Server




 * Not to be confused with Servant



The Servers are the computers that host RuneScape. Servers are maintained by Jagex and by contractors retained by Jagex. They are distributed across the real world. There are several types of servers used in RuneScape.


 * The first server players will meet is the hosting server, which runs the main RuneScape website. It is unknown how many individual computers manage the site and as to whether the Grand Exchange Database, RuneScape Forums and Hiscores are all on this server.
 * After selecting the 'Click Here to Play' button on the home page, the game first does a loading process which includes connecting to the Update server.
 * The optimal World server for the player is selected upon loading the game, 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 171 worlds (five are German-speaking, five are French-speaking, and three are Quick Chat only), but more are routinely added.
 * The player is connected to the Login server when the loading process is completed and a world server is selected.
 * After logging in, the Friends list and Ignore list are loaded after connecting to the Friends server.
 * The RuneScape Forums have their own servers, which are accessible even when the game servers are down.

Isolation of worlds
Each world server known by the short name world is fairly isolated. A player may be logged in to at most one world server at any given time. To ensure this is the case, a delay is in place between logging out of one and logging into another world.

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, players (along with chat messages) contained in one world will not be visible to players in another world. The only exception to this is the Grand Exchange which trades with players on all worlds.

World switching
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. Therefore switching worlds is no longer advantageous when buying from stores. However players still switch worlds often in order to find more favourable conditions (e.g. more populated) for minigames, player killing or trading. This technique is known as world switching or world hopping.

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

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.

Locations


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


 * {|class="wikitable"

!Continent !Country !Free servers !Members servers !colspan="4"| RuneScape New Zealand 1 1 Denmark Finland Ireland Netherlands Norway Sweden United Kingdom 1 3 1 4 1 3 13 1 3 1 6 1 3 5 Mexico United States 0 40 1 38 !colspan="4"| RuneScape German !colspan="4"| RuneScape France !colspan="4"| RuneScape Brazilian Portugese !rowspan="2"|Totals !Servers !Free !Members
 * Oceania
 * Australia serv.PNG Australia
 * Australia serv.PNG Australia
 * 4
 * 4
 * Asia
 * India serv.PNG India
 * 1
 * 1
 * Europe
 * Belgium serv.PNG Belgium
 * Europe
 * Belgium serv.PNG Belgium
 * 1
 * 1
 * Americas
 * Canada serv.PNG Canada
 * Canada serv.PNG Canada
 * 7
 * 10
 * Europe
 * Germany serv.PNG Germany*
 * 3
 * 2
 * 2
 * Europe
 * France serv.PNG France
 * 2
 * 1
 * 1
 * Americas
 * Brazil serv.PNG Brazil
 * 3
 * 2
 * colspan="4"|
 * colspan="4"|
 * colspan="4"|
 * 169
 * 88
 * 81
 * }
 * }


 * The German servers are located in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Themed worlds
After the Themed world update on 13 August 2007, a new column on the far right of the world select screen was added by Jagex. This column highlights worlds associated with certain activities and servers Jagex have designated as the worlds that should be used for certain activities (due to certain servers not being able to cope with high levels of activity).

This makes it easier to find people who wish to do the same thing, like Trouble Brewing or Castle Wars.

These worlds are recommended by Jagex as the best place to perform these activities. However, they are only recommendations; players may still use any world they want to perform these activities, with the exception of LootShare, Bounty Hunter, Drop Parties and Duel Tournaments, which are only available on the appropriate themed worlds.

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

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

Player killing
Worlds where players kill others on PvP Worlds, Bounty Hunter, the Duel Arena and others.

Role playing
On these worlds, it is intended that players will get together with either friends or others they meet on the roleplaying forums and act out their roleplays (commonly called igrp or In-Game Role-Plays) as if they were in another setting (including new names for places/characters/items and a group of people going from one place to another). This actually does not happen that often.

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 Hero's Quest.

Party room
On a party room world there will be many people in the Falador party room waiting for balloons to drop so they can get the items in them.

Skill Total
On these worlds, players with a total level of 1000 or over can log on to these worlds. Besides the total level requirement, there are no further limitations. These worlds are often called "anti-noob" worlds.

Player worlds
Certain worlds have become colloquially-specialised by the player-base for particular activities, usually for socialisation with similar players which share common attributes like language, or to participate in events which require many people, such as parties and games. These worlds are...

World themes
The list of worlds may change at any time, this is the current world list as of 9 November 2009.

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. (This rollback is different from an edit rollback or revert.)

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.

Recent events



 * In mid-April 2008, Jagex removed all eight servers from Eastern Canada to the United States.
 * On 23 April 2008, World 36 had a glitch where non-members were allowed to enter the world, but could only access free-to-play actions.
 * On Friday, 13 June 2008, all of the servers experienced downtime due to problems with one of the game's internet service providers, Telstra.
 * On 10 August 2008 all of the servers crashed multiple times during the day. The crashes lasted a few minutes but went down again soon after. The servers then completly went offline for the rest of that day
 * On Thursday, 23 October 2008, an error with the login servers showed up. At 19.15 GMT all servers were down. The RuneScape Forums went offline as well.
 * With the release of the 150th quest a server blackout happened. The blackout lasted for about 50 minutes.
 * On 2 July 2009, all the Australian and New Zealand servers went down. Players were logged out and when attempting to log back in, they were given the message that "Their account has not logged out from their last session"
 * On 16 July 2009, multiple servers were offline for a large amount of time. Jagex Mod Gibson stated, "We have pinpointed the world crashes to a problem with one of our in America."
 * On 16 July 2009, some servers went offline. These worlds are: World 1,2,7,8,9,21,22,26-32,42,47,48,56,70 and 100.
 * On 9 November 2009, various "Skill" worlds were released: they required a Skill total exceeding or reaching 1000.

Trivia

 * Before the 22 new worlds update, World 156 had not existed. However, players were once able to access this world using easy-to-decipher URLs.
 * World 150 was added as the sixth German world on 15 October 2008 with the introduction of PvP worlds. However, World 150 became a RuneScape French world on 10 December 2008.
 * On July 16 2009, 41 worlds went offline. The worlds affected:4, 5, 7-9, 13-14, 17, 19, 21-22, 26-30, 37, 42, 47-48, 56, 62, 64, 70, 72, 100, 113. Jagex has the issue under control, although a few worlds remained offline for a while.