I don’t mind either way really for this version, I’m just enjoying it and will move forward to the next, I do want to say a big thank you for being so thorough and keeping us informed though.
Personally I’d like a version after slayer and before GE - GE ruined the community spirit imo.
Anyway thanks guys!
I can see Rev 225 being special as it was the first. All other revs should not be hosted as those who followed the progression once, will do again. I personally do not care for a hosted 225 as I can always record my offline game. If you do decide to host it, I see it getting the same number or less active players as current f2p.
I think its important to have a first edition of this project to look back on.
However, I will most likely play most up to date version for now.
The game wasn’t designed to allow players to control the client version, so I don’t see how that would work out long term for multiplayer.
My mind is reaching heavily for the Minecraft like model where you can download the client and server locally and they can be at a version specified. That model seems to fit well for the use case here. Perhaps the focus should be on teaching motivated players how to host the client and server combo of their choice, and then develop some kind of web UI that allows for drop-down selection of a specific version that downloads a bundle of the client and server pair. Then they just go read some document that makes it dead obvious how to run it.
imo just hosting the most updated version of the game is the way to go. Splitting the current player base makes the game less enjoyable.
Huge thanks to everyone involved for making this project possible. I love it!
fully agree with this 
For those saying that keeping other revisions hosted will “divide the playerbase”, that’s going to be an inevitability in the sense that a point in time will come when most players will not want to continue onto later revisions. 2005/2006 are especially popular, particularly for those that stop and think about it for longer than a few moments.
All that being said, I support there being a server hosting the original release of 2004Scape. It does make sense for the first supported iteration to be the exact version that all of this began with.
I agree with this and it’s one of the many reasons that an early 2006 iteration would be most ideal.
This was my thought too, but you also have to consider that a lot of people will likely get bored and want to move on to the next year, whether that be 2006, 2007, or I dare say, 2008…
It’s partly why OSRS dipped in player count before new updates were released. I think when we actually get there, the majority of the playerbase will choose to continue to (at least) 2007.
And hey, haven’t seen your name in ages. I remember shortly before the beta released we were chatting about this same concept in the discord and you put up a poll about it.
There will still always be a core playerbase that doesn’t care about updates and that will stay in older revisions. I personally think I’ll stay in 2005 but I could see myself playing through 2006, never 2007 though. I think we’ll see the biggest split in the community between 2006 and 2007 since the G.E got added in 2007.
2008+ will never be popular. At that point people would just be playing OSRS.
I do think that initially people might try 2007, but after the novelty wears off the most popular iteration will likely be pre-skill capes, pre-wilderness ditch, pre-GE, pre-[insert updated monster models here], pre-interface overhaul etc.
They haven’t worked out how they plan to do the iterations, but if we go by the early period of each year (like this 2004), that could work out nicely.
I don’t think the May 2004 server really needs more than just 1 server dedicated to it, though. Maybe 2 if you really want to preserve both f2p and p2p versions of it. I don’t even mind if we lose two servers to it. I think it’s better to have fewer servers, and have them be more crowded.
Biggest split is likely to be between pre-Construction (Pre May 2006) and a November 2007 (late 2007, before Wilderness/Free Trade removal, and pre-Summoning) iteration.
Anything can happen though, with these being open source and all.
2008+ will never be popular. At that point people would just be playing OSRS.
OSRS is significantly different to the way the game actually was beyond 2008. I’m not saying you won’t find similarities but it’s hardly even close to the same experience.
True to an extent, and I actually even think some updates 2008+ were good. I really enjoyed Stealing Creation, actually. And Tormented Demons were fun, even if Dragon Claws were a bit crazy. I personally spent an entire summer in 2009 terrorizing 76king people in Falador PvP worlds. The absence of NMZ and a bunch of other things (including Ironman mode itself) means I’d have to concede that OSRS is indeed much worse than 2008 or 2009 RuneScape.
I just don’t believe it’s going to have much of a pull, especially with this present community that enjoys 2004 (which is really barebones compared to even early 2005).
I think this server will mainly grow from the major updates throughout all of 2005.
Once you hit that “2008” threshold, you’re looking at a crowd that likely just didn’t want EoC, and that goes all the way to 2012 or whatever. At the end of the day, it won’t matter if these iterations co-exist, since they are so different from each other and have different communities in essence. I wish Jagex had chose to run 3 RuneScapes (One EoC, one Pre-EoC, and one RS2) instead of shoving both of the latter two groups into OSRS.
Well it was fun while it lasted.. please don’t ever go beyond 2006 This is my only piece of childhood left lmfao
They were transparent from the start that they would proceed beyond 2006.
Either way, the community still decides. They can make as many years past that point as they like, but if the majority stick to 05/06, then that’s where the activity will remain.