[Kendall]

This server was the shit. Made a bunch of friends, had the best of time, really enjoyed myself. But we're all hanging on to something that just isn't there. I understand that a lot of blood, sweat and tears were put into development of this server but let's face it, this game is dead and it won't come back. Even if it does, it will never be as good as it once was.

[edub]

I think that is a fair point to make, unfortunately with most things in life you want to see them go out on top. There was definitely a lot of good times on this server and unfortunately the last few years have been a roller coaster and runerebels has limped on ever since.

I have been active on and off but at least being on lately there's still a few people that play. I don't think we may ever see the days of having 20+ players on daily again (I could be wrong) but with some development things might pick up a bit. Obviously everyone gets busy with life and its hard to find time to play but I don't think the plug should be pulled as long as some of us are still playing even if its just a few here and there I think there is a reason to move forward. There might be little to no reason to keep playing at all at this point honestly but I will keep riding the ship even if she sinks.

[Sheldy]

Free stoof plz?

[Charles]

I think we can all agree that updates are a thing of the past, but Runerebels still has life, there is still things to do within the current game state and if we want to make it a nice place to be we have to spend time working on the community. A good start would be to just have runerebels on when at the computer just to chat if you don't feel like playing.

[Stuart]

There is still quite a bit of content, at least that I've done, that hasn't been released yet. Partly in due to the fact that a lot of quests need to be released, minor bugs, etc etc. The gnome agility course was already completed by the time I got to it, but I fixed it up and it was good to go.

In dev worlds I've got the wildy course and the barbarian courses working 100%.

I really don't have much time these days to dev like I once used to, I work in the woods during my summers and travel (in New Zealand) during my winters. I do think there will continue to be short bursts of development of the next year. Its going to be uncommon though.

[Charles]

I do think there will continue to be short bursts of development of the next year. Its going to be uncommon though.

Did Ryan finish the tools he was working on before leaving?

[Pyro]

I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I have a feeling RuneRebels "died" because the player base grew up; people just have better things to do now than grind for hours on a private server. With the introduction of OSRS, RuneRebels lost its appeal to many new players. IMHO RuneRebels still has a few advantages though:

• Small & tight-knit community - Main reason I played private servers; I'd have a decent chance of getting on the high scores, and (more importantly) you make a lot of friends
• It's "vanilla" - Some people are purists, and are uncomfortable with the additions to OSRS
• RuneRebels never dies (?) - IMO the strongest appeal for a private server is knowing your precious exp.
   won't disappear the next day

I don't think updates will save RuneRebels. Personally, I wouldn't play the game regularly even if the game was 100% complete.

Why?

Back in 2013, when I was in high school, I had an enormous amount of free time; I'd spend hours just watching anime, AFK fishing sharks and shitposting on /b/ (lul). Now it's 2018, and I'm busy with my studies and co-op. I enjoy lurking the RR forums and seeing how everyone's doing, but grinding out slayer tasks or burning logs for hours isn't a big priority anymore.

Of course, this is just a theory. I'm just getting vibes that the only "active" RR members are veterans who've grown up, and simply can't devote as much time grinding exp.


So what should we do?

Here's what I think:

• RR needs new players. I think it's very, very unlikely we'd succeed in getting people to join, which leads me to the next point...
• If RuneRebels fails to get new players, it will slowly disappear as everyone ages; at that point, it's Ryan's call to decide when to pull the plug
• If Ryan does decide to kill RuneRebels, I'd really appreciate it if he put the source on GitHub (I don't know how RSPSs work, so this may be impractical, idk)
• It would be nice if the RuneRebels forum continued to be maintained, but if not, I'd be willing to make a simple forum for free (I'd make it open source, build it with Node.js, and deploy with Heroku)
  

If somebody feels enthusiastic and does feel like advertising, I'd recommend focusing on RuneRebels's strengths, ie. "vanilla", small community, long lasting (?), as opposed trying to compete with "common" selling points, such as big communities, frequent updates, and 20x exp rates.



TL;DR: I don't think RR will benefit a lot from updates; if we want RR to live, we should focus on the community, and market RR as nostalgia server that has been up for (more than?) five years. Do I think RR has a chance if we advertise? Not really, but it seems like our most viable option.

Regardless of what happens, it was definitely a pleasure playing with all of you; I'll never forget all the fun I had grinding, going to drop parties, and meeting everyone here.

[edub]

I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I have a feeling RuneRebels "died" because the player base grew up; people just have better things to do now than grind for hours on a private server. With the introduction of OSRS, RuneRebels lost its appeal to many new players. IMHO RuneRebels still has a few advantages though:

• Small & tight-knit community - Main reason I played private servers; I'd have a decent chance of getting on the high scores, and (more importantly) you make a lot of friends
• It's "vanilla" - Some people are purists, and are uncomfortable with the additions to OSRS
• RuneRebels never dies (?) - IMO the strongest appeal for a private server is knowing your precious exp.
   won't disappear the next day

I don't think updates will save RuneRebels. Personally, I wouldn't play the game regularly even if the game was 100% complete.

Why?

Back in 2013, when I was in high school, I had an enormous amount of free time; I'd spend hours just watching anime, AFK fishing sharks and shitposting on /b/ (lul). Now it's 2018, and I'm busy with my studies and co-op. I enjoy lurking the RR forums and seeing how everyone's doing, but grinding out slayer tasks or burning logs for hours isn't a big priority anymore.

Of course, this is just a theory. I'm just getting vibes that the only "active" RR members are veterans who've grown up, and simply can't devote as much time grinding exp.


So what should we do?

Here's what I think:

• RR needs new players. I think it's very, very unlikely we'd succeed in getting people to join, which leads me to the next point...
• If RuneRebels fails to get new players, it will slowly disappear as everyone ages; at that point, it's Ryan's call to decide when to pull the plug
• If Ryan does decide to kill RuneRebels, I'd really appreciate it if he put the source on GitHub (I don't know how RSPSs work, so this may be impractical, idk)
• It would be nice if the RuneRebels forum continued to be maintained, but if not, I'd be willing to make a simple forum for free (I'd make it open source, build it with Node.js, and deploy with Heroku)
  

If somebody feels enthusiastic and does feel like advertising, I'd recommend focusing on RuneRebels's strengths, ie. "vanilla", small community, long lasting (?), as opposed trying to compete with "common" selling points, such as big communities, frequent updates, and 20x exp rates.



TL;DR: I don't think RR will benefit a lot from updates; if we want RR to live, we should focus on the community, and market RR as nostalgia server that has been up for (more than?) five years. Do I think RR has a chance if we advertise? Not really, but it seems like our most viable option.

Regardless of what happens, it was definitely a pleasure playing with all of you; I'll never forget all the fun I had grinding, going to drop parties, and meeting everyone here.

I think OSRS played a role in the player-base thinning out. I also think that along with the player-base growing up and a lack of updates at times wore out a lot of people's welcome. But like you said this server definitely has its strengths and longevity is one of them without a doubt.

The other problem is with new players there is such a huge gap in-between people who are just starting and most of us vets who have been around for 4 or 5 years. With the lack of a player base in terms of resources your almost on your own. If there was ever a chance of a revival this server would need more development and new players in addition to the vets that we still have around now. Otherwise like you said the castle will slowly continue to crumble.

[Charles]

I wouldn't mind a relaunch but before such a thing could even be feasible there would need to be great improvements to the current game state/content, new players would most likely give up if they feel like they are hindered.

[Francis]

Can't believe this server is still going, it would definitely be nice to see this game getting popular once again.

[edub]

Can't believe this server is still going, it would definitely be nice to see this game getting popular once again.

How many other servers out there can you think of that have lasted over 5 years? Since I started playing RS private servers in 06/07 I cannot honestly think of any that come to mind.

[Ry60003333]

Hey guys! I appreciate the discussion of updates; I think some more background on the last push of updates would help a bit.

I actually really love and enjoy working on the game; it of course isn't easy reimplementing an MMO, but the challenge is one of the things that makes it enjoyable! Back in the beginning of last year, we were able to build up a very large amount of momentum with the updates, and the team did a fantastic job at just pushing out tons of new content. However, the pace that we were going (an update every 2 weeks) was most likely too fast, as we would spend one weekend working on content, the next releasing it and pushing out major bug fixes, and then repeating the process.

Towards the end of the update fest I got sucked into some pretty large projects at work, and without bug fixes and new features for the tools the development of content slowed. However, we made massive improvements to the development process. We now have actual dedicated developer worlds that developers can reboot and modify content on without me being involved at all, we have moved every bug into an issue on our Gitlab server, and all changes to both the code and database is automatically tracked. Lastly, we have a Telegram bot that can automatically do most of steps to deploy updates to the live game servers.

I have a bit more free time again around this time of year, so I would like to get things rolling again. I've continued to do lots of behind the scenes tweaks and infrastructure updates, but I think we would like to formalize on a one update per month schedule. This will give us more time to focus on higher quality content, as well as taking the time needed for larger content updates.

Lastly, I do think that we need a solid roadmap and a way to get more people involved with the project. One key thing I think we should focus on is the new user experience; It should be as simple as possible for a new user to download the game client and login in and get started. Revamping the game client, world select page, and homepage would probably be a fantastic start to this. The main question is when to tackle this, as of course for our players that have been around forever we would like to focus on new content. Let us know what you think!

[Minecraft]

I personally think you've done a wonderful job and a valiant effort. This could end up being something for all our kids to play on in the future. It's just a matter of time.
Also having a quantifiable amount of time between updates is a huge plus. Less stress and more exploration on what to improve and track your progress.
I've read on the old Worldscape forums that updates are patched to both servers, Is this true =o? Couldn't this cause some sort of complication? As much as i would love you to work on both equally, i know that it isn't possible or preferable.
Keep up the great work Ryan and stay positive!

[Stuart]

I personally think you've done a wonderful job and a valiant effort. This could end up being something for all our kids to play on in the future. It's just a matter of time.
Also having a quantifiable amount of time between updates is a huge plus. Less stress and more exploration on what to improve and track your progress.
I've read on the old Worldscape forums that updates are patched to both servers, Is this true =o? Couldn't this cause some sort of complication? As much as i would love you to work on both equally, i know that it isn't possible or preferable.
Keep up the great work Ryan and stay positive!

All updates done to Worldscape that are server core related also translate to Runerebels as both servers run off the AllGoFree engine. However, both servers have their own content databases when it comes to things like drop tables, shops, etc etc. Skill databases are shared as well between the two, so as I write agility on Runerebels, it'll translate to Worldscape, vise versa!

[Chaoslancex]

i say we all do a reunion we all pick a day and try to work it out with everyone schedule and get on and man i've haven't been on here in years.... side how hope everyone's been doing good