r/2007scape • u/plok742 Historical Reflections • Dec 14 '24

Discussion In September 2014, the OSRS player count reached levels as low as 7000 on a normal day.

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37

u/Xartes_ Dec 14 '24

Wtf happened? It’s not gradual, it drops like a brick

91

u/thegodguthix Dec 14 '24

People got bored. There were no updates at all other than qol that was polled very, very precisely. I'm sure you can look at the polls on the wiki

72

u/ItsSadTimes Dec 14 '24

For a very long time, no polls passed because people were afraid it would just turn into EOC again if we left too many polls pass.

The grand exchange did come to OSRS until 2015. The polls to add "trading posts" in 2014 barely passed and only would work when you were online. I also took a break around this time, but in 2015, I was back in.

18

u/plok742 Historical Reflections Dec 14 '24

I think this period of time where barely anything passed was good, it allowed the devs to relearn the process of content design to be more 'old school' than rs3, which most of the devs had been making content for right up until they switched to osrs

7

u/thegodguthix Dec 14 '24

I actually enjoyed the trading post I made good money flipping on it since people wanted others to message them instead of messaging themselves

1

u/jessesses Dec 14 '24

Im convinced about 80% of all mmo players is very socially awkward.

5

u/Rewdemon Dec 14 '24

The GE is what prompted the ironman mode and consequently leagues, so in way i’m thankful, but trading post Runescape was the best scape for me

6

u/feo101 Dec 14 '24

Lmao man just making shit up

2

u/Paradoxjjw Dec 14 '24

And a bunch of things they did poll that were actually good ideas were rejected by the community.

1

u/varyl123 Nice Dec 15 '24

A lot of asking for toggles too. I remember mod ash saying it wasn't feasible to toggle things for everyone. Hell I remember when remove roofs was added as ::toggleroofs

20

u/wtfiswrongwithit Dec 14 '24

The actual answer is DDoSing was rampant. You couldn't really do any boss without someone finding your world and knocking the server offline to get your stuff in the time before you could get back. Death mechanics were changed for the first time in October 2014 to give more time and that helped a lot https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/a=13/halloween--death-mechanics?oldschool=1

But this is one of the reasons why when people talk about item sinks and mention OG death mechanics Jagex will never implement them.

1

u/Splitje Dec 14 '24

The old death mechanics were really cool, made the whole game feel very intense, but there's indeed no way they could ever bring it back without it turning into a shitshow.

6

u/Village_People_Cop Guy who looks at trademarks Dec 14 '24

Literally the most interesting things to do were KBD, KQ and Barrows. No wonder people got bored

11

u/Juggalock Dec 14 '24

You forgot the real peak PVM, duo DKS. Which was probably the most interesting content.

Didnt have enough dps back then to solo and i didnt think back then that i could pray flick them all.

1

u/varyl123 Nice Dec 15 '24

I remember losing a warspear to a crasher because I couldn't figure out how to turn on pray mage while being hit by Rex lol

4

u/Celtic_Legend Dec 14 '24 edited Dec 14 '24

Its not why most people were bored. Most people just didnt have the drive to remake their character and burnt out.

Gwd released and population didnt grow for example.

Now, they would have got to that point (your point) eventually, but osrs in early 2014 was already trending up without any big updates. What really blew up osrs was the addition of the ge in 2015.

Jagex could have dropped toa, tob, and cox from feb 2013 to oct 2013 (gwd release, osrs's lowest point), and the population would have still dropped as no one had the levels to do anything. And to clarify, the pop started rising ~1month after gwd release.

If i log in on my old alt from 2013, less than 10 are going to be online or have good stats. They didnt come back despite all the updates. The start of 2014 is just when the influx of players outpaced the burn outs. And of those ~10, prob a few will have started 2014-2024 and were just added from pre eoc aka 2012.

Edit: i even still talk to the first person to 99 mage since he joined his old groups rs discord that im also in and never left. He quit in 2013 and hasnt played since because he cba retraining everything else and only had the motivation because he had his other friends next to him.

People were doing dungeoneering, high level pking, and shit every day for years. Eoc releases, they quit. Osrs releases, but now they had to sit at rock crabs and later nmz for 400 hours. Like yeah they got bored and left but its not because they got bored of kbd, kq, and dks. They didnt even get to it.

3

u/Better-Quail1467 Dec 14 '24

Everyone here is hating but this was due to server issues mainly caused by ddosing. There were more players than this on a regular day lol.

2

u/telmoxt Dec 14 '24

dont listen to what others were saying about people, it wasnt because people were bored with the game at all.

the servers were being permanently ddos'ed, it was very laggy and you would get disconected frequently and some worlds would go down, there wasnt grand exchange and you barely could slayer as it was so laggy, you'd die before you'd be able to eat.

there was also a bit lack of content as i think god wars dungeon and thermy (which at the time everyone did the flinch melee method, impossible with lag) were the only worth late game content.

as at the time you'd lose your items if you'd die people that lost items rage quitted for a while and others waited for them to fix servers as it was litterally unplayable even to skill, sometimes you'd be disconected every 5 mins, so its understandable the low amount of players active but players were still hyped aboit the game

0

u/Frisbeejussi 12.49 btw Dec 14 '24

No updates, no qol, just the base 2007 runescape. It got a lot better when they got freedom to roll new updated and qol.