Co-op, Crossplay & Dedicated Servers

Two caps, and the difference catches people out constantly.

A player-hosted world holds four players, the host included, and only runs while the host is in it. A dedicated server holds six and runs whether anyone is online or not.

Crossplay arrived with 1.0 and is a per-session choice: you enable it when you load a world, and people join with invite codes. Mixing PC and console players does not raise the cap on its own. Four is four.

Running your own server, the numbers that matter are 2 GB of RAM plus 1 GB per player, which is Jagex's own sizing and works out at 8 GB for a full six. It needs a 64-bit Windows or Linux host and port 7777 open by default, and the owner has to enter their Player ID before it will start.

Three things that bite:

• Client and server versions must match or the server is simply invisible, which is why a patch day means restarting it.
• Searching by server name does not work. You search by world name, and it is case sensitive.
• Configuration changed while the server is running is lost on restart. Stop it first.