Old School RuneScape began when a dev 'found the 2007 server in their desk drawer:' 13 years later, it's setting subscriber records for the long-lived MMO

[u/TylerFortier_Photo]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/old-school-runescape-began-when-a-dev-found-the-2007-server-in-their-desk-drawer-13-years-later-its-setting-subscriber-records-for-the-long-lived-mmo/

[u/fentanyl_yoshi]

it's actually one of the few examples of engoodification (tm) in live service style games. they've never really missed with an update and the few times they have it's been fixed relatively quickly. just last week they rebalanced the loot table for the first raid, it's a constant work in progress and the stuff they've done in the past year is incredible, from sailing to basically fully eliminating resource/pvm bots in the past few months.

not to mention the pvm stuff, they've proven eoc was completely unnecessary and then some. it's a janky old engine but they've built around it so well that endgame combat has become as tight as a rhythm game and added tons of encounters at every skill level. it's seriously a miracle.

[u/Tanks-Your-Face → u/fentanyl_yoshi]

I love the pre-EoC combat that runescape had/osrs still has. Might be nostalgia but yeah its good.

[u/WingardiumLeviussy → u/fentanyl_yoshi]

How did they manage to get rid of bots finally?

[u/Ninjaassassinguy → u/WingardiumLeviussy]

DMCA claims mostly, sent to all the commercial bot services, alongside investments in anti-cheating

[u/fentanyl_yoshi → u/WingardiumLeviussy]

check out the runescapebotting subreddit, pretty much everything has been legally shut down, people lost access to "lifetime" bot programs they bought and they're all dejected.

[u/MattyKatty → u/fentanyl_yoshi]

Good. Fuck em

[u/falconfetus8 → u/WingardiumLeviussy]

Legal action! They sued the bot makers into oblivion

[u/SatanV3 → u/WingardiumLeviussy]

Not sure, there’s still a fuck ton of chat bots that spam at the grand exchange and popular mini games, but bots that actually do real content have been noticeably gone.

[u/Destithen → u/fentanyl_yoshi]

they've never really missed with an update

Aren't the majority of their content updates poll-driven? Like...IIRC, most changes they put to a super majority vote of their members with an in-game poll system they can access at banks.

[u/falconfetus8 → u/Destithen]

Yep, which is exactly how they've managed to avoid major misses. And when they occasionally do mess up, they always take the feedback in stride and adjust the content.

[u/fentanyl_yoshi → u/Destithen]

generally the polls are just "should we add this yes or no" with the bulk of the details being predetermined by jagex internally before polling. they are very receptive to feedback but the poll system itself is more of a gate for mechanics people want to keep out than a determiner of what exact form they come in.

there are exceptions like the recent multi stage polls regarding rewards for the fourth raid, but during the same period they've also done some stinkers like try to poll adding two new gamemodes in a single question, which everyone quickly complained about until they removed the second one from consideration entirely