While we have had “official worlds” for quite some time, it seems that lately they have become more and more popular. By “official world” I mean worlds used almost solely for one purpose, or a world that anybody can count on going to in order to find others doing the same thing. For example, people use worlds 1 and 2 primarily for trading, and if you want to succeed at the new game Pest Control, you can count on going to world 78 to find others participating, thus increasing your chances of success.
It’s good to see players band together like this. Even without major advertisements on forums, word has spread of these “official” worlds. For those of you who don’t know them all, here are just a few, and you can watch our forum topic for more!
- World 1: Trading (Varrock)
- World 2: Trading (Falador) or Dueling (Al Kharid)
- World 9: Tip.It Users
- World 16: Running Air Runes
- World 18: PKing
- World 66: Running Law Runes
- World 78: Pest Control
These worlds, as well as any others, offer a great service to players looking to do things that require working with several players. Without these worlds, doing things like getting fast Runecrafting experience would require much effort in getting your own runners and (often) teaching them yourself what they need to do. Also, the players looking to get the runes made would have to get themselves “hired” by Runecrafters, and once that player logged off, they’d be out of luck.
It would be interesting to see if Jagex has any response to these “official” worlds and created some “official” worlds of their own. Many players have begged and pleaded for worlds with either combat level or skill total requirements, as they get harassed by lower levels everywhere they turn. I think, in part, that this kind of official world would be a little unfair in some aspects, and would require some tweaking before it ever happened. For example, the wild would be a playground for only high levels, so clans would reign on these worlds, and lower levels would get slaughtered by people looking for easy PKs on the other worlds. There would definitely be some benefits too, though, if it was implemented well.
Jagex’s declaring a world to be “official” for something would definitely make those worlds more exciting. Right now, going to castle wars can often be quite uneventful, but if there was a world officially dedicated to castle wars players, we might see a nice boom in participation again. This could either be done by making a small world that only includes specified areas, or by declaring one of the main worlds to be “official” (the first option would require much more work on Jagex’s part).
While I may dream, though, I do not expect Jagex to do this any time soon. It would indeed make it easier for players to know their options, but these worlds rely heavily on the players involved. Declaring a world to be “official” could lead to big letdowns if the activity dwindles, making some customers angry with Jagex (not that it’s really a good reason to be).
Players have been using worlds 1 and 2 for years for trading. We know if we need to get rid of stuff and don’t want to deal with forums, we can sell it there. Despite the long reign these two worlds have had, they have never been declared “official” for trading, which is why I doubt we will see any declarations soon. Then again, Jagex could do it just to make me wrong now. But that said, doing it to make me wrong would make me right about them doing it to make me wrong, so I’d still be right, right?
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