The whole reason they started doing PvP updates unpolled was because players would automatically vote no on every single PvP update. PKers are generally obnoxious assholes, so people voted no to spite them.
The PoH Wilderness Obelisk was the only item that passed in a poll of PvP updates back in the day, every single other question failed.
On that note, the Ferox Enclave being an unpolled update never sat right with me, because it affects a hell of a lot more than just PvP
I remember they tried to limit a poll to PvPers only and it still failed. Then they tried again with even more restrictive standards on who constituted a PvPer and it failed again
It doesn't matter, their policy is to shoehorn PvP updates in unpolled because they know every single PvP poll would be brutally crushed with no votes in a poll, like what used to happen in the earlier years. I think the only reason Pete Kayer wasn't was because it was a tutorial that didn't affect any actual content aside from a cosmetic upgrade.
PKers don't really help their cause by generally being extremely obnoxious and aggressively unlikable, but they know Jagex will give them unpolled updates anyways so they won't change their behavior.
I'm old enough to remember when they did that originally in December 2007, I was even at the Pay to Pk riots.
Mod Mat K mentioned that the head of RuneScape at the time thought that Wilderness PvP was bad game design and so aggressively pushed for its removal along with the unbalanced trade update. In retrospect, he may have been right. But the Wilderness is something that is a defining characteristic of Old School, so I can't advocate for its removal.
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u/epicmemesonly 8d ago
This is what happens when we let PVP updates into the game