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I've been thinking about this for a while but I've never seen it discussed here or elsewhere.

I'm curious if Jagex has ever considered removing the difference between Free & Members worlds, making ALL players allowed on ALL worlds (aside from VIP worlds). Obviously free players would still have the same boundaries/restrictions of a free world, but they would be able to see and interact with members and vice versa. I think this would be healthy for the game in many ways, especially with the release of mobile approaching.

Over the years as the population has declined from what it once was, we've seen what playerbase we do have get spread thin across a plethora of worlds. Many of which have >200 players on them throughout majority of the day. If we cut out all of the f2p only worlds (and potentially a few members worlds) the game would feel significantly more alive especially in the low-mid level areas. Not only would it make the game better but it'd also have the side effect of advertising to free players and giving more of an incentive to pay for membership as they would be constantly seeing the benefits mems has to offer.

Imagine if you're a new player killing cows and in Lumbridge you see some level 138 come up and ZGS spec right in front of you or you see someone surge/bladed dive across the GE. These things would give you a better idea of what's possible and something to strive for.

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over 5 years ago - /u/JagexPips - Direct link

Yes we have, it’s actually one of those ideas that resurfaces every year or so. We’d quite like to do it eventually. As others have mentioned in this thread, it’s a huge project which would probably either need massive code refractors or completely redefining the terms of f2p vs mems (or both!).

We’ve got some big structural projects that are more beneficial to happen first before we’d get serious about a ‘free/mems merge’ as we tend to call it, higher priority projects like mobile, bank rework and getting NXT to a place we can deprecate the java client.

One day, maybe?! Would be interesting to know the communities ideal for HOW such a world sharing would work best for you and what changes (simplifications ideally) could happen of free/mems differences.