RuneScape: Guide to World-Hopping

In these aggravating predicaments, the best option is to use a process called world-hopping. World-hopping is when a player decides to “hop”, or switch, to another world with the desire that it will better suit his/her needs, such as being less crowded or with newly spawned resources.

Now, most players think world-hopping is an easy no-brainer. Well, the truth is that most players are, put bluntly, wrong. The majority of world-hoppers believe that the best method is simply to go to the server list and select the world with the lowest population. This could not be further from the truth, for while it seems perfectly logical that a world with very little people should be very uncrowded, this is almost never the case.

Most of the time, the most favorable worlds are the middle-high population ones. As difficult as it may be to wrap your mind around this theory, it nearly always works. This is because the belief stated earlier, that you should choose the server with the least amount of players, is so religiously followed by such a vast majority of players. Due to this false belief, all the skillers and farmers will flock to these small worlds, thereby creating what I call “trap worlds”. These trap worlds are nice to look at, seemingly peaceful, open worlds with only 200 or so players. However, these looks are certainly deceiving. Upon entry to one of these worlds, one would find that their area of choice, such as a certain group of yew trees, a fishing spot, or a coal mine is completely congested!

How can this be? Well, when so many players flock to these little worlds, it creates a population composed almost entirely of farmers. No, these farmers are not players training their farming skill, but are anyone gathering or killing the same thing repeatedly in an attempt to get mass quantities of items or experience points. This causes popular farming locations to overflow with farmers while the rest of the worlds are composed mainly of players questing or attempting other alternatives to farming. My experience has led me to the realization that these worlds with a higher population are ripe for the picking, with trees, ore, and monsters as far as the eye (or video card, in this case) can see.

Those of you that are not skillers can also benefit from this by flipping the rule. For example, if all you want to do is to be able to kill that coveted quest creature unhindered and without competition, going to a low population world is a great choice, as there will hardly ever be players who are questing.

Another useful, lesser-known fact is that the time it takes for something to respawn is based on the population of the current world. So if you have a choice between a world of 400 players with five cutting yews and a world of 2000 players with 10 cutting yews, the latter will be preferable due to a much, much faster tree respawn rate. So next time you are in a keyboard-slamming situation, remember that worlds with more players are usually less crowded in skilling areas, and have higher respawn rates! The funny thing about this is that if enough people read this and begin to change their strategies, the previously crowded worlds will become free, and the information stated in this article will be flipped.

Ironic? Yes, very.

Hopefully you have found this article both enjoyable and informative to read. Please comment on it, as this is the first article I have ever submitted on the internet or anywhere else, and I am completely open to criticism and suggestions. Thanks for your time!