A server blackout is the unexpected crash of a server, typically resulting in all players being logged out for an extended period of time. Those listed on this page are events which affected most, if not all, game servers and may have affected other RuneScape facilities such as the forums and main website.
Server blackouts are generally caused by a technical failure at Jagex and as such players can do nothing but wait until the problem is fixed. In some cases, a rollback is necessary. A rollback is an operation the database in the servers are returned to a previous state. On rare occasions where a rollback is performed, any changes that occurred between the crash and the previous state is lost. This include gained experience, trade transactions, etc.
During a server blackout, worlds on the select screen are listed as having 0 players, rather than being offline or having a specific number. This occurs because when a server is deliberately taken offline, the game screen is changed to reflect this. However on an unexpected crash, the login server simply assumes that nobody is connected to that server.
In the following section, each blackout that have occurred during the history of RuneScape is documented, along the reasons given for the blackout. All times are noted in UTC, unless otherwise stated. (Note that this is one hour behind British Summer Time, or BST, during the summer due to daylight savings.)
The first server blackout of 2007 was a pair of events that happened on 2 and 3 June 2007 in which all RuneScape servers were shut down for several hours. RSC servers remained online however, and received a flood of RS2 players, reaching 1,000 logged-in on both RSC worlds combined.
| “ | We do apologise. We had experienced a slight server outage which had removed all of the players from the game. This was done as a safeguard to ensure that our players did not lose any game data. We will continue to monitor this throughout the night but we suspect that this will be an isolated incident. Thank you for your patience regarding this matter. | ” |
When the servers went back online, players were confused and were unsure about why this happened. Since it was the first blackout many players had encountered, rumours that a hacker manipulated the servers were everywhere. A group of players in World 66 in Falador lied that the Kalphite Queen appeared in Falador and when players stormed into Falador, a group of mages attempted to telegroup players to the Ice Plateau in level 50 Wilderness. Many lower-levelled players who were unaware that the Ice Plateau was located in deep Wilderness accepted the teleother and were killed. This event was a classic example of luring.
The second server blackout of 2007 occurred on 15 July 2007. It caused players to lose what they had done in the past hour thus causing several rants and riots in game, most notably the riot in World 66 in Falador. Jagex moderators stated on the forums that this was due to a Jagex Internet Server Provider (ISP) outage, and that they would take steps to decrease the chance of this occurring in the future, as it was the second blackout within two months.
The third server blackout of 2007 occurred starting at 01:28 UTC and ending at 04:33 on 19 November 2007. It was caused by a hardware failure at Jagex's main hosting facility. For unknown reasons, the router/firewall malfunctioned and stopped forwarding traffic to the internet.
RuneScape 2, including the German beta version, as well as all other aspects of RuneScape which required logging-in such as the forums and account management went offline. The only exception being RuneScape Classic. The Friends List server went down approximately half an hour before the servers blacked out. Shortly after the servers came back on, a riot broke out in World 66. Mod Zach showed up to talk to players.
As with all other riots, players congregated in Falador centre shouting phrases such as, "Shave the whales", "Ice me", "Jagex failed", along with many other phrases from previous riots. The Retribution prayer was also seen during this riot; players would activate the prayer to show their anger with Jagex. The riot continued in the Frozen Waste Plateau.
The first server blackout of 2008 occurred around 18:50 UTC on 17 January 2008. The official forums and other parts of the website went offline. The servers came back on at around 19:05. The cause of this blackout is unknown.
The second server blackout of 2008 occurred only two days after the first blackout of 2008 at about 05:30 UTC on 19 January 2008. All players were logged-off the servers, although the login servers were down for some time before. Website features were also offline, similar to other blackouts that have occurred in the past. This blackout was short-lived, lasting only 30 minutes as the servers came online again at about 06:00 UTC.
The third server blackout of 2008 occurred at about 15:25 UTC on Friday, 13 June 2008 (Friday the 13th). World 119 was the first server to go offline. The login servers went down at 15:25, and at about 15:34, all players were logged-off from the worlds.
During much of the blackout, the website's main page indicated that there were still 347 people playing the game, despite the fact that on the world selection list, all servers were listed as having zero players. This appeared to have been fixed at about 17:00. It was apparent that this was a bug, as there were not actually any players on the servers. The General and Tech Support forums user numbers went up and Jagex moderators (mainly Mod Emilee), forum moderators, and helpful players congregated, helping out the confused players. Rumours began of a second RuneScape 666 (Runescape 666 is when a glitch occurs, allowing many people to attack each other in a non-attack area.), which was of course not true.
This blackout also affected FunOrb, being the first blackout since its launch. Most players were unable to play games, although some were able to login despite the blackout. Website features and the forums were also disabled as a result.
At about 17:00 UTC, the following was announced on the RuneScape main page:
| “ | Telstra, one of our service providers, is currently experiencing technical difficulties. As a result, you will not be able to access the RuneScape game and a number of our website features. We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and we are assured our service provider is working hard to rectify this fault. | ” |
By 17:30, all world servers were back online, with the exception of World 119 being back online a while later after some maintenance work.
The fourth server blackout of 2008 occurred at 13:55 UTC on Tuesday, 1 July 2008. Free servers, especially those which were British, crashed first. This was possibly due to Jagex's headquarters being located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Shortly after, every other server blacked out. Evidence suggests that this blackout resulted from the RuneScape High Detail update, which was introduced only 20 minutes beforehand.
At 14:07 on the same day, the rants forum had 383 active users and peaked at 452 users at 14:14. The number of users fell to 180 at 20:25.
The servers were brought back online at approximately 14:25 the same day. The following was announced on the RuneScape main page:
| “ | Due to the high volume of traffic and the size of today's update, RuneScape has experienced some technical difficulties. This has led to several worlds going offline and issues with the Grand Exchange. We are aware of these problems and they should be fixed shortly. We apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused you.
If you are struggling to download the client, please choose a world from the USA, as they have more bandwidth available. You can always switch to your favourite world once the client has downloaded. |
” |
The fifth server blackout of 2008 occurred after a system update around 14:00 UTC on Thursday, 17 July 2008. The world selection screen showed as all worlds, either members or free-to-play, as being offline. No announcement was made as to what caused this blackout.
Some world servers started to be back online at around 14:13 and the blackout lasted only 13 minutes.
The sixth server blackout of 2008 occurred at on 19:13 UTC on 23 October 2008. The servers were partly back online at 19:22, becoming the shortest blackout ever and eventually were fully running a short while later. This blackout was originally believed to be due to the 2008 Hallowe'en event update, as evidence suggests that this blackout is similar to the blackout that occurred after the RuneScape High Detail update.
The first server blackout of 2009 occurred on 25 February 2009. Many members-only and free-to-play worlds worldwide (Worlds 110, 111, 112, 115, 49, 81, and 50) went offline at around 23:00 UTC, and those worlds which remained logged-out hundreds of players soon after. This blackout was caused by a mass bug which was exploited by players using the Public chat interface.
The second server blackout of 2009 occurred on Tuesday, 17 March 2009, after The Chosen Commander was released. Servers began crashing one-by-one, and completely went offline at around 14:04 UTC.
After losing connection with an offline server, players experienced problems with being unable to log into another server, receiving the message "Your account has not logged out from its last session. Try again in a few minutes." even after 10 minutes or more had elapsed.
Many Jagex Moderators had claimed in the RuneScape forums that the blackout could never last more than 10–30 minutes, but this was not the case as the blackout lasted approximately 50 minutes (14:04–14:54 UTC). Popular servers in America and Canada (including Worlds 1 and 2) remained offline until 16:13.
The third server blackout of 2009 occurred on Sunday, 14 June 2009 at 20:30. A few worlds were reported to go offline. Jagex fixed the blackout 10 minutes later.
The fourth server blackout of 2009 (though technically not a blackout) occurred only two days after the third on Tuesday, 16 June 2009. At about 15:40 UTC, all European servers were shut down, and almost 4 hours later, the European servers were back online.
Around about the time of the blackout, a Jagex Moderator started a new thread on RuneScape Forums.
| “ | Unfortunately, our ISP is experiencing some difficulty with their hardware. Whilst this is investigated, we are shutting down all of our European worlds. Please feel free to use one of our many other worlds to continue with your game play. We apologise for the frustration and inconvenience. | ” |
The fifth server blackout of 2009 occurred on Thursday, 16 July 2009. At 21:16 UTC, Mod Gibson issued an announcement on the RuneScape Tech Support Forum regarding a crash of one of the American servers. Over the next several hours, the problem grew: by 01:06 UTC on Friday, 17 July, 20 American servers (1, 2, 7-9, 21, 22, 26-32, 42, 47, 48, 56, 70, and 100) had gone offline during play, rendering the accounts of players in those worlds inaccessible for over an hour. Some players subsequently reported experiencing a rollback of 15 minutes to an hour while others reported experiencing no such effect. In a press release issued shortly afterwards, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard blamed the interruption on problems with an ISP contracted by Jagex to provide services in the United States:
| “ | We'd like to sincerely apologise for a number of worlds being down last night and this morning. This is due to Navisite, one of our ISPs in Nevada. We are deeply disappointed in the service we have received from Navisite during the course of our relationship, and will not only be seeking damages for this service outage, but will naturally be moving all of our services from Navisite to a better ISP. | ” |
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— Mark Gerhard, Update:Worlds Down
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Service was restored to two servers (1 and 2) later that day, but Jagex took down 19 additional NaviSite-run servers, including 4 serving Canada, due to concerns about reliability:
| “ | We've temporarily taken down some of our game worlds due to ongoing issues with our ISP Navisite. We deeply regret the service outage, and as I mentioned before we are now in the process of moving to a better ISP. ...The following worlds are currently affected: 4-9, 13, 14, 17-22, 26-32, 37, 42, 47, 48, 56, 61, 62, 64-66, 70, 72, 100 and 113-116... | ” |
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— Mod MMG, Update:Worlds still down
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In a later Tech Support Forum post, the Jagex CEO reported that "the problem was caused by the ISP's routers being overloaded. It was not a problem with our own systems, or with us having inadequate bandwidth." Service was eventually restored sometime between 7:37 and 11:37 UTC on 18 July 2009.
The sixth server blackout of 2009 occurred on Tuesday, 28 July 2009 at 17:00 UTC and lasted for around 20 minutes. The server blackout included servers in Sweden, Mexico, India, and many others. Although no official statement was made towards the blackout, there was no warning prior to the blackout and all players on the effected worlds disconnected from RuneScape. Some people involved in the disconnection could not log back into RuneScape as the game was already notifying them of their accounts being online. Service was restored around 2 hours later for all of the affected servers.
The seventh server blackout of 2009 occurred on Thursday, 20 August 2009 at 01:07 UTC and lasted for around 5 minutes. The server blackout included all European servers including the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. No official statement was made towards the blackout yet there was no warning prior to the blackout either and all players on the effected worlds disconnected from RuneScape. Some people involved in the disconnection could not log back onto RuneScape as the game server was notifying them of their accounts being online. This was mainly caused by the person logging onto the server their account had crashed on. Service was restored minutes after the crash.
The eighth blackout of 2009 occurred on Tuesday, 27 October 2009 at approximately 03:30 UTC. At the time of writing, this blackout is currently underway - no definitive server restore time can be stated.
After being disconnected from the server, an "Error connecting to server" message was displayed upon a log-in re attempt, followed by the "Your account has not logged out from its last session" message after further log-in attempts.
This issues seems to be affecting some, but not all, membership accounts.
Edit: This can be fixed by logging in and out on the homepage of Runescape, you can then log in as you normally would.
The Ninth Server Blackout of 2009 occurred 21 December at about 15:32 UTC.
This was discovered on FunOrb, At the end of a tutorial in Kickabout League.
This can be fixed by logging out and logging back in
The first server blackout of 2010 occurred on Friday, 1 January 2010 at approximately 20:30 UTC. This blackout lasted for about 5–10 minutes, and occurred only on World 2. Prior to the blackout there was more lag than usual. Moments after the blackout ended, World 2 could be seen with 1263 players, as opposed to its usual 2000, and the lag was very bad for the first 3 minutes after the blackout.
The second blackout of 2010 occurred on Thursday, 11 January 2010 at approximately 00:58 UTC. This blackout affected worlds: 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159.
There was not much lag when it went offline.
The third blackout of 2010 occurred on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at approximately 00:20 UTC, this blackout affected Canadian worlds 154, 155, and 157, Mexican world 156, and worlds 158 and 159. As of approximately 1:00 UTC, accounts that were logged into the affected worlds are free to log in. If a player was in a clan chat in one of the affected worlds while the blackout was in effect, their name would remain there as 'ghosts' until the player logged into a different world. Due to this blackout, all accounts that had been playing on these worlds at the time had a rollback, anywhere from 5–30 minutes.
This blackout lasted approximately an hour.
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