Thread: Any Recommendations For Small (1-4 players) Server?

Hello all,

Recently, a friend of mine has gained an interest in playing RuneScape, but he doesn't have the time to justify paying for a subscription to the game because he is active in his local community and is serving in the military. I had heard about private servers in the past, but it seems like the vast majority of them have put significant effort into standing out from the crowd by adding things like accelerated exp. rates(or even instant 99s), custom events, global PvP, etc. Additionally, we would be at the mercy of the server's owners' decisions. For this reason, we opted to create our own private server for just us and potentially a couple of friends(less than five others). I'm relatively new to the community and know very little about the process involved with working on a RuneScape server. I should add that I am not concerned about any prerequisite programming ability(I am a full-time developer by trade and work in Java and another proprietary Java-based language).

So, with that said, I'm not quite sure what the best approach is and what is recommended. I downloaded the Nocturne(876 I think?) release and have since gotten it running and have been able to sign in. The first things I've noticed was the lack of quests(I couldn't get any quests to work at all despite a few of them seemingly being included already in the code), the skills interface opened a new window and displayed various teleports to each of the preferred training locations for the skill, lodestones didn't function but all home teleport locations were unlocked by default, and there was a new "tutorial" that allowed you to pick a starting class and gave you loads of gear and items that would be used if you played as if you fit in a class of that description. This was really disappointing since we were hoping for a more "vanilla" experience. From what I seem to understand while reading the forums, it seems as if the server is mostly created by hand and tweaked to get as close to a vanilla(or custom) experience as possible.

We chose Nocturne because it seemed to be the most reputable and most recent version available. It seems as if it may not be the optimal choice. At the end of the day, we want to be able to play on the most vanilla-like server available that also is the most updated version possible. Obviously, this is asking for something that doesn't exist, but are there any suggestions that people have to check out that may be a good server to start with? I'm not concerned about having to do a little work to get things working, but I'd prefer to have the best starting point possible. Additionally, if an 876 release like Nocturne is just not reasonable and something closer to a 742 or even a 718 is better, then what would you suggest? We would by far prefer a more "complete" 718 or 742 over a less "complete" 876 release.

Are there any suggestions on a recommended release to use? Should we stick with Nocturne and just fix the missing functionality? Should we move to an earlier/different release for the sake of saving some time in the long run?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and doubly so for recommending a release!

EDIT: It seems as if the Matrix 718 or 830 release might be a good option as well. Lots of people have put some confidence behind it. Is there any input as to whether it would be recommended to drop Nocturne 876 for Matrix 830? Is there any reason not to?