RuneScape is set, see "World" redirects here. For the fictional world in whichis set, see Gielinor ; for the other worlds and planes of existence, see Realms . For the music track named Worlds, see Worlds (music track)

Servers (also sometimes referred to as a world) are dedicated game servers maintained either by Jagex themselves, or by contractors retained by Jagex. RuneScape servers can be found distributed across many countries and continents. A single server is capable of hosting many RuneScape worlds.

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Types of servers

Web server

The first type of server a players will meet is a web server. Jagex web servers processes requests made to the main RuneScape website. It is unknown how many individual computers manage the website, and as to whether the Grand Exchange Database, RuneScape Forums and Hiscores are all hosted by the same server. It is probable that the Grand Exchange and Hiscores databases both interface this server.

Download server

After launching the RuneScape Game Client or NXT client the client must first perform a loading process connecting players to the RuneScape download server. In this process, the game client and Jagex cache files are downloaded and stored partially on the player's hard drive and in memory.

Login server

Once a player's game client has passed the loading process, they are connected to a login server. Because all servers are separate, a single login server is necessary in order to keep player data (player names, emails, passwords, inventory, etc) on every world.

Game server

Also known as a world server, once connected to a login server, players are automatically assigned a world, although players may select another server to connect to if they wish.

Each world allows 2000 players to be connected at once.

There are currently 141 worlds Three German-speaking Two French-speaking Four Portuguese-speaking

The default server players are assigned upon connecting to a login server is selected based on three factors: Server latency, language, and physical distance.

Miscellaneous servers

List of world servers

This is the list of servers as of 9 October 2014, including Jagex-defined world themes, P2P/F2P status and whether or not LootShare is enabled on that world.

It is recommended that players connect to the server closest to them, or that has a ping number of less than 100, as they will experience more reliable connections and less lag. However, this is not mandatory.

The German servers are located in the United Kingdom and in Germany.

The Brazilian servers are located in United States.

On 2 November 2011 four new Europe Free Servers were added and several worlds were removed or re-numbered.

Isolation of worlds

Each world server known by the short name world is intended to be isolated from the others. A player is permitted to be logged in to at most one world server at any given time.

For the most part, events that occur in one world will not affect any other RuneScape world. For example, character/item respawns and ore regeneration are all managed individually for each server. Additionally, player actions and public chat messages contained in one world will not be visible to players in another world.

There are exceptions to this isolation. The Grand Exchange trades with players across all worlds. Shop stock is unique to the player; if a player buys out the apples at an NPC shop, the same shop on other worlds will also be sold out for that player. Clan chats and friends chats are accessible from any world, and private chat messages can be sent to other worlds.

Ping

Ping is the time it takes for your computer to send an echo request to the server, and for the server to respond, usually measured in milliseconds. If the server has many players or is farther away, the Ping will be higher. If the server has fewer players or is closer, the Ping will be lower. The higher the Ping, the longer the server takes to respond.

As a general rule of thumb, a world with more than 200 is not recommended for dangerous situations, 100 and below is generally lag free, and anything below 50 will have no lag.

For example, a world with ping of 35 will probably have no lag compared with a world with ping of 192.

To find out the highest/lowest Ping, click the arrows in the Ping column to sort the Ping into ascending/descending order.

World switching

While players can log out of one world and log in to another at will for any reason, there is a specific practice of World switching commonly known as world hopping. It could be done by right-clicking the World Map icon, selecting "Open World Select" and then right-click a world and choose "Quick-hop". If you have added players to your Friends List, right clicking "Join" on their names can be simpler and quicker at the expense of taking up space in said list.

Players change worlds rapidly in order to take advantage of situations that expire and recur on different worlds. These can include the spawning of rare resources such as runite ore, opportunities for player killing, seeking a more populated area to find more players for a minigame, trading, etc.

Prior to the move to infinitely stocked shops, player would often change worlds rapidly to buy from one store many different times. However, the shop improvement update gave most stores infinite stock, and later the personalised shop updates returned finite stocks, but made stocks for a particular player independent of world.

Players may switch to less populated worlds for fewer players, so they can have more monsters, logs, ores (etc.) for themselves; however, there is a slower respawn time for many objects on less populated worlds - this includes both rocks and trees.

To quickly switch without using the "join" option, three worlds may be favourited by clicking on the icon. These worlds then appear as icons next to the play button in every lobby tab but the options.

Players who hop worlds more than ~25 times in quick succession will get a "login limit exceeded" error and be forced to wait 5 minutes.

Persistence of character state

When a user logs off of a world, all settings particular to that character are saved to the player's account profile in a global database. Therefore, when logging into a different world, the character's skills, inventory, etc. will be restored to the same state, regardless of which server the character last logged onto. The only exception is that if a player goes from a members-only world into a free world, his/her statistics will be restored to the normal level.

Themed worlds

After the Themed world update on 13 August 2007, a new column on the world select screen was added by Jagex. This column highlights worlds that Jagex has suggested for certain activities, to make it easier to find other players who wish to do the same thing, such as play Trouble Brewing or Castle Wars.

The worlds are only recommendations; players may still use any world they want to perform most activities. There are some exceptions to this: LootShare and High Risk Wilderness are only available on the appropriate themed worlds. Oppositely, Jagex only allows players with the appropriate levels to log in to a Skill total world. Players who log into the Quick Chat world are restricted to communicating solely from the quick chat menu.

All themed worlds display the flag instead of the country flag in the world select menu.

Players who are logged into a Beta world will have a flag displayed next to the world number they are logged into.

On 5 December 2012, Jagex moderator Mod Emilee posted a thread to forums, which contained possible world theme changes in future.

On 14 December 2012, many worlds had their locations and activities switched (according to feedback from the aforementioned forum thread), and some free-to-play worlds were converted to member's worlds.

VIP

Worlds where only players who are in the Premier Club are allowed to enter. It is denoted by this flag: ( )

Trade

Worlds where players gather in the large cities (such as, Falador, Varrock or Seers Village) to trade a variety of items.

Rune running

Worlds where players can run runes for money or craft runes to raise their Runecrafting skill.

High Risk Wilderness

The World (currently 137) where players can kill each other in the Wilderness where the Protect item prayer and curse are disabled.

Role-playing

The official role-playing world for members is world 42, and the official world for free-to-play is world 41, though other unofficial worlds may be used. Jagex identifies these world for players who wish to act in character (rather than a modern, real life person controlling a game sprite) along with like-minded players, as if they were genuinely living in the semi-medieval world of Gielinor. Special conventions are used to indicate if a person is not speaking "in character".

Group questing

These worlds are where players gather together and do quests. They are popular for players looking for a partner for either Shield of Arrav or Heroes' Quest.

Party room

The official party room world for free-to-play is world 136, and the official world for members is world 9.

Skill total

Only members with a certain total level can log on to these servers. This uses actual skill levels and does not use virtual levels. Besides the total level requirement, there are no further limitations. Both of these were originally limited to players with a total level of at least 1000, but the March 2010 update increased the requirement. Skill total (1000) and (1500) worlds are on some occasions called "anti-noob" worlds. With a February 2013 update, worlds 30 and 48 were set up as skill total (2000) and (2400) worlds. World 48 was changed to a 2600 Skill total world on the 10 April 2017.

Citadel

When a clan member opens a citadel by teleporting to it from the clan camp, Jagex creates it in a separate "instanced" server. The citadel will exist on this world for any clan member who enters, but will close when the last member leaves. It will be created again, on a world assigned by Jagex, whenever it is needed.

Technical issues

Sometimes a technical issue will occur which may cause every game world to crash and log out players in the middle of the game; it may or may not also affect the RuneScape Forums. Players may not be able to log back in if the login server is also affected. The problem is usually resolved in a short time. A server rollback may or may not occur which will reset players back to status before the crash occurred.

Occasionally only a single world will crash/experience a glitch and depending on the problem, the other worlds may be purposefully taken offline, or not.

Information about this will appear in the forums Technical Support section. Other fan sites may also have information if the forums are down. Take special note that servers marked with "OFFLINE" have been purposefully taken down by Jagex, whereas servers with 0 players have crashed.

Recent events

In mid-April 2008, Jagex moved all eight servers from Eastern Canada to the United States.

On 15 October 2008, World 150 was added as the sixth German world with the introduction of PvP worlds.

On 10 December 2008, World 150 moved from a German world to a French world.

On 9 November 2009, various "Skill" worlds were released: they required a Skill total exceeding or reaching 1000 for free players and 1500 for members.

On 3 March 2010, world 114 was changed from being a skill total 1000 world to a skill total 1500 world.

On or before 26 August 2010, Worlds 170 and 171 are either removed or no longer visible.

On 1 February 2011, all of the player-vs-player, bounty hunter and bounty hunter (+1) worlds were changed to normal worlds.

On 9 February 2011, worlds 21, 32, 40 and 85 were changed from free-to-play to members worlds

On 25 February 2011 world 172 was added to RuneScape as a members world.

Other languages

The complete list of RuneScape German servers The complete list of RuneScape French servers The complete list of RuneScape Brazilian Portuguese servers The complete list of former RuneScape Spanish servers

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Trivia