The merits of "a few minutes faster at most" is much more significant than it's being given credit for. If a strategy is consistently faster by even a minute, that's the strategy that gets used by speedrunners because it makes a consistent difference in time and time is measured less than 2 minutes when discussing world record competition. If the idea is competing, which is the whole point of putting it on this site, then those minutes really matter.

The reason this matters so much to me, and a concern TheDarkestUno expressed, is hardware. Multi-logging changes the hardware requirements to successfully run the game. I haven't submitted a run because I'm trying to find a solution that allows me to record my gameplay on the hardware I've got, but it is possible. If multi-logging is the winning strategy, then I'm not in the competition at all because two clients actively running and trying to record is fairly impossible, at least with any kind of speed to speak of. This kind of hardware restriction consistently discourages people from running games or recording their runs, especially on PC games.

We also have a consideration in that this IS an MMO. It's online. Some parts of the world(looking at parts of Australia and the midwest U.S.) barely have internet that is fast enough to run this game. Multi-logging would kill many of these connections, or slow them down to a point where the game becomes un-runnable. Not un-runnable in the case of disconnects ruining a run, but consistently impossible to achieve for what is available to them.

I'm more worried that people potentially interested in running won't bother, because they'll never be able to compete. Either due to their computer's hardware, or due to the internet connections where they live.

Unfortunately this is an issue in other communities as well. Most games run faster on PC if the version is available unless there are console exclusive skips to save time.If multilogging is limited to the degree I mentioned earlier there shouldn't be too many issues, especially if OSRS mobile is implemented, then you can just multilog on another account from there. Also as far as Count Draynor blocking goes you would technically be able to have a friend do that for you because all it really is is an account standing still. With there being no interaction I don't see how this could impose anything, but I understand why people would be against this concept. If hardware or internet connection is impeding your run on two accounts, then it most likely would also impede your run on a solo account. At least for WR contention. OSRS is a pretty low CPU usage PC game, especially if being ran on the official client. I'd be suprised if this would be a widespread issue, especially since this is the first time it has come up in this discussion. The meta of the current game is still pretty alt centric, so I think not permitting multilogging doesn't make sense since in RS it is commonplace.

It's not the first time it's been brought up, actually. Metruption brought it up in the first discussion about this last year, TheDarkestUno quoted him on the first page, and I seconded the point then. I run just fine on one account, adding recording software(and a split timer, but that's a separate issue that you windows PC users don't suffer from) slows things down quite a bit, but it's still doable, and barring anything ridiculous like walking into the GE at peak time should allow for a competitive run so long as you know the route as well as you should to be running competitively. So the difference between one client and two IS fairly significant if your hardware is struggling.

I can understand reasonable expectancy there, but with bandwidth the issue is much more prevalent and not something that those people can help, adjust, or fix.

How would you record your mobile client? I'm excited for mobile and can't wait for it to release, but running separately on that would be......unverifiable? As far as I'm aware. Not that it would be a problem in the way you're mentioning, but it could easily be a problem in the future with new strats and glitches/features that may arise.

At this point, I'm interested in keeping running this game as feasible as possible for new runners. I feel like multi-logging strats are more likely to drive low-spec users away, and setting them up as different categories, or at least with a different tag(I believe this is the current setup?) so there is at least non-multi-log competition still.

How bad are your specs that you're worried about a low CPU low bandwidth usage game on 2 accounts?

I shouldn't be worried about it to be honest, except that I'm running linux on a chromebook and resources for linux are rough as it is, setting aside the fact that I'm using a chromebook. It's an issue I'm addressing, I'm just having to figure out the issues on my own(help for these topics are either years old or answered with "Don't run linux")

The bandwidth isn't a problem for me, that's more a consideration of people in the U.S. that aren't necessarily in major cities or anywhere near a provider's decent range, and for people in Austrailia who, even after Jagex's servers are fixed, still typically have garbage quality internet.

Based on the discussion that has run over to the discord I would say keeping the current speedrun.com system is agreeable to everyone.

We just really need to make a list of what strats are considered multilogging.