RuneScape Preservation is a Nightmare
I like RuneScape - that much should be obvious if you spent more than 3 seconds on this website. One thing always bothered me though. The game requires on servers to function. This mean that one day, the game will inevitably become lost media. While I am sure that RuneScape players will organize to preserve Oldschool RuneScape the second the game shut down will be announced, I fear that RuneScape 3 will be left to bit the dust. Even on the Oldschool RuneScape side, I doubt anyone will manage to fully recreate the game. It is simply too vast. This is evidenced by the fact that the OSRS wiki is still incomplete to this day - and that's just a description of things in the game for the most part. When you start accounting for technical aspects of the game, the futility of it all quickly becomes obvious - though I am of the opinion that some RuneScape is better than no RuneScape and thus even an incomplete preservation project is better than nothing at all.
The ultimate endgame of RuneScape preservation is to run the game when Jagex will no longer exist. The optimal form of this would be an open-source private server - or at the very least a large amount of data that would allow for the creation of one in the future.
This hypothetical best-case scenario excludes a crucial question: Which RuneScape are we talking about? I am not merely talking about RuneScape 3 and Oldschool RuneScape. As live service games, they both receive lots of update - some which are quite divisive. RuneScape 3 is currently on build 940 whereas Oldschool RuneScape is on build 229. That's a lot of different versions.
Now to be fair, it is extremely unlikely that someone would want to play a hyper-specific version of the game. Players generally long for specific eras (i.e a time before the Grand Exchange). I think this best reflected in how the RuneScape private server community tends to focus on a selection of different build. As I was curious to see the progression of the game's complexity over time, I decided to fetch the model count of those builds. This is probably not the best way to gauge "game complexity", but I figure it should give a somewhat accurate picture since the vast majority of updates are made of 3D models:
| Build number | Model count | Build date |
|---|---|---|
| 225 | 3454 | 18 May 2004 |
| 317 | 7537 | 18 June 2005 |
| 448 | 22194 | 08 February 2007 |
| 530 | 45468 | 28 January 2009 |
| 667 | 65517 | 09 October 2011 |
| 718 | 70784 | 29 May 2012 |
It seems that start to become very complex sometimes in 2007. Given current information, I think that the game becomes unpreservable sometimes after that point. I know that replicating the game as it was in 2007 is possible as Vidyascape did it - sadly this doesn't count as preservation as their code is closed source. If I recall correctly, it took them 6 or 7 years to make the game feature complete. That's a lot of time.
I have recently keeping an eye on a project called Lost City. This project is an open source private server of build 225 - a true preservation project. This project is notable for going the extra mile of replicating RuneScript. Although their build of version 225 is not feature-complete yet (Legends' Quest is still missing), their goal seems to be in reach. Watching the development process only confirmed my worst fears though. The amount of time and effort necessary to replicate an early version of RuneScape 2 is horrifying.
Even in an ideal world where Jagex would open source the code for RuneScape 3 and Oldschool RuneScape, some version of RuneScape would still remain unpreservable. This because Jagex did not used source control until May 2012. Let's say you wanted to replicate build 530 (28 January 2009). While data from RS3 would certainly help, you would ultimately end up with a lot of missing data. Your only option is then to pray that there exists YouTube videos of whatever content you are trying to replicate.
Back in 2022, I started a project called RuneLibris. It had the goal of documenting content in RuneScape 3 to avoid the aforementioned scenario. I quickly gave up after I realized how cursed RuneScape preservation is.
Let's say for example you want to preserve interactions in Legends' Quest (a quest requiring membership). For starters the quest requirements look like this:
Should you fail to record an interaction and accidentally lock yourself out of it, you need to create another account, buy another membership and then grind out all the requirements again. The price of failure is that steep.
This was a quest released back in 2003 - that was when the game was relatively simple. Something well within the preservable period outlined above.
Using all this information, I think it is crystal clear that my favorite game (RuneScape 3) will not be able to be preserved. The game is simply too complex. I used to pray regularly, asking for the game's source code to get leaked - that's how desperate I was.
I think the worst part about all of this is that I feel like I am compelled to do something. I feel like that I am the one that can do something about it. Yet my previous attempt backfired horribly on my mental state.
In my eyes, the version of RuneScape 3 I used to play is long gone. I think the game peaked somewhere around build 900. I don't even have the will to play anymore. The new NXT client is a buggy and unoptimized mess. I remember when RuneScape was about accessibility. Back in 2015, the game ran perfectly on my parents' mediocre computer that only had 1 GB of RAM. Now the game practically requires a gaming PC. Don't get me started on all the new content I disagree with.
Even if I were to complete RuneLibris, I am not sure what I would do with it. The world as made it clear that it dosen't care about RuneScape 3 because it's the "inferior version". Even if I knew how to code, it's not like I could realistically recreate the game on my own.
The only hope I have left is that initiatives like Stop Killing Games has a ripple effect in the future where Jagex makes the code for RuneScape 3 open source before the game shut down and that it includes version control files that allow us to compile the game back to its previous glory. Even then, I doubt I would be able to play on contemporary hardware and operating system given how things look in general.
There are so many more reasons why RuneScape Preservation is cursed that I did not mentions. In some version of the game, map data is encrypted which significantly complicate things. If a replica of the game would be to be made from scratch, packet capture would be a must, meaning would you essentially need to maintain a special client to get data.
I sometimes get the thought that I should reboot RuneLibris. Perhaps I should only focus on specific quests since preserving the entire game is impossible. I quickly dismiss those futile thoughts, as I know nothing can be done.
The only solace I have is that I recorded my quest playthroughs back in the day. I sometimes boot up some weird 718-RS3 hybrid private server and teleport around in a virtual world, void of technical interactions,contemplating what was once was.
Written by manpaint on 21 March 2025.
2025-03-22 Edit: I originally stated the model count for build 718 to be 165509. Turns out there was something wrong with the cache I used. The actual number is 70784. As such I removed the "That metric then goes through the roof in 2012. Yikes. " line from the article. I also fixed some minor number offset.