I tend to believe the game was designed and developed specifically with the expectations that the population would be low and that players would trickle in slowly. This becomes pretty apparent just by looking at how they designed their starting area/island. Even a few dozen people can ruin the experience through server lag, and there being so few mobs to fight over. Once you get past the starter island, things do open up and that becomes less of an issue. Towns/hubs still suffer from poor optimization, but that never did anything to sour me on things.
runescape did it 27 years ago
runescape
Dev quality obviously matters, as well.
► Show Spoiler
Last edited by Rienen on March 13th, 2026, 15:44, edited 1 time in total.
I tend to believe the game was designed and developed specifically with the expectations that the population would be low and that players would trickle in slowly. This becomes pretty apparent just by looking at how they designed their starting area/island. Even a few dozen people can ruin the experience through server lag, and there being so few mobs to fight over. Once you get past the starter island, things do open up and that becomes less of an issue. Towns/hubs still suffer from poor optimization, but that never did anything to sour me on things.
runescape did it 27 years ago
runescape
Dev quality obviously matters, as well.
► Show Spoiler
It's just so frustrating that runescape solved an issue every MMORPG still bangs its head against to this day
It's just so frustrating that runescape solved an issue every MMORPG still bangs its head against to this day
A lot of game development over the years turned into a guy trying to come up with the concept of a "wheel", while there was a car driving by in the background. I never understood why developers didn't do massive case studies on existing games mechanics to evaluate what worked and what didn't before they attempted their game.
What am I saying... there was analysis done, but it was business and use metrics to establish what types of features would produce the most cheddar for the company and it had nothing to do with "game play".
