Jagex, I hope you notice the player base in Asia /u/jamisgone Old School RuneScape!

As a Korean OSRS player, wanted to share my experience playing the game from Asia.

It’s no secret that we’re a pretty small minority. Our community, specifically in Korea, has a clan of about ~80 players (~100 if you include our chat and Discord), though not all of us are active. It’s a mix of Koreans, Korean Americans, expats stationed here, and even people just interested in Korea. While it’s nothing fancy, we’ve been slowly building this small community over the years, and it’s been awesome. While we are mostly independent, we would occasionally raid together and a good number of us has sticked around for years.

That said, we’ve definitely noticed some challenges. For new players, We’ve had a good number of people join our group chat (we mostly use KakaoTalk—it’s like Korea’s version of WhatsApp) to ask questions, only to quit after a few days. It’s usually language barrier and sometimes gameplay inconveniences turn them off. Other than that, one of the biggest struggles we face is high-ping servers. There’ve been plenty of posts on Reddit over the years asking Jagex to create a dedicated Asia server, but nothing has come of it. The best ping we can get is on Australian or US West servers, which sit at around 130–140ms at BEST. It’s not unplayable, but it’s far from ideal—especially for tick-sensitive PvM activities.

I’m not sure what hosting solution Jagex uses or what costs they’re at, but I imagine they see server hosting in Asia as not worth it. Maybe they’ve looked into the demographics and decided we’re too small of a player base to justify it. And honestly, I get that business is business.

Still I think there’s more interest in this game in East Asia than Jagex realizes. Beyond Korea, there are players in Japan, Hong Kong, and other parts of the region who’d benefit from an Asia server. I’ve personally came across a lot of US soldiers based in Japan as well. I know it’s a long shot, and I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon, but it’d be great if Jagex could take a fresh look at the numbers one day. With how server hosting has evolved over the years from “old school” way, maybe they’ll find a way to make it work.

We will continue to build our community, but I just hope Jagex doesn’t overlook us for being a minority. There’s a bigger community here than they might think.

As a Korean OSRS player, wanted to share my experience playing the game from Asia.

It’s no secret that we’re a pretty small minority. Our community, specifically in Korea, has a clan of about ~80 players (~100 if you include our chat and Discord), though not all of us are active. It’s a mix of Koreans, Korean Americans, expats stationed here, and even people just interested in Korea. While it’s nothing fancy, we’ve been slowly building this small community over the years, and it’s been awesome. While we are mostly independent, we would occasionally raid together and a good number of us has sticked around for years.

That said, we’ve definitely noticed some challenges. For new players, We’ve had a good number of people join our group chat (we mostly use KakaoTalk—it’s like Korea’s version of WhatsApp) to ask questions, only to quit after a few days. It’s usually language barrier and sometimes gameplay inconveniences turn them off. Other than that, one of the biggest struggles we face is high-ping servers. There’ve been plenty of posts on Reddit over the years asking Jagex to create a dedicated Asia server, but nothing has come of it. The best ping we can get is on Australian or US West servers, which sit at around 130–140ms at BEST. It’s not unplayable, but it’s far from ideal—especially for tick-sensitive PvM activities.

I’m not sure what hosting solution Jagex uses or what costs they’re at, but I imagine they see server hosting in Asia as not worth it. Maybe they’ve looked into the demographics and decided we’re too small of a player base to justify it. And honestly, I get that business is business.

Still I think there’s more interest in this game in East Asia than Jagex realizes. Beyond Korea, there are players in Japan, Hong Kong, and other parts of the region who’d benefit from an Asia server. I’ve personally came across a lot of US soldiers based in Japan as well. I know it’s a long shot, and I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon, but it’d be great if Jagex could take a fresh look at the numbers one day. With how server hosting has evolved over the years from “old school” way, maybe they’ll find a way to make it work.

We will continue to build our community, but I just hope Jagex doesn’t overlook us for being a minority. There’s a bigger community here than they might think.