I have had a lot going on IRL lately, so I have been a little quieter than usual. At the same time, I have still been sitting back and watching how updates like Havenhythe, Leagues, Double XP, and the rest have been landing.

Behind the scenes, I have also been steadily fixing bugs, cleaning up errors, partitioning my databases, and improving the site’s functionality. That includes new URL-state linking:

I have posted a few times on Reddit with what I thought were interesting data points, but most of those posts get downvoted, which is kind of funny, but it can also be annoying. People want to criticize, but often do not have valid critiques. "You should do a regression," one person said, when I already have that, and personally it is not that useful to me. Knowing we are losing 2K players per year is interesting, but those analyses are so sensitive that even Double XP can make the regressions look like we are gaining. So hearing that I need to do X, Y, or Z when it is already available seems like an odd reply, although it might be in good faith.

I called the downtrend back in the first or second week of February and was massively downvoted for it. That post had 50K+ views and 150+ comments, but now saying there is a downtrend feels a lot more popular on Reddit. The Road to Restoration does not seem to be landing the way people hoped it would. I do think it has more to do with the subscription increases, grandfathered-rate removals, and nerfs than MTX alone, but MTX is still part of it.

Here is the thing: for 13 years, some of the biggest flamers, tryhards, and loudest jerks have been on OSRS lauding it as the best version of the game. That tradition is as old as EoC. OSRS has that reputation and social momentum, whether it is fully earned or not. The only way RS3 overcomes that is by being more cool than OSRS. That is it. I thought PKing might add that, but after doing a good bit of research, I think I was wrong. Maybe it is more updates, maybe more modes, but becoming the painful grind that is OSRS is not the way.

I am awaiting the new bot data, which should be out soon. Check here. I would guess there were more bots during Leagues... oh Leagues. It is kind of shameful that OSRS players were supposedly quitting the game a few months ago and then set all-time highs during Leagues.

While hiscores counts are going down, we should not underestimate how many people were playing alt accounts who may no longer be doing so. Player counts have dropped, but they have done so more slowly than hiscores counts. That implies to me, at least, that fewer people are playing alts moreso than fewer people are playing, although fewer people are playing too.

There are still a couple things I would like to add to the site that I think would be especially interesting:

I have a couple more ideas too, but those are the ones I think would be the most interesting.