Runescape popularity on the decline?

[Sypherz]

I remember it would hit 100k sometimes even back on '06. It's definitely declining.

 

[Fire Monkey]

I've seen a rise, when there was botting, there were 100K people online the majority of the time, after botting there was like 45K people online and now there is 60K+ so i think it's increasing in popularity.

Nah, there was never 45k online.. you got your figures wrong.. there was nearly 200k online most of the time before Nuke day.

Then it went down to about 80-90k

and now there's 67k (baring in mind alot of people have moved to RID and Simba) - I'd say it definitely declining.

I can't imagine it picking up & getting more players within 1month of Nuke day - the more likely scenario is that people who are left without bots just quit. All you need to do is look around Sythe and the other cheating communities - it's only a small percentage of people who are actually bothering to play legit now. Everyone else is still botting or has given up lol

So out of 67k how many are color bots?

Jagex is killing it's own game IMO, the botting situation got too far before they done anything about it... too many lost players, too little, too late.

 

[Sillymonkey]

I remember it would hit 100k sometimes even back on '06. It's definitely declining.

Yeah, because there were no bots back then, right? I remember walking by Willows next to Draynor (the ones next to the farm house) on any F2P world and seeing the MASSIVE herds of bots. That's just 1 example. Another obvious one would be all the essence miners.

When I was training RC (got 99 back when nats were a healthy 300 GP each), whenever I bought essence in Fally, the person with the best price was obviously a bot/gold farmer. And they always had mills of essence to sell.


The people that couldn't be bothered because they either couldn't get a good training spot for a skill, or couldn't be bothered because they had to sell things for too low, will be finding skilling (and playing RS) worthwhile again due to (almost) no bots.

There are also the people that were unmotivated to level because of all the botters getting 'easy XP' while they spend their time on it, that are now motivated to level again because of most bots being gone.

Me for example, before the nuke I was close to only needing 1 99 (Hunter) to become maxed. If the nuke hadn't happened, I wouldn't of been able to get myself to bother with Hunt due to all the bots at various spots. But instead, the nuke did happen, and I will be 99 Hunt tomorrow and get to design my max cape tomorrow night.

 

[Laptop65]

Numbers have shot down since the bot update, haven't seen it above 100,000+ since before the update.

 

[RecklessMatt]

Back in about 2006, The population of RuneScape was around double it is now, yet at that time, they're was no-where near as many bots as there has been 2009-2011

 

[They be trippin]

I havnt actually played Runescape in over a year, with bots gone there is nothing pulling me in any longer.

 

[SomeFormOfHuman]

As stated: It's because of the nuke.

The last couple years, Runescape has been littered with bots. Nobody can be bothered to play "legit". It's just a pain...


God damn goldfarmers. Ruined it for everyone. Bots weren't created so that people could make a pretty penny off of using them.

 

[Garbear]

It will go up, people want to play for fun.

 

[Rogerthatfeddie]

how did jagex get rid of the bots so effectively?

 

[CARU TI]

they just need to make a new game bunch of new lvl 3s and a beta game ++ "double vote"

 

[unsc bt90]

I feel the same way. It does seem like the amount of people on rs has decreased, but it has to be due to the bot nuke.

 

[Tim50]

No I disagree, I think the game is going up very fast at the moment. I was reading a thread on the RS forums which was tracking people online every 3 hours since the bot nuke.

It has been going up heaps, with there being on average like 10k more players (Which is an insane amount of people if you think about it)

 

[Old English]

The population isn't declining, at all. It's steadily increasing, at peak times it hits 80k+ players. That's growth from the 45-50k players just after the nuke. It hasn't been very long, at all since so any speculation and evaluation is inevitable considering it takes a year to get a full graph written that's accurate data.

 

[Themaulpure]

It's been declining since 2008.

 

[meodows92]

I know before 06 the unbalance trading happends, it was 1 million and every server was like full but now is only hit 50k.

 

[-Ryan]

The popularity of Runescape has decreased significantly since the last bot update. It is not nearly what it used to be.

 

[charlie24]

Yes the game's done.

 

[THEemperor]

This will change once old school people learn that bots are not around anymore, i know alooooooooooot of people that quit just for bots. With free trade and botting gone, its back to the golden days. the populaition will rise quite fast again.

 

[Kudos]

I is going up and up, a lot of older players are returning all the time. They have big plans for a whole combat shift with action bars (finally!) things are only going to get better you jut have to embrace change.

 

[Emperor Nero]

The game is going to die, and those of you who say it is going up I would like to see evidence because it has been on the decline since pre-GE. It's difficult to face but with all the updates that are trying to make the game like WoW it is going to get less and less popular because if people want to play WoW they will just buy WoW or at least play a better rip-off. (Runes of Magic, hint hint.) At least lose games are completely open to their player base and you only play for game enhancements, hence the name freemium. It is all around a better system than what RS uses.

The bots impacted the player base hugely and they aren't going to get a lot of those members back. Even if old school (pre-GE) members come back they're going to be pissed because of all the BS that Jagex added. Just take it back old school and make the game simple again.... You don't need 6,000,000 types of pures in a PvP game.