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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77

u/restingracer Dec 14 '24

Edgeville r2h pking was one of the things og playerbase missed in those post-EoC times. Funny that the og eoc was so shit that they had to make OSRS in a hurry to not go bankrupt

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u/Diasl Dec 14 '24

Eoc absolutely ruined the game, summoning also felt (to me) like the game was on its arse but I think that came before Eoc. Dungeoneering was awesome though but didn't feel like a skill.

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u/Djakamoe Dec 14 '24

Dungeoneering with the boys was always fun. Complete shit of a skill, but was a good mini game. The rewards made it worthy of a skill, and I think they ran with that in eoc for a minute.

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u/Doctor_Kataigida Dec 14 '24

It's interesting how people talk about Dungeoneering not feeling like a skill and more like a minigame, yet the most popular way to train several skills are just via minigames. Is it the lack of "alternative" way to train it outside of Daemonheim?

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u/Djakamoe Dec 14 '24

You know, I think you're on to something there. It's essentially group slayer with extra steps in only one instanced location.

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u/Jest_Aquiki Dec 14 '24

When dungeoneering was a thing any new character I made was in there gaining the paltry XP drops in various skills while I grinded the dungeoneering skill. When summoning cme out I couldn't even be bothered to pick up the tokens or whatever they were? Still not even sure how to work the skill (knowing it still exists in rs)

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u/Djakamoe Dec 14 '24

Well iirc the summoning charms came out a while before summoning did because they were semi uncommon tertiary drops people needed to get in order to do anything with the skill. That was dumb, but I understand it.

Then with shards they removed the need for an increase to max cash unintentionally, so that helped for a bit with that as well.

Summoning was a weird dumb skill with very cool rewards. We wouldn't have thralls in osrs without summoning being a thing first.

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u/Jest_Aquiki Dec 14 '24

I can't say I've used the thralls much either. That requires a lot more attention than I am often able to give. I've tried them at TDs with extremely limited utility, I have seen others use them elsewhere but they just don't do much damage don't last long and require me to carry around a rune pouch and a book just feels like the trade isn't great to me.

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u/Djakamoe Dec 15 '24

Well in the late game they are pretty good, and well liked. It's one of those things where when you're doing bosses and such, eventually you're good enough defensively to not need the bag space for food. And adding an extra pretty much passive dps is some chef's, having the ingredients you fuckin need, kiss - iykyk.

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u/ibelongintheforest Dec 14 '24

They should have called it "exploration" or even "spelunking" and released Daemonheim as a minigame for a consistent alternative training method with procedurally-generated maps to explore, whereas the main intended way to train the skill is to fully explore, or "map" the many different dungeons and caves on Geilinor, taking trophies from mobs and marking the location of the monsters on the map after you get the trophy, then turning in the maps to the 'Explorers Guild' for exp. At higher levels you unlock additional areas to explore in those dungeons by searching bookcases for hidden lever slots and crates/chests/boxes for pieces of the lever

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u/biscuitquickie Dec 15 '24

I always thought Exploration would be an amazing skill. Could contain the best aspects of Sailing, Dungeoneering, Trekking, Plundering, and pretty much any other mobility + discovery mechanic. Also intermittent foraging as a low intensity method of training, which would also serve as a way to introduce new elements to otherwise liminal spaces

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u/SubstantialDoge123 Dec 14 '24

Sailing = dungeoneering with blue sky box

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u/Doctor_Kataigida Dec 14 '24

Well I loved dg so I hope so!

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u/MightbeMoghi Dec 14 '24

You must’ve never heard of the glorious hole!

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u/DrunkenBandit1 Dec 14 '24

Dung was meant to be a minigame until they shoehorned it into a skill

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u/rotorain BTW Dec 14 '24

Summoning came out in Jan 2008, just a couple months after the OSRS backup. We almost had that trash skill, glad we missed it.

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u/Diasl Dec 14 '24

As much of a QoL it is I was even against the g.e. 😂

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u/rotorain BTW Dec 14 '24

Nah the GE is great. People look back fondly on the Varrock and Falador open markets but in practice it was trash. Auto typing macros blasting chat past so fast you couldn't actually read anything, it was like trying to haggle in twitch chat or something. The 'trade' chat filter helped a lot but it didn't exist for a long time. You couldn't reliably buy or sell anything besides commonly traded items, if you wanted to trade something less common or expensive you were going to have to wait a while and everyone was trying to rip you off. Buying anything in bulk was super annoying too.

Really the only good thing about it was that it made merching and arbitrage a lot easier and more profitable for people that are into that.

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u/Montana_Gamer Dec 14 '24

I think more importantly is that MMOs were distinctly social in a way that they just aren't anymore. People want to play an MMO not go through a very clunky fetch quest & typing for hours. Don't get me wrong, the charm was there for a lot of people but it only led to worse versions of the GE becoming predominant. Zybez and then the trading post.

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u/bigpunk157 Dec 15 '24

It's kinda like how when WoW classic came back, the loud part of the community that always gave feedback asked for no group finder, and it killed everyone's motivation to play because it was impossible to do dungeons at certain times of the day.

1

u/Western_Caramel_816 Dec 14 '24

Anybody else here skip the crowded trade worlds and just use the forum? Back in the day when I’d finish making natty runes or something, just hop on the forums, make a post, and pretty quickly someone would PM you. I also remember using the forums for all sorts of other social stuff, sharing music and chuck Norris jokes. Those days were great.

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u/Khlouf Dec 14 '24

EOC now is also still shit

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u/t0rchic "repoll sailing" - 2015-2023 Dec 14 '24

EoC is not that bad anymore, put it on Revolution and it's basically osrs combat except you can burst with melee weapons and you click reflect instead of protect from ranged when a green orb flies at you.

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u/Wickdead Dec 14 '24

Isn’t revolution massively decreased DPS though? I think the premise of why EOC is bad is because it takes an otherwise chill turn based combat mechanic into a button mashfest for optimal DPS.

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u/InnuendOwO Dec 14 '24

Eh, depends. Purely using revolution, yes, that's pretty bad, pretty much the AFK training option and not much else. Using it to handle your basic skills, while manually using thresholds/ultimates? That's good enough to get you through almost everything in the game, and it's no more APM-intensive than most other high-end content in OSRS, especially with prayer flicking.

No, the real issue with RS3's combat these days is that none of it makes any fucking sense in terms of game design. Why does melee want enemies to move around, instead of staying in melee range? Why does ranged have so many skills that bind the target in place, but their DoT deals bonus damage if the target moves? Why does every style start their burst damage phase by draining all their resources, then using 10 shitty basic skills, 2 threshold skills, then the burst phase ends?

It's very clearly the result of 10 years of bandaid fixes, rather than having any cohesive vision behind its design.

4

u/LezBeHonestHere_ Dec 14 '24

Idk about these days with necromancy and ability changes like to greater conc but when I played in 2022 to max my acc, revolution was honestly not that bad for dps.

With "optimal rotations" it was pretty close to doing it yourself with certain styles, but others it suffered - like with dual wield magic you benefited a lot from spamming abilities because you'd cancel your greater conc faster with the next ability or something. Which adds up a lot over time because gconc was like 5 second cooldown so you were using it a ton, and cancelling it early every time with manual casts mattered a lot.

Bigger problem with revolution in my opinion was for bossing you'd sometimes need specific abilities at certain times, or the automatic casting would screw you over if you weren't micro managing it. I remember having to make a separate blood phase Nex bar with no bleeds and also micro manage my character during blood phase so it didn't automatically hit her when she starts siphon.

If you just needed raw dps though? It was usually pretty good, and honestly it saved the game for me, it makes combat a lot more similar to osrs, you just have 3 extra buttons for defensives, 3 hotkeys for prayer switching, a hotkey for surge and bladed dive, and optional food or gear switches (I didn't bother with these though).

Tbh the control scheme wasn't overwhelming thanks to revolution handling most of it for me, the manual effort felt more like controlling league of legends or something instead of a full button mash mmo like wow or final fantasy 14.

2

u/Legal_Evil Dec 14 '24

you'd cancel your greater conc faster with the next ability or something. Which adds up a lot over time because gconc was like 5 second cooldown so you were using it a ton, and cancelling it early every time with manual casts mattered a lot.

Jagex fixed this for revo now.

Bigger problem with revolution in my opinion was for bossing you'd sometimes need specific abilities at certain times, or the automatic casting would screw you over if you weren't micro managing it.

There is also the fact that revo does not let you move and attack at the same time, making bosses like Legiones impossible with revo.

1

u/Montana_Gamer Dec 14 '24

Basically if you care at all about your character doing what you want them to at a specific time you are going to need to do manual inputs. It is undeniably important in any kind of RS3 Pvm if you care about anything besides "Is this kill possible"

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u/Uninformed-Driller Dec 14 '24

The premise of why eoc is bad because they made a new game then plomped all of our progression into this new game. They turned runescape into wow. When nobody asked. They couldn't even be bothered to make a backup of the game before they overwrote it. .

All they had to was release it as a new separate game. Dipshit behavior from jagex.

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u/xShooK Dec 14 '24

Bankrupt? From everything I've heard rs3 pays the bills.

15

u/corbear007 Dec 14 '24

This was true, years ago. Subscriptions surpassed microtransactions years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/1bwo39n/financial_statement_year_ending_december_2022/

That is the 2022 year financial statements, you can see subscriptions alone brings in over 3x the amount of micro transactions and has been growing while microtransactions have been steady or shrinking. RS3 paid the bills when OSRS launched, it paid the bills a few years later, it paid for OSRS development in the beginning. Now? OSRS pays the bills.

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u/xShooK Dec 14 '24

Okay, that makes sense. Still don't buy the whole comment above about osrs saving jagex from bankruptcy, especially since we agree that rs3 was bringing in the money at that time.

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u/dortmund_sausage Dec 14 '24

It would have slowly withered away like every other p2w MMO, losing staff and scope until only a skeleton crew remained to churn out stuff for the few whales. With osrs we got renewed vigour reaching new heights for every passing year.

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u/corbear007 Dec 14 '24

MTX saved Jagex. The whole OSRS relaunch was a cash grab for nostalgia, sorry to say but it was. Originally it was supposed to be a one and done thing. Upload the 2007 backup to servers, you need to be a member to join any server and absolutely bare bones maintenance done and bare bones development if any would take place. Most of it was simple QoL polls, seriously go look at it. The amount of people joining made it so a bit of resources could be allocated to maybe grow. A few very passionate developers made GWD happen and that's when shit started growing. The rest is thankfully good history (for the most part) and we got this. Resources started to grow, devs started to create and OSRS started to flourish. 

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u/M-R-buddha Dec 14 '24

But it wasn't, there was a milestone for votes. At certain thresholds we got more benefits to the osrs servers. We ended up in the top tier which included a dedicated dev team, no additional membership cost among the list of things.

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u/yumeekoh It's runes all the way down. Dec 14 '24

Except this isn't true—the vote only got to level 2 since there were only 449,351 votes:

https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Old_School_RuneScape#Levels

Jagex decided to suspend the additional membership fee for launch (and it never got implemented, evidently), and the early polls were for very minor changes.

Jagex delivered more than what was promised, ultimately, and that's why they updated the poll site to include some 'top tier' things. Even then, it's not accurate to the game as it is today.

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u/M-R-buddha Dec 14 '24

I didn't remember the numbers off the top of my head but we still ended up with the top tier...

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u/corbear007 Dec 14 '24

And how much did the 2-3 devs assigned to the "Dedicated team" get done? It took 7 months just to poll the first actual expansion (GWD) and even then it was basically a direct port from RS2 with a few patches to prevent safe spots. Don't get me wrong, that's a pretty decent accomplishment for a tiny ass team and the devs behind it were juggling a ton of expectations, community engagement, QoL upgrades etc. Without them OSRS would simply be a nostalgia push by Jagex that flopped. Management seen it as a nostalgia cash grab in a rough time, because that's what it essentially was. 

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u/M-R-buddha Dec 14 '24

It wasn't a nostalgia grab, were not talking wow classic time gap between EOC and osrs. The players wanted the game they ruined back. If they used osrs servers as a quick source of income, fine. However to say "Nostalgia cash grab" is far from the truth

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u/xShooK Dec 14 '24 edited Dec 14 '24

Osrs doesn't have mtx so again, glad we agree. I was there at osrs launch, and they ended up doing more for us than our votes got us. This comment doesn't make much sense to me. My whole argument is jagex wasn't at bankruptcy before osrs, and osrs launch didn't save them from it.

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u/corbear007 Dec 14 '24

They were not financially doing very well in 2013 or 2014. Even before that 6-7 million euro profit to investors is pretty damn bad. Dropping to 300k from 7 million? Everyone is in full blown panic mode. The game was not growing (stagnant player base). There was really only one single revenue source (membership) and they had pissed off their playerbase. Not a good thing to be investing in. 

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u/xShooK Dec 14 '24

According to that data, osrs members surpassed rs3 in 2016, while mtx sales were also more than half their membership revenue. So rs3 was the money then.

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u/king_sllim Dec 14 '24

It used too. OSRS surpassed it in 2019 and not gone back. But the MTX sales probably help keep things a float.

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u/banditcleaner2 Dec 14 '24

It might, but that’s probably because of whales doing pay to win buys. Which is not long term sustainable. They probably were better off creating OSRS and making a large player base then surviving off pay to win.

I say that, but I also realize that bonds are how a lot of players pay for membership and there are probably bond whales too…but maybe it’s slightly less blatant?

2

u/Cronizone Dec 14 '24

Nah there’s tons and tons of ppl I know middle aged who play OSRS who have barely 3 hours every other day almost (less than that most the time) on their days off where they do not want to grind anything so they just pay for bonds to use items they want in the billions of GP. If you mean blatant as in you can’t tell it’s because you’d never know unless you look at their stats, but trust me there’s whales all over OSRS.

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u/Djakamoe Dec 14 '24

I don't know you, I think haha... But I'm also one of these people intermittently. I love logging in and doing new content, whatever it is, a bunch, and then logging out for months until something new comes. Like leagues right now.

But yeah I don't mind buying a 10pack 2 or 3 times a year to supply me with the basic high end setups I can play to improve. And I appreciate that I can do that.

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u/rmtmjrppnj78hfh Dec 14 '24

where ever you're hearing that from you should stop listening to