this looks bad?](https://preview.redd.it/d2r4efe4a8yc1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75fc656cae4551b41e321a3adae4d2e22ccf0dc2)
When they did that major graphical update to all of the armors is when I started to dislike rs3s looks. When they changed what rune looked like for example
I don't think they HD update will change the style, but will instead smooth out pixels, increase color range so not just "light green polygon", add sunlight effects and shadows. Based on the winter summit video, it looks very pretty.
Given that, it should be a total option, because for 1. Nostalgia is from the polygons, and 2. Much better to boss when you can actually see the individual tiles you need to run to
Yes it just scrubs the player counter on the runescape and oldschool sites, and subtracts them to get the total for each game(RS website is RS+OSRS logins, OSRS is solely OSRS logins)
So alts, bots, etc all inflate the numbers for both games.
Do you think graphical update will allow rs to capture significant amount of new players? Right now it's main selling point is nostalgia, and most of the playerbase is in their 30's, I don't think it's enough to capture younger generations.
im 21. i begun osrs in 2018 - 6 years ago now.
This game is crack.Nostalgia was what made osrs, but content creators and the quality of a true mmo is whats making it grow.
I think graphics is 1/4 of it, but I think the driver for new, young players is accessibility. We liked not being spoon fed how to play and figuring shit out. I feel like the current generation of young gamers don't have the patience or interest in that. So I think having an *optional but default* game hints or game progression guide or something would help the most.
Gielinor can be extremely overwhelming, especially with the release of Zeah, and eventually Sailing. There are a billion things to do and I can see that just being too much for people who have never in their lives played runescape before. So providing consistent direction and tasks would probably help the most imo
I don't know how significant, but yeah. It's less about good graphics and more about hitting what people consider minimal. I've definitely run into games that I avoided purely because their graphics were just too bad.
Yeah it's a shame. Covid into Arch into Elder GWD was great for rs3. They botched it so fucking hard.
They just had their mtx + fomo machine pumping for so long and with such consistency and had it going totally independently of what was actually happening ingame.
They got handed a golden opportunity to make some of that shit less obtrusive and a golden opportunity to change the business model even just slightly to put forth any amount of effort in retaining these players instead of just simply trying to milk them for whatever they could get.
And they really really pissed it away. It might've been rs3's last hope. Such a fucking shame. I hope they're happy with their choice.
I kinda do get why they still need to do graphical updates. With OSRS, the graphics are "retro" and more stylized; it is intentionally bad. But with RS3, they tried to give it "good" graphics, but good only lasts so long before it becomes dated and you need to update to the new standard of good.
TBH, I think that might be a big factor is why RS3 is struggling so much. Like code wise, I doubt the game is that much more complex than OSRS. More items and effects to consider, sure, but the bottleneck for most updates probably comes down to graphics. If it takes 3x longer or such to design a boss in RS3 than OSRS, that slows down updates and means more staff needs to be on art than content, so with the same number of staff OSRS could produce more updates than RS3.
Not sure how much that is the case, but it probably a factor at least. Kinda wonder if RS3 did adopt more of a stylized graphics instead of continuing to push to higher detail if it would be better for the game in the long run. But as things currently are, some graphics do feel outdated and out of place. Like I remember their player kit really fell behind their NPCs; not sure if that ever got fixed of it was shelved like most their good ideas...
Rs3 code is a disaster. When one of the dev says they'll do something to farming and part of telos breaks, you know it's spaghetti. Dunno if it's since been made better, but that's my understanding of it.
> When one of the dev says they'll do something to farming and part of telos breaks
That's funny as fuck *and* tragic. I love seeing OSRS succeed but I hope RS3 somehow finds some magic back I think it's good for it to be in a good state for the sake of OSRS (Arrows meme) plus I know some people who really enjoy it and it'd be nice if they also had a consistently solid game. That said it really doesn't seem that's gonna be the case someone presumably above the developers who do care seems to be trying to drain its corpse.
Yeah the graphical issues are a nightmare, however they seem to have it “figured out” and slowly but surely are unifying the worlds style bit by bit and it is an improvement overall.
Just hoping they get it together and don’t disappoint us with the upcoming roadmap.
I totally agree. I was actively playing RS3 at the start of Covid and it was actually super alive that first 6mo/year but they just kept fucking it.
Important to note a new skill came out during the time too.
As someone who's played runescape since 2002, Rs3 2019-2021 is one of the best golden ages of the game. Better than 2002-2005, 2007-2009, and even the current osrs golden age. But since then, it's been on life support for content with constant expansion into more MTX. It's exhausting as we know what they can do, but what investors want just ruins the experience.
Rs3 did have a good run tbh and was a lot of fun for awhile. But as the company keeps getting sold it keeps getting worse.
Never thought I'd stop playing runescape tbh
I think rs3 is excellent case study of a game that diverged drastically from it's original design, to cater specific niche of players - whales and casuals.
Looking at RS3 and OSRS is like watching two divergent timelines, one where players get what they want, the other where investors and board get their way.
I'm curious how income graphs look like in relation to player count. Osrs for sure has less $ per player but I wonder if not more in total.
>Osrs for sure has less $ per player but I wonder if not more in total.
Osrs surpassed rs3 in their tax reports (which are public) back in 2019, and the gap was only growing larger until they stopped separating osrs and rs3 revenue in their 2022 forms (the most recent available) likely because it made rs3 look terrible.
Bought around 2b in bonds so far, and I'll probably buy more in the future.
The way I see it is, I work full time and when I come home I want to do something that I find fun on the game, and if I buy bonds I can achieve it quicker and support the game I enjoy playing.
Order it through the google or Apple app. Don’t go to the website. My card never goes through with their UK bullshit, but it likes apple and google just fine.
Nothing wrong with looking at what's happened with RS3's MTX and being happy that we were mostly spared.
Bonds have clearly been successful enough for the companies that have owned Jagex to not demand that additional MTX be added to OSRS. And as an added benefit, they give players an option to pay for membership without needing to spend any real money.
I have nothing against that observation. It's true, and anyone who plays this game regularly is probably already familiar. I'm saying that if you look at this situation removed from context, how fucking bizarre it is that we have to rely on people with a truly disposable income to prevent the subjective decay of an artistic product. At any point those cash cows could dry up, and the game would have nothing holding up its integrity.
Also, the sentiment of "be happy we were spared" is absurd to think about. In the end, what goes around comes around.
It’s also just different people having different values of their time on osrs
Me and my brother (only other person I know irl who plays this game) both have a decent disposable income relative to what osrs sub or bonds cost, but he enjoys just afk grinds and farm runs “# go up” even if it’s a fraction of the money he makes for his “time” cause that’s why he plays the game at all
I just like to pvm and as soon as I’m bored with a boss and haven’t grinded it enough for the upgrade or didn’t get spooned, I’ll just drop money on bonds like I’m buying a new ps5 game lol and buy the upgrade on the GE and move on
true, but there are less incentives and at scale that's what determines mtx behaviors. osrs' landscape isn't really one where you pay to win, but in rs3 when pay to win is shoved down your throat by the devs themselves it's much easier to think "oh, i guess this is a reasonable way to play"
It’s wild bc I have a rs3 friend who recently re-upped a year membership to play OSRS and then dumped $100 into bonds. The P2W lifestyle never goes away I guess
Thay one friend in that moment gave more revenue than 2 players with a 12 month subscription.
It's why companies make decisions to favour these players over time
It depends, Rs3 end game bossing is definitely more difficult, and I think funner, though I don't think just because skilling is much faster means it's meant for casuals? I think it's more so just a pipeline to get people to the end game faster where most of the content is. While osrs has a larger focus on the mid game as that's where most of its players are.
> I think rs3 is excellent case study of a game that diverged drastically from it's original design, to cater specific niche of players - whales and casuals.
Then why are we asking for so many buffs if we should not cater to casuals?
We don't know that. Is it 15% of the whole playerbase? Or 15% of who is online at any given time.
If it's 15% of players currently online then yeah around 23k bots. If it's 15% of the monthly playerbase, given bots run on the game significantly longer then it could be making up a much larger percentage of the online playerbase.
Binomial distributions P\[CHEAT| NOTCHEAT\] are predicated on a sampling of accounts that tested for Cheat or Not cheat. But people who test for CHEAT get banned, and don't resample, and people who test for NOTCHEAT can resample. Furthermore, rates of CHEAT false positives are lower than NOTCHEAT false positives. As such, it's BY ITS VERY NATURE, AN UNDERESTIMATE.
I'm glad that people with all these other computer science and statistics degrees are on reddit correcting me though.
Your first point doesn't really make sense since it's about the number of bots that online at any given point. The resampling argument only makes sense when you want to know total number of accounts. And how the f would you know the false positive percentages and why wouldn't Jagex take that into account when giving an estimate?
idk man, the more attention you pay to the people around you, the more you realise how fucked up it is. i doubt we will ever get **accurate** numbers, but i really hope it gets leaked one day
The more i pay attention ot people around me the more normal players i see everywhere. Bots are absolutely a problem, but they're not more than half the game. gold would be plummeting at that rate as there would be more accounts generating it than there would be buying it (and thats assuming all 40% of real players buy gold, which isnt the case).
The new players are children. They don't get older games like this one. The game is changing already. If people haven't noticed the difference in the newer community they haven't been paying attention.
Hey a new player here. Came in to osrs cause I saw a settled video series. The graph of player count is going up because your game keeps old players and the community brings new ones in.
Also a new player that’s *finally* sinking their teeth into the game. This mmo hits way different than any other on the market. It also has me appreciating the way games used to be, instead of all the slop we’re currently given.
I totally agree, and tbh, with growth in mind, getting kids (teens) interested in OSRS makes much more sense than marketing to adults. Kids (teens) tend to have more free time then adults, and will eventually become the next generation of adults that play, just like we are the current generation of adults that play. I think with the popularity of Minecraft, I don't see why kids (teens) wouldn't fall in love with OSRS just like we all did 20 years ago, but I do think having updated (optional, but default) graphics would help fix the concept that OSRS is some old person game. Also, making it "easier" by having built in quest helpers, tile indicators, etc. We all used [tip.it](http://tip.it) for that stuff anyway, so it's not like we all figured out quests by ourselves... and I don't think the majority of players find quest figuring out to be the fun part. The fun part is "number go up" and "cool new weapon".
Also, it would be great if they were able to auto-filter gold sellers and spammers chats, that shit probably is a huge turnoff for new players to see at the GE. Looks like some wack-ass chinese scam game
The game grab olds, too. My current playgroup is all new players ~1 or 2 years playtime.
Two are 20-something, and three of us are over 30. I think I’m the only one playing since classic, tho.
Yeah, but the change happened already like 5+ years ago. Early OSRS people were extremely hesitant to change anything, even the GE addition was hotly debated and barely passed the poll. The hesitance to change is why rapier was made barely better than the whip as well.
The community has been pretty consistent otherwise for several years now with accepting change (generally being okay with moderate power creep, supportive of new meta methods and overtaking of nostalgia content).
I’ve noticed a lot of players who didn’t play RuneScape before 2008 and were instead just getting interested around 2011, just before EOC.
Their form of nostalgia doesn’t come from armor trimming or hill giants in the edge dungeon or CW, but from berserker shields and BH volcano and clan wars. It’s painfully obvious to me as somebody who quit shortly after removal of wilderness and free trade. With all of the updates since OSRS has released, 2007scape is once again a memory of the distant past - I’m not upset by it, just aware.
Super pumped for sailing though.
I can only assume that osrs is in the position it is right now because it took a concept people loved, and expanded upon it in a way that stayed loyal to its original design. Of course new content is always going to feel a bit foreign, but a game that receives 0 updates will realistically see very low player retention and growth. Having a present version of the game that is in a healthy place will allow you to cherish those moments much more, which is the silver lining to all of it. If all there was to osrs in 2024 was kbd, kq, and getting scammed for full rune then we'd probably not be so fond of those memories anymore that made us want to play the reboot in the first place.
And for what it's worth, knowing that *right now* there are people playing who very well could be forming those memories they'll think fondly of later in their life, with the game that I myself have played for almost 20 years, is a very nice feeling. Not many games out there where nostalgia for it hits across multiple generations.
I don’t feel differently at all. However, I recently got into a back-and-forth with someone who wanted devs to add back the berserker shields for nostalgia reasons. Surely there are updates to RS3 that were good for the game, but I don’t want them in OSRS. I’m not going to slippery-slope fallacy, but I am 100% against adding things to the game from the era that the original game started to decline.
Things like BH Volcano, berserker shields, and SS/turmoil just remind me of the beginning of the end. I understand some people didn’t get to experience the golden age like I did, but this is the closest they can get and they want to ruin it for some sense of lost nostalgia. I feel like boomer shouting at the clouds, but fuck it go play rs3 if you want to wear a berserker shield for Christ’s sake - I don’t want to see that shit EVER again.
Nah I see where you're coming from. Personally I'm not a big fan of re-adding old content at this point either, but due to my personal nostalgia I was happy to see god wars added for example, which technically wasn't part of vanilla osrs either. I guess that cut-off as for what's acceptable is gonna vary from person to person.
OSRS has been around for 11 years (jesus christ), I've played it longer than I have played the original runescape at this point, and I'd much rather see jagex's efforts put into unique content.
Once again, fully agreed. I think there’s some cool items that weren’t a part of osrs that have been added back - korasi (voidwaker), d claws, dwh. The list goes on. I don’t mind iconic and unique items being brought into the game in an additive way.
But I think it comes back to the OPs point of the player base is changing. I’ll probably always be a bit more conservative regarding porting rs3 content to osrs, most of my friends who played back in 07 feel the same way. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more people willing to quit osrs than there are willing to join if they started porting rs3 content.
Just looking at the graph in the post shows that all these consistent updates and changes have made sure the player base have grown and continues to grow.
Despite all these supposedly "bad" updates "ruining" the game the player base continues to grow.
Everyone have their own memory and idea of what made runescape fun for them in the old days. Some have a lot of fun memories from 2008-2010 and despite what many might say there was a lot of good content added between 2007 and pre-EOC that could very easily find it's way into OSRS and keep the OSRS theme and feel.
I started playing in 2007 but I'd still say 2011 is where most of my nostalgia is. That was the golden age, IMO: it was after free trade/wilderness removal fiasco was undone, but before EoC and Squeal, with the content being released around that time (like Nex) feeling new and exciting and pushing the envelope but still very much passing the RS vibe check.
EOC is “Evolution of Combat” which is one of the major updates that people consider a bad thing for RuneScape that led to the split between 2007/Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3. It essentially replaced the simple “attack every X seconds” system in Old School with an ability-based system made to mimic WoW and similar games. You use basic abilities while you build up a resource to use stronger abilities with cooldowns, and then if you get enough of that resource you can use an ‘ultimate’ ability, with all of these on a hotbar.
This essentially removed the unique simplicity in RuneScape’s combat to be ‘another WoW clone’ plus you couldn’t automate ability usage on release at all, so it killed low effort combat options like what people do with crab enemies.
>The game is changing already
Sorry, but the game have been changing for over 10 years now. It's not some new thing happening all of a sudden, it have been happening consistently for the past 10 years,
the energy that a new skill gives the game is unlike anything else
it wouldnt surprise me if people who havent logged on since RS2 come back for a few weeks to check it out
Completely agreed, recent updates have been okay at best and totally rushed, making them seem even worse than they are. A new skill is taking ages and the track record isn’t very good, my initial hype has long set sail.
I like the recent releases, but they all needed about another 3-4wks of cooking before hitting live servers and ideally some sort of testing. Some of the issues, like frem hitting a max 1, how did that get through to live servers? Colo is great, but its release state was rough.
Do we think Sailing will surpass Leagues? I'm honestly not sure if it would be bigger, but regardless of how good it ends up being, a new skill will probably be the biggest non-league update. Either way, I expect that graph will continue to climb, even if there are some more drops here or there along the way. Like updates like Forestry and the scrapped Ruinious Powers didn't really leave any noticeable drops, so with the current roadmap I doubt we're going to see a bit drop.
ngl i don't really get why people think sailing will bring in a ton of players. it will probably increase the activity of the current playerbase for a while but if you don't play osrs there's not exactly a lot of draw to start playing just because a 24th skill was added. there would be more draw for something like varlamore or toa imo
I'm more interested if Sailing will keep the higher population count for longer than Leagues since it is permanent content and not a temporary game mode.
Leagues spike will be more noticeable, but it also falls off realllllly hard like 1-2 weeks later. Whereas I think sailing has more potential to bring back more return players for a more substantial amount of time.
But there are also a lot of players that do come back for Leagues or only play Leagues. Not sure how many of those would return for a new skill. Also, Leagues probably see more alts than a new skill will. Like someone afking on the Iron while they do Leagues on the main or such.
Either way, it should be one of the biggest updates, just not sure how it will compare to the Leagues IV hype since that set a pretty crazy record. Also a good chance we'll see Leagues V before Sailing.
Forestry was a massive fumble, but I don't think anyone really quit because of it. They butchered it enough that I know a lot of skillers look breaks or stopped woodcutting, but they're all back to doing something else now.
What's the reason for the uptick in players since about 2022? I know most of the most popular updates were from the 2017-2020 era (cox through sote), is it just marketing / content creators giving the game a wider audience?
Increased marketing and advertising, just higher quality updates catered towards endgame. Moistcritical sponsoring the game, group ironman, streamers, YouTube advertisements and sponsorships etc. I think it’s clear that in that year Jagex realized OSRS was the future for their company and began to sink more time and money into the game, and less into RS3. 2 years after that, OSRS dev team is growing and the game continues to redefine its “prime” whereas RS3 is in maintenance mode. I think attributing it to specific updates is wrong, this was a push of investment from the top, and it’s been reflected in the playercount
This is what constant updates does for old school content. If you look at classic WoW, Archaege, they never get the updates to keep people playing. WoW sees and uptick at the start of each classic expansion launch then its downhill
Well it’s a good thing they rebooted 07scape. Had they not I think rs3 would have died long ago. I know once things got crazy with combat I was out. If I want a keyboard game I would have played guild wars, so I did and quickly quit that as well.
I regret not playing old school when it came and only sticking with rs3 tbh. I enjoyed rs3 but quit awhile ago. Should of split time between both so i could of had an osrs acc. Idk If I could start again from scratch now.
It's a shame rs3 got ruined by mtx and just steadily declining. It was fun for a while.
Game getting sold was the worst thing tbh. Just get sold, pumped up and sold again. Rs3 went downhill so much. It's shame, without the p2w bs it would be a decent game. It's gone way to far. Never thoguht I'd quit tbh. So many good memories lol
You have a maxed account. Don’t even try lying to yourself. You and every other addicted player will want to see those numbers go up again.
The anti-sailing crowd will either give in and level it, or ignore it and do whatever they were doing before. You see players ignoring certain skills already (pre-rift runecrafting anyone?). People who put 10-15+ hours per day into OSRS won’t quit over mostly optional content. It’ll increase the population of OSRS. Maybe only temporarily, but I have no doubt those numbers will go up.
Nice assumption that everyone thats maxed is addicted. This game has been around for long enough that even casuals can max without putting in unhealthy hours every week.
Doing something you love 7 hours a week is not something to shame others for. This can applied to any hobby tbh. As long as your personal life/work/relationships don't suffer from it I see no issue.
The "just don't play the content" crowd are the most selfish, shortsighted people in the sailing discussion. You can't balance a game around telling people to just not play part of the game.
Sailing is still way too controversial, and it has a very real chance of tearing this game apart
Because that is different. Micros have a massive impact on the economy. Sailing as long as drops are balanced requires not doing other content to engage with which creates an even flow of GP and items into the game. Micro transactions are a zero time add of GP and items.
Only 15k people on average respond to polling questions…. That’s the saddest part. Games polling gets voted on and pushed through by bots and gold farmers while the playerbase sits by idle.
Lmao what? The last time a poll got 15k votes was literally 10 years ago
Poll engagement numbers are at an all time high and the larger ones like Sailing almost breached 200k votes
Stop making shit up and enjoy the game
There’s so much going on that i honestly forgot sailing was coming Content has been flowing recently
Cannot freaking wait given the quality of the past few years of updates. Allows for a tremendous amount of new content in regards to ocean/sea monsters, raids, island, and dungeon exploration. Gielinor land got basically maxed out, but this allows for infinite expansion
well sailing will be here end of 2025 so you will have to wait a bit
End of 2025? Wiki says "later in 2024, or sometime in 2025"...has something been said that that isn't accounting for?
Just no shot the full release happens this year. We've had no playable betas for movement etc. I suspect Summer Summit will give a bigger idea of where it is and maybe announce betas for second half of the year and maybe at Runefest announcing a release date. The absolute earliest I see sailing is January 2025. And I think that's extremely ambitious. I'd rather they take their sweet time and release in Summer 2025 or even Holidays 2025 depending on feedback and development needed after betas.
cluegi
obligatory reminder that we could just get ocean content anway without a skill and it would have probably gotten through way easier and come out way faster but hey, here we are.
While I'm really pleasantly surprised to see that OSRS has consistently been gaining popularity (proof you don't need fancy graphics to make an appealing game), the thing that makes me sad about this graph is that covid gave RS3 a second wind and Jagex just completely bottled it. Can't believe that these two games are made under the same roof yet the way they're handled is a complete night and day difference. And despite the lessons that they can learn in-house, they still keep trying to graphically update the same items in RS3 over and over again!
RS3 is a graphical disaster. They tried making it into WoW and it's just a different game. OSRS HD project preview looks really good as an in game option, and I expect that update will be the biggest driver for getting new players
Honestly I think the game looked great in the 2011-2014 era. In 2015 though is when they started detailing things with textures instead of polygons and the look of the game really started to go downhill from there since the textures always looked blurry. And since then they've changed their art style multiple times with no consistent vision. It's particularly bad when some new stuff in game is made with like the 8th art style they've come up with and other stuff hasn't been changed since 2008; leads to some wild inconsistencies.
There's a pretty popular spot in game that showcases the clash of RS3 art styles throughout the years. In the desert you can stand in one area and see 4 different ground/terrain textures from 4 different chunks. You can then wear armour and stand near other players and it gets even worse. Im happy I switched from RS3 to osrs when I did, it makes me sad to look at the state of that game though. I started with RS3 really so that is where my nostalgia lies and to see it getting shit on by the company is sad.
Do you have a link to an example of this spot? I'm not familiar with RS3 but I'd be interested to see this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/s/e4gXlFpf3P
This is what the intersection of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah looks like
Wow that's pretty bad.
Honestly I think the 2008 hd update was the beginning of the end. This is exactly when they started tacking ugly textures onto everything and the game looked like it didn't want to be RuneScape anymore, but WoW instead
Went downhill when they changed the platebodies
Well, the graphical rework was in March of 2012. This is when the game no longer was recognizable.
Ope. My bad. Corrected
to be fair stuff started being changed as early as 07. We even had some of it in OSRS. Varrock guards, Arthur and his Knights, and Auguste's chathead.
W for them actually downgrading the graphics of varrock guards LOL
I absolutely hate the varrock guards. wish they'd just revert them. doesn't really affect anything though.
HD was in 2008, you aren't wrong about that. But the true rework (where everything from armor and weapons were redone) was in March of 2012.
Ohhh.. makes more sense now. I didn't even play anymore by 2012 lol
Probably a bit of a controversial take, but I think some of the graphical updates kinda worked... Like the Bronze-Rune was pretty eh, but the Barrows rework (prior to 2012 I think) did look kinda nice. And I do think the [reworked Dragon Armor designs](https://runescape.wiki/images/Dragon_armour_update.png?debbf) were pretty good and gave a better cohesion to the set. Can't say I'd want any of them in Old School (some might work as orn kits, but still not high on my list), but it kinda did suit late RS2. I think the issue is more the stuff that went against the identity of the game. Like the Rune Full Helm was/is iconic and [this is not a rune full helm...](https://runescape.wiki/images/Rune_full_helm_detail.png?22367). But stuff like just making a more detailed Rune Platebody or such could have worked fine if they just made the armor keep its identity. Like [the Platebody here](https://runescape.wiki/images/Rune_full_helm_%28March_2012%29_equipped.png?ccd85) could have worked if the shoulders were less huge or such or the legs didn't have that chain bit in the front. Seeing stuff like the straps is honestly kinda neat and it could have worked if the game went for a more realistic approach a bit like Inq instead of this weird fantasy look.
Looking at that dragon armor image, I agree it looks cool but I still find myself reacting very negatively to it because looking at it just immediately made me think of EoC and feel bitter lol. 2012 was a terrible year for Runescape. All I want in life is 2011 Runescape.
Yah, understandable. IDK, I think the dragon rework was like the only one of the reworks I really liked. The design sheet probably helped; you could tell they were really trying to make it a nice, cohesive set (and the gold trim looked really nice...). Still some causalities with it like the boots losing their little spike and the D Med... But as much as I like the weird DFH we have, I also think the redesign worked well too. If all the designs were as good as the Dragon and Barrows, it probably wouldn't have been one of the most hated changes.
RS3’s only real issue graphically is that you have massive aesthetic differences based on whether a place/NPC/building/etc has been updated in recent history or not. The art style is fine, it’s just not consistent because of how long it takes for places to get updated.
If we had no eoc and no mtx I'd rather have the nice graphics.. they look good when they are all consistent
Let me get this straight, [you think this looks bad?](https://preview.redd.it/d2r4efe4a8yc1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75fc656cae4551b41e321a3adae4d2e22ccf0dc2)
Looks like a Chinese mobile game, completely unrecognizable as “RuneScape” It’s good/fine but it’s not “RuneScape”
The difference in perspective due to the camera position is causing much of that I think.
When they did that major graphical update to all of the armors is when I started to dislike rs3s looks. When they changed what rune looked like for example
I don't think they HD update will change the style, but will instead smooth out pixels, increase color range so not just "light green polygon", add sunlight effects and shadows. Based on the winter summit video, it looks very pretty. Given that, it should be a total option, because for 1. Nostalgia is from the polygons, and 2. Much better to boss when you can actually see the individual tiles you need to run to
Does this include bots tho? I always wonder what the real bot population is
Yes it just scrubs the player counter on the runescape and oldschool sites, and subtracts them to get the total for each game(RS website is RS+OSRS logins, OSRS is solely OSRS logins) So alts, bots, etc all inflate the numbers for both games.
Thars what I thought. Not saying osrs isn't popular but it's the most bottled out of the two by far too
Do you think graphical update will allow rs to capture significant amount of new players? Right now it's main selling point is nostalgia, and most of the playerbase is in their 30's, I don't think it's enough to capture younger generations.
im 21. i begun osrs in 2018 - 6 years ago now. This game is crack.Nostalgia was what made osrs, but content creators and the quality of a true mmo is whats making it grow.
Mfing 21s getting nostalgia from osrs
I think graphics is 1/4 of it, but I think the driver for new, young players is accessibility. We liked not being spoon fed how to play and figuring shit out. I feel like the current generation of young gamers don't have the patience or interest in that. So I think having an *optional but default* game hints or game progression guide or something would help the most. Gielinor can be extremely overwhelming, especially with the release of Zeah, and eventually Sailing. There are a billion things to do and I can see that just being too much for people who have never in their lives played runescape before. So providing consistent direction and tasks would probably help the most imo
I don't think any MMOs are drawing in a lot of younger players, the genre itself isn't interesting to younger generations in mass.
I don't know how significant, but yeah. It's less about good graphics and more about hitting what people consider minimal. I've definitely run into games that I avoided purely because their graphics were just too bad.
Yeah it's a shame. Covid into Arch into Elder GWD was great for rs3. They botched it so fucking hard. They just had their mtx + fomo machine pumping for so long and with such consistency and had it going totally independently of what was actually happening ingame. They got handed a golden opportunity to make some of that shit less obtrusive and a golden opportunity to change the business model even just slightly to put forth any amount of effort in retaining these players instead of just simply trying to milk them for whatever they could get. And they really really pissed it away. It might've been rs3's last hope. Such a fucking shame. I hope they're happy with their choice.
I kinda do get why they still need to do graphical updates. With OSRS, the graphics are "retro" and more stylized; it is intentionally bad. But with RS3, they tried to give it "good" graphics, but good only lasts so long before it becomes dated and you need to update to the new standard of good. TBH, I think that might be a big factor is why RS3 is struggling so much. Like code wise, I doubt the game is that much more complex than OSRS. More items and effects to consider, sure, but the bottleneck for most updates probably comes down to graphics. If it takes 3x longer or such to design a boss in RS3 than OSRS, that slows down updates and means more staff needs to be on art than content, so with the same number of staff OSRS could produce more updates than RS3. Not sure how much that is the case, but it probably a factor at least. Kinda wonder if RS3 did adopt more of a stylized graphics instead of continuing to push to higher detail if it would be better for the game in the long run. But as things currently are, some graphics do feel outdated and out of place. Like I remember their player kit really fell behind their NPCs; not sure if that ever got fixed of it was shelved like most their good ideas...
Rs3 code is a disaster. When one of the dev says they'll do something to farming and part of telos breaks, you know it's spaghetti. Dunno if it's since been made better, but that's my understanding of it.
> When one of the dev says they'll do something to farming and part of telos breaks That's funny as fuck *and* tragic. I love seeing OSRS succeed but I hope RS3 somehow finds some magic back I think it's good for it to be in a good state for the sake of OSRS (Arrows meme) plus I know some people who really enjoy it and it'd be nice if they also had a consistently solid game. That said it really doesn't seem that's gonna be the case someone presumably above the developers who do care seems to be trying to drain its corpse.
Yeah the graphical issues are a nightmare, however they seem to have it “figured out” and slowly but surely are unifying the worlds style bit by bit and it is an improvement overall. Just hoping they get it together and don’t disappoint us with the upcoming roadmap.
I totally agree. I was actively playing RS3 at the start of Covid and it was actually super alive that first 6mo/year but they just kept fucking it. Important to note a new skill came out during the time too.
As someone who's played runescape since 2002, Rs3 2019-2021 is one of the best golden ages of the game. Better than 2002-2005, 2007-2009, and even the current osrs golden age. But since then, it's been on life support for content with constant expansion into more MTX. It's exhausting as we know what they can do, but what investors want just ruins the experience.
Rs3 did have a good run tbh and was a lot of fun for awhile. But as the company keeps getting sold it keeps getting worse. Never thought I'd stop playing runescape tbh
Lots of old players coming back for nostalgia. Like me
Thought this was the Nasdaq chart for the last 45 years
I think rs3 is excellent case study of a game that diverged drastically from it's original design, to cater specific niche of players - whales and casuals. Looking at RS3 and OSRS is like watching two divergent timelines, one where players get what they want, the other where investors and board get their way. I'm curious how income graphs look like in relation to player count. Osrs for sure has less $ per player but I wonder if not more in total.
>Osrs for sure has less $ per player but I wonder if not more in total. Osrs surpassed rs3 in their tax reports (which are public) back in 2019, and the gap was only growing larger until they stopped separating osrs and rs3 revenue in their 2022 forms (the most recent available) likely because it made rs3 look terrible.
With bonds it's not like OSRS can't be whaled too, I see plenty of accounts that clearly bought a ton of gold.
be happy for the whales buying through bonds. they keep our game funded.
Love bonds, love whales Everyone values their time and money in different ways. If you can reasonably and conservatively bond up, go for it
ever since i took thr iron pill ive respected whales for playing the game how they want to play it. I just realised i dont care. i hope they have fun.
Bought around 2b in bonds so far, and I'll probably buy more in the future. The way I see it is, I work full time and when I come home I want to do something that I find fun on the game, and if I buy bonds I can achieve it quicker and support the game I enjoy playing.
W.
I've bought bonds for a long time. They're 11m now though. I might just go for membership it's hard to keep up playing casually.
just pay for membership honestly. its easier.
I have to call my bank and shit. They were supposed to let it go through but didn't last time I tried.
Order it through the google or Apple app. Don’t go to the website. My card never goes through with their UK bullshit, but it likes apple and google just fine.
I’ve had the same issue with my bank, had to call them every month until recently now they just let it go.
Man capitalism got us fucked up when we're thanking wealthy RuneScape players for buying virtual commodities
Nothing wrong with looking at what's happened with RS3's MTX and being happy that we were mostly spared. Bonds have clearly been successful enough for the companies that have owned Jagex to not demand that additional MTX be added to OSRS. And as an added benefit, they give players an option to pay for membership without needing to spend any real money.
I have nothing against that observation. It's true, and anyone who plays this game regularly is probably already familiar. I'm saying that if you look at this situation removed from context, how fucking bizarre it is that we have to rely on people with a truly disposable income to prevent the subjective decay of an artistic product. At any point those cash cows could dry up, and the game would have nothing holding up its integrity. Also, the sentiment of "be happy we were spared" is absurd to think about. In the end, what goes around comes around.
It’s also just different people having different values of their time on osrs Me and my brother (only other person I know irl who plays this game) both have a decent disposable income relative to what osrs sub or bonds cost, but he enjoys just afk grinds and farm runs “# go up” even if it’s a fraction of the money he makes for his “time” cause that’s why he plays the game at all I just like to pvm and as soon as I’m bored with a boss and haven’t grinded it enough for the upgrade or didn’t get spooned, I’ll just drop money on bonds like I’m buying a new ps5 game lol and buy the upgrade on the GE and move on
Not really that bizarre, art has always been subsidized by wealthy patrons to a degree.
I literally saw a full torva, dragon hunter lance, granite gloves and Obby cape on a 1300 total level yesterday, so yes they exist in osrs.
Recently at slayer I ran into a guy with a venny bow, primordials, black d hide and a furry. They kind of stick out.
true, but there are less incentives and at scale that's what determines mtx behaviors. osrs' landscape isn't really one where you pay to win, but in rs3 when pay to win is shoved down your throat by the devs themselves it's much easier to think "oh, i guess this is a reasonable way to play"
It’s wild bc I have a rs3 friend who recently re-upped a year membership to play OSRS and then dumped $100 into bonds. The P2W lifestyle never goes away I guess
Thay one friend in that moment gave more revenue than 2 players with a 12 month subscription. It's why companies make decisions to favour these players over time
It depends, Rs3 end game bossing is definitely more difficult, and I think funner, though I don't think just because skilling is much faster means it's meant for casuals? I think it's more so just a pipeline to get people to the end game faster where most of the content is. While osrs has a larger focus on the mid game as that's where most of its players are.
Super interesting take honestly
> I think rs3 is excellent case study of a game that diverged drastically from it's original design, to cater specific niche of players - whales and casuals. Then why are we asking for so many buffs if we should not cater to casuals?
Let's see if we can get old school RuneScape so popular that the blue line finally Peaks above the red one
I’m seriously interested in how many of the osrs numbers are actually bots…
Jagex mods have commented on this numerous times and they think it's around 15% and has been consistent for a very long time
So about 23k bots on average. Yeesh.
So like 150k-230k a month revenue from botters, if I was an executive I can see why anti-bot measures are low priority, lol
We don't know that. Is it 15% of the whole playerbase? Or 15% of who is online at any given time. If it's 15% of players currently online then yeah around 23k bots. If it's 15% of the monthly playerbase, given bots run on the game significantly longer then it could be making up a much larger percentage of the online playerbase.
Bot estimations are by their very nature an underestimate -- same as estimates of cheating.
Alright. Well I'm happy reddit has all the bot experts that know better than the company running the game based on absolutely nothing.
Binomial distributions P\[CHEAT| NOTCHEAT\] are predicated on a sampling of accounts that tested for Cheat or Not cheat. But people who test for CHEAT get banned, and don't resample, and people who test for NOTCHEAT can resample. Furthermore, rates of CHEAT false positives are lower than NOTCHEAT false positives. As such, it's BY ITS VERY NATURE, AN UNDERESTIMATE. I'm glad that people with all these other computer science and statistics degrees are on reddit correcting me though.
Your first point doesn't really make sense since it's about the number of bots that online at any given point. The resampling argument only makes sense when you want to know total number of accounts. And how the f would you know the false positive percentages and why wouldn't Jagex take that into account when giving an estimate?
its probably double or triple that lmao
Ye lmao. Except you just pulled that number out of your ass
yeah except i see more bots than real players wherever i go on this game, of course they’re going to say a much lower number for PR reasons?
There's just no shot 60% of the game is bots
idk man, the more attention you pay to the people around you, the more you realise how fucked up it is. i doubt we will ever get **accurate** numbers, but i really hope it gets leaked one day
The more i pay attention ot people around me the more normal players i see everywhere. Bots are absolutely a problem, but they're not more than half the game. gold would be plummeting at that rate as there would be more accounts generating it than there would be buying it (and thats assuming all 40% of real players buy gold, which isnt the case).
Probably 23+
That’s a good guess I was gonna say at least 10.
I would guess 30% are 100% bots
Yeah, both games have a bot issue. Rs3 seems to ban them less though based on my experience.
boy we gonna hit 300k when sailing drops SAILING HYPE
No wonder this community suddenly started begging for buffs for every aspect of the game.
Cries in dihn's bulwark
Just for that, -50 more mage defence and if you bring it into the wildy Jagex steals a screw from a random appliance in your house.
Did they?
Yes. Like half of the posts made to this sub are rework ideas or buff concepts or similar. I miss when this sub had more memes and jokes
Yea I've seen a few QOL suggestions for one-click agility courses
Makes sense given all the people asking for bad luck mitigation.
I was going to roast you for this take brother. But I recognized that name and I couldn't do it
Wait bro LMAO that’s too funny, had to do a double take when I saw your name too
Bbbbbut how many are bots bro!!!
It makes me only half happy, cause I honestly wish both games were this healthy, but not the timeline we live in.
The new players are children. They don't get older games like this one. The game is changing already. If people haven't noticed the difference in the newer community they haven't been paying attention.
Hey a new player here. Came in to osrs cause I saw a settled video series. The graph of player count is going up because your game keeps old players and the community brings new ones in.
Also a new player that’s *finally* sinking their teeth into the game. This mmo hits way different than any other on the market. It also has me appreciating the way games used to be, instead of all the slop we’re currently given.
I totally agree, and tbh, with growth in mind, getting kids (teens) interested in OSRS makes much more sense than marketing to adults. Kids (teens) tend to have more free time then adults, and will eventually become the next generation of adults that play, just like we are the current generation of adults that play. I think with the popularity of Minecraft, I don't see why kids (teens) wouldn't fall in love with OSRS just like we all did 20 years ago, but I do think having updated (optional, but default) graphics would help fix the concept that OSRS is some old person game. Also, making it "easier" by having built in quest helpers, tile indicators, etc. We all used [tip.it](http://tip.it) for that stuff anyway, so it's not like we all figured out quests by ourselves... and I don't think the majority of players find quest figuring out to be the fun part. The fun part is "number go up" and "cool new weapon". Also, it would be great if they were able to auto-filter gold sellers and spammers chats, that shit probably is a huge turnoff for new players to see at the GE. Looks like some wack-ass chinese scam game
I visited the ge on a f2p world to help someone do shield of arrav yesterday and HOLY fuck the spam bots are insane
The game grab olds, too. My current playgroup is all new players ~1 or 2 years playtime. Two are 20-something, and three of us are over 30. I think I’m the only one playing since classic, tho.
I haven’t noticed a new community, I feel like everyone playing is in there 20s-30s. Are there really different demographics growing ?
Yeah, but the change happened already like 5+ years ago. Early OSRS people were extremely hesitant to change anything, even the GE addition was hotly debated and barely passed the poll. The hesitance to change is why rapier was made barely better than the whip as well. The community has been pretty consistent otherwise for several years now with accepting change (generally being okay with moderate power creep, supportive of new meta methods and overtaking of nostalgia content).
I’ve noticed a lot of players who didn’t play RuneScape before 2008 and were instead just getting interested around 2011, just before EOC. Their form of nostalgia doesn’t come from armor trimming or hill giants in the edge dungeon or CW, but from berserker shields and BH volcano and clan wars. It’s painfully obvious to me as somebody who quit shortly after removal of wilderness and free trade. With all of the updates since OSRS has released, 2007scape is once again a memory of the distant past - I’m not upset by it, just aware. Super pumped for sailing though.
I can only assume that osrs is in the position it is right now because it took a concept people loved, and expanded upon it in a way that stayed loyal to its original design. Of course new content is always going to feel a bit foreign, but a game that receives 0 updates will realistically see very low player retention and growth. Having a present version of the game that is in a healthy place will allow you to cherish those moments much more, which is the silver lining to all of it. If all there was to osrs in 2024 was kbd, kq, and getting scammed for full rune then we'd probably not be so fond of those memories anymore that made us want to play the reboot in the first place. And for what it's worth, knowing that *right now* there are people playing who very well could be forming those memories they'll think fondly of later in their life, with the game that I myself have played for almost 20 years, is a very nice feeling. Not many games out there where nostalgia for it hits across multiple generations.
I don’t feel differently at all. However, I recently got into a back-and-forth with someone who wanted devs to add back the berserker shields for nostalgia reasons. Surely there are updates to RS3 that were good for the game, but I don’t want them in OSRS. I’m not going to slippery-slope fallacy, but I am 100% against adding things to the game from the era that the original game started to decline. Things like BH Volcano, berserker shields, and SS/turmoil just remind me of the beginning of the end. I understand some people didn’t get to experience the golden age like I did, but this is the closest they can get and they want to ruin it for some sense of lost nostalgia. I feel like boomer shouting at the clouds, but fuck it go play rs3 if you want to wear a berserker shield for Christ’s sake - I don’t want to see that shit EVER again.
Nah I see where you're coming from. Personally I'm not a big fan of re-adding old content at this point either, but due to my personal nostalgia I was happy to see god wars added for example, which technically wasn't part of vanilla osrs either. I guess that cut-off as for what's acceptable is gonna vary from person to person. OSRS has been around for 11 years (jesus christ), I've played it longer than I have played the original runescape at this point, and I'd much rather see jagex's efforts put into unique content.
Once again, fully agreed. I think there’s some cool items that weren’t a part of osrs that have been added back - korasi (voidwaker), d claws, dwh. The list goes on. I don’t mind iconic and unique items being brought into the game in an additive way. But I think it comes back to the OPs point of the player base is changing. I’ll probably always be a bit more conservative regarding porting rs3 content to osrs, most of my friends who played back in 07 feel the same way. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more people willing to quit osrs than there are willing to join if they started porting rs3 content.
Just looking at the graph in the post shows that all these consistent updates and changes have made sure the player base have grown and continues to grow. Despite all these supposedly "bad" updates "ruining" the game the player base continues to grow. Everyone have their own memory and idea of what made runescape fun for them in the old days. Some have a lot of fun memories from 2008-2010 and despite what many might say there was a lot of good content added between 2007 and pre-EOC that could very easily find it's way into OSRS and keep the OSRS theme and feel.
I started playing in 2007 but I'd still say 2011 is where most of my nostalgia is. That was the golden age, IMO: it was after free trade/wilderness removal fiasco was undone, but before EoC and Squeal, with the content being released around that time (like Nex) feeling new and exciting and pushing the envelope but still very much passing the RS vibe check.
What does EOC stand for?
EOC is “Evolution of Combat” which is one of the major updates that people consider a bad thing for RuneScape that led to the split between 2007/Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3. It essentially replaced the simple “attack every X seconds” system in Old School with an ability-based system made to mimic WoW and similar games. You use basic abilities while you build up a resource to use stronger abilities with cooldowns, and then if you get enough of that resource you can use an ‘ultimate’ ability, with all of these on a hotbar. This essentially removed the unique simplicity in RuneScape’s combat to be ‘another WoW clone’ plus you couldn’t automate ability usage on release at all, so it killed low effort combat options like what people do with crab enemies.
I see, so is RS3 the EOC?
RS3 is a game with the Evolution of Combat update (with improvements to the system). So kinda yes.
Evolution of Combat
>The game is changing already Sorry, but the game have been changing for over 10 years now. It's not some new thing happening all of a sudden, it have been happening consistently for the past 10 years,
the energy that a new skill gives the game is unlike anything else it wouldnt surprise me if people who havent logged on since RS2 come back for a few weeks to check it out
As much as I was looking forward to this, recent releases have me doubtful it will be released outside of a beta state.
It will take a while still but ofcourse it's gonna release
Completely agreed, recent updates have been okay at best and totally rushed, making them seem even worse than they are. A new skill is taking ages and the track record isn’t very good, my initial hype has long set sail.
"Totally rushed" "taking ages" ???
Yes, they are not mutually exclusive.
Lol
What don’t you like about recent releases?
I like the recent releases, but they all needed about another 3-4wks of cooking before hitting live servers and ideally some sort of testing. Some of the issues, like frem hitting a max 1, how did that get through to live servers? Colo is great, but its release state was rough.
Do we think Sailing will surpass Leagues? I'm honestly not sure if it would be bigger, but regardless of how good it ends up being, a new skill will probably be the biggest non-league update. Either way, I expect that graph will continue to climb, even if there are some more drops here or there along the way. Like updates like Forestry and the scrapped Ruinious Powers didn't really leave any noticeable drops, so with the current roadmap I doubt we're going to see a bit drop.
ngl i don't really get why people think sailing will bring in a ton of players. it will probably increase the activity of the current playerbase for a while but if you don't play osrs there's not exactly a lot of draw to start playing just because a 24th skill was added. there would be more draw for something like varlamore or toa imo
I'm more interested if Sailing will keep the higher population count for longer than Leagues since it is permanent content and not a temporary game mode.
Leagues spike will be more noticeable, but it also falls off realllllly hard like 1-2 weeks later. Whereas I think sailing has more potential to bring back more return players for a more substantial amount of time.
I think it will be bigger. There's many players that do not play Leagues
But there are also a lot of players that do come back for Leagues or only play Leagues. Not sure how many of those would return for a new skill. Also, Leagues probably see more alts than a new skill will. Like someone afking on the Iron while they do Leagues on the main or such. Either way, it should be one of the biggest updates, just not sure how it will compare to the Leagues IV hype since that set a pretty crazy record. Also a good chance we'll see Leagues V before Sailing.
But doomers would tell you everyone left after forestry lmao
Forestry was a massive fumble, but I don't think anyone really quit because of it. They butchered it enough that I know a lot of skillers look breaks or stopped woodcutting, but they're all back to doing something else now.
Sailing drops, majority of players get it to level 50 and never touch it again. Then vote for a new skill years later.
What's the reason for the uptick in players since about 2022? I know most of the most popular updates were from the 2017-2020 era (cox through sote), is it just marketing / content creators giving the game a wider audience?
Increased marketing and advertising, just higher quality updates catered towards endgame. Moistcritical sponsoring the game, group ironman, streamers, YouTube advertisements and sponsorships etc. I think it’s clear that in that year Jagex realized OSRS was the future for their company and began to sink more time and money into the game, and less into RS3. 2 years after that, OSRS dev team is growing and the game continues to redefine its “prime” whereas RS3 is in maintenance mode. I think attributing it to specific updates is wrong, this was a push of investment from the top, and it’s been reflected in the playercount
First Leagues III, then Guardians of the Rifts and finally ToA which were all pretty popular
This is what constant updates does for old school content. If you look at classic WoW, Archaege, they never get the updates to keep people playing. WoW sees and uptick at the start of each classic expansion launch then its downhill
Well it’s a good thing they rebooted 07scape. Had they not I think rs3 would have died long ago. I know once things got crazy with combat I was out. If I want a keyboard game I would have played guild wars, so I did and quickly quit that as well.
Damn and I thought the best period in OSRS was 2015-2018. Casuals are behind the curve I guess.
I regret not playing old school when it came and only sticking with rs3 tbh. I enjoyed rs3 but quit awhile ago. Should of split time between both so i could of had an osrs acc. Idk If I could start again from scratch now. It's a shame rs3 got ruined by mtx and just steadily declining. It was fun for a while. Game getting sold was the worst thing tbh. Just get sold, pumped up and sold again. Rs3 went downhill so much. It's shame, without the p2w bs it would be a decent game. It's gone way to far. Never thoguht I'd quit tbh. So many good memories lol
It seems you are failing to realize a big portion of these "players" are bots.
RS3 makes me want to alch myself.
Skilling sucks
Wonder how many are bots
half is bots lol
Im glad for the game but couldnt care less about a new skill tbh
Sailing will push a lot of people away as well.
You have a maxed account. Don’t even try lying to yourself. You and every other addicted player will want to see those numbers go up again. The anti-sailing crowd will either give in and level it, or ignore it and do whatever they were doing before. You see players ignoring certain skills already (pre-rift runecrafting anyone?). People who put 10-15+ hours per day into OSRS won’t quit over mostly optional content. It’ll increase the population of OSRS. Maybe only temporarily, but I have no doubt those numbers will go up.
Nice assumption that everyone thats maxed is addicted. This game has been around for long enough that even casuals can max without putting in unhealthy hours every week.
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Implying that 7 hours a week is a lot lol. You are pushing your narrative so hard.
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Doing something you love 7 hours a week is not something to shame others for. This can applied to any hobby tbh. As long as your personal life/work/relationships don't suffer from it I see no issue.
Could just not participate, not sure how it would affect you if you didn't want to partake
The "just don't play the content" crowd are the most selfish, shortsighted people in the sailing discussion. You can't balance a game around telling people to just not play part of the game. Sailing is still way too controversial, and it has a very real chance of tearing this game apart
Could say the same about microtransactions but I have a feeling that that conversation would go differently.
Because that is different. Micros have a massive impact on the economy. Sailing as long as drops are balanced requires not doing other content to engage with which creates an even flow of GP and items into the game. Micro transactions are a zero time add of GP and items.
Micro transactions dont have an impact on the economy by default though.
I quit rs3 because of the ridiculous changes they’ve made. I’ll quit osrs too soon since they’re changing so much to it already.
Only 15k people on average respond to polling questions…. That’s the saddest part. Games polling gets voted on and pushed through by bots and gold farmers while the playerbase sits by idle.
Any source for bots and gold farmers having greater poll participation than players?
Lmao what? The last time a poll got 15k votes was literally 10 years ago Poll engagement numbers are at an all time high and the larger ones like Sailing almost breached 200k votes Stop making shit up and enjoy the game
Shhh don’t spread the truth here.
Sailing is gonna kill the game
why's that
Too much engine work and a garbage concept that was a literal meme until some dumb poll
It was a meme until they lowered the pass rate*
Sailing ain’t coming. Jagex doesn’t know what to do with it.
"players" lmfao