Yoko Kurama

Particularly well after the fact several weeks into it, when many people had already spent hours gathering tears in anticipation of switching.

Despite this event's faults, at least it was in the summer where people theoretically have time. In November with school and no holidays, I can't imagine people being able to spend that sort of time (that was required for this event) as a sustained effort for 10 weeks. Particularly a few hours a day. So I agree with you there. Tribute to Guthix was generous in its experience and they can't do that all the time. But a nice fun event like that seems the way to go. A few hours a day is a bit much. Even the Gelinor Games were done extremely well. Lots of experience (perhaps too much), and a decent time commitment (not too much) for cosmetic rewards and what not. I think they should use those events as models for future events of this sort.

Wasn't it supposed to be a meaningful choice that would have meaningfully lasting impact? I think it's somewhat early to judge (we should wait until it's over), but I don't see anything earthshaking thus far.

I agree completely. I am in for the rewards, and simply that. And not even all of them. I have debated at various times not doing it at all (many people I know haven't touched it). It's funny that even supposedly 'monumental' events and supposedly fun minigames which are supposed to be joyful distractions are grindsome like skills. To be honest, it's really just a poor excuse for what should have been another big quest over the summer to follow TWW. It plays off the whole "It's the Sixth Age" theme without actually doing much. A bunch of enticing cosmetic rewards, and one of the factions get a temple or something? Not exactly earthshaking. It doesn't even have particularly cool monsters or boss monsters, it's just a bunch of pesky but easily killed monsters that you grind at. I do hope we get a new sequel soon, I would much rather see them go into that direction than spend effort on these sorts of things. I feel like it will be years before we will get another ROTM or WGS level quest. TWW was fantastic but far too short. There's apparently another world event planned this year, is that true?

I don't fully understand what's happened, but it seems like a waste of time on their part meant only to annoy people. They should have known that if they have two factions with different armours/emotes, then many people will want to grab both sets/emotes, and thus will plan to switch sides/stock up. This is normal and harmless. Why [bleep] with them for no reason? Either that, or it was unintended, in which case it should be fixed. I wasn't personally affected by this, but I imagine others are.

So you need 1 tier 10 ring? I have never gotten a tier 10 ring despite my love of dungeoneering because the tier 10 are so expensive for such a minor increase. I have some 4 million spare tokens, so I guess I could do it.

Is that before or after he gets invited to a party for hitting 5.2b experience, only to ruin it at the proverbial last minute by some random act of cursing at the very people who invited him? What? Too soon? I am kidding of course, I am just terrible, aren't I? :P

I did my Super Challenge in the Battle of Lumbridge, it's super easy and super safe.

One hour to first Super Challenge. Is anyone else excited? This is my kind of update: a small daily distraction with some decent rewards.

It's a hypothesis or conjecture, if you will. The sorts of excessive update I am referring to are aimed at hardcore players, who are going to be around in one form of another. There isn't really any need in focusing so much attention on them that they get things like Trimmed Capes with ridiculous requirements of 5k games. If they were to do nothing, it would not make a dent in their bottom line, as the hardcore players would stay. If they wanted to do something, they could expend that effort on lower levels in order to attract more players to the game or more f2p players subscribing. I agree that the nature of MMORPGs is sort of geared to this, inherently. I have acknowledged this before. However, even within that framework there are differences, and things that Jagex can do to maintain their profit and act responsibly at the same time. Just take the example of the 5K Castle Wars games again. What was the point of that? The people that were targeted were hardcore players who were subscribed long before than and are probably still player. Did it increase Jagex's profit? Nope. Did it gain them any significant amount of new members? Doubtful. Those people were paying 7$ dollars (or whatever p2p is now) before and after. All it did was suddenly compel a lot of people to frantically play for 5,000 games (something no more than a handful of people, had attempted to do prior to the requirement of a prestigious item requiring it). What this shows is that incentives matter. Not many people, I can assure you of this (I know various people who trimmed capes, and I have been part of various elite clans who have such people), even thought of going for 5K Castle Wars games before 2011 (when the capes were released), but suddenly, there were several going for it afterwards. What changed? The incentives, obviously. What I am arguing is that such incentives are completely unethical and probably not even profitable. Runescape has plenty of grind, things like 5K castle wars games or races is completely uncalled for. All I am suggesting is that Jagex be mindful of the incentives they are setting up especially when it doesn't hurt their bottom line. From my understanding, everyone who completes all 30 challenges will receive the outfit, but the titles will only be given to those who are under the 1k ranks. If this is correct, then this will be just another quasi-trimmed cape, it will probably inspire various people to compete for that obsessively. Well, that's more of a general point that I was trying to make. The major responsibility of any corporation is to increase profits for its shareholders. In a structural sense, my point holds. In specific matters however, they can sometimes act in an way resembling enlightened self-interest: that's where they still pursue profit but it's beneficial for all of us.

What about the player base, is it as strong as ever?

Well some people do seem to be denying that the RS has suffered a severe decline and they also seem hesitant to acknowledge that it is in a period of decline. They seem to be suggesting, "well, it's not really that bad", or "well, it was probably mostly bots anyways." As for this trend being turning around, sure, that'd be a nice thing. ---------- On a related note, how is WoW doing these days, in terms of members, subscriptions and micro-transactions?

Probably the sort of people who haven't the faintest of clue what hypocrisy actually entails and would rather use it as a buzzword. There is a difference between the game and the current regime. There is absolutely no hypocrisy at all in trying to change an institution while working from within. It would only be hypocritical if I had ever stated that people should quit the game, while playing it myself, but I have done no such thing. There are certain things I like, and others which I dislike. Neither aspect dilutes the other: there are things which I rather like about Jagex and others which I don't. A complete straw man. I have never presented any normative statements of mine as fact. I have my subjective opinions on the game and the company, and I often present them here, and I am willing to argue for my positions and defend them. That's not the same thing as portraying them to be fact. And I have never claimed something as vulgar as "Jagex brainwashes people". You seem to be desperately trying to grasp at fictitious straws in order to score points against me ("You're a hypocrite! You act as if your opinion is fact!")

They can still make the same money if not more by not doing this. The players that this is targetted at are the hardcore base, and they are going to be playing RS no matter what happens. The only question is "how long per day, or how, will they play?". If there's a race like this, they might play 18-22 hours per day as they did during Divination. If there isn't, then they probably won't play that long for no reason. They will still be paying members, they simply won't be playing obsessively. This isn't even necessary for profits, it's just shortsighted recklessness. So, no, it won't be hurting the bottom line. And I fully realize that people in the 'bottom line business' are not concerned about compassion or mercy. I was simply sarcastically making this point clear for others who still labor under that delusion and think that Jagex acts responsibly.

I completely forgot this bit from the BTS: Great. Now we can have thousands of more players incentivized to toil away like zombies to get under the 1k ranks, as if this sort of self-destructive competition wasn't rampant enough already. During a school month, at that. And of course people will still be yelling from the top of the lungs that Jagex has nothing to do with this sort of obsessive behavior on the part of players. Is Jagex not compassionate and merciful? Cretins.

Another thing to consider is that perhaps they should redo the concept of dragon items? Currently it makes little sense for them to be obtained through various GM quests/tough monsters (QBD/TDs) when they're weak level 60 items. This causes them to have prices that are too expensive for the people that need them, and it's useless for people who can afford them. Before EoC it kind of made sense, because of the special attack system, so dragon items still had some use. Now it seems redundant. Either increase their level, or just release them all through shops, or perhaps through medium quests, rather than GM quests. For example, I could have easily shelled out 30M for dragon plates back in the day, and the kites, and I will be easily able to afford the dragon warhammers. But I won't, because they're useless to me, and I don't really care for them aesthetically (I have neater looking cool outfits). So I am not going to buy them. People who have 60 defense/attack and who could actually use these warhammers (they will probably be worth a decent sum for a while) won't be able to do buy them.

On the surface that looks horrible, but I don't think the number of actually *players* has fallen that much. 1) fewer bots and gold farmers 2) fewer people with multiple accounts (i.e. pures) Will I hazard a guess the true decline in subscribing players, no. But I will say it's less than the gross numbers seem to indicate. Though with out argument it is a major decline in revenue from subscriptions even with the price increase. The decline is so large that I seriously doubt that all of that decline, or even most of it, can be accounted by simply pointing to bots. Not all of that decline is players, either, of course. But it does seem clear from various factors (the emptiness of people in worlds, at spots, etc.) that there has been a substantial decrease in the human population.

The number that I had stuck in my head about the amount of players at Runescape's peak was 1 million active subscribes and 9-10 million free players. I thought it was a suspect number but after googling some stuff, I have found some sites verifying it: RuneScape hits 1 million subscribers, including free members 10 million players total. That's a news story from 2007. Perhaps that will clarify for some of you the decline that RS has experienced and make you appreciate the seriousness of it. This is no small matter. As I have said before, RS is not dying, but it has suffered a very severe decline.

I am inclined to agree that the quality of high-level updates has dramatically improved since January 2011, when Free Trade and Nex were released. Since then, we have received high-level updates at a level and scope that was never there before. However despite this the player base has fallen. That's odd isn't it? That the player base is shrinking while high-level content (which was lacking in the past) is increasing. It's because new players do not seem to think climbing the grind-ladder is worth it. Meaning there is something wrong with the structure of the game and how incentives are set up. That's telling. I don't think it is a dying game (it is not yet terminal -- and I have acknowledged this rather explicitly in the thread asking if RS is dying), but it is a game in severe decline in certain respects (player base). That's never really an excuse, but putting that aside, their business model is failing. They're profitable, sure, but their player base is shrinking and is a mere fraction of what it used to be. This is because people no longer have time for nonsense where leisurely games feel like work, with little reward. New players are not being recruited as fast as they used to be in the past, and f2p has suffered a stark decline. It's simply not marketable. RS is losing to other games, and its losing fast. That's been a well known fact for a very long-time. Nothing new. Jagex do not look like they are stopping with content updates for a while anyway, which is the only thing dedicated players should fear. I don't understand what you're trying to say, besides re-iterating what everyone has known for years. I never claimed to be making a completely novel point. That, by no means, diminishes its importance. Still my point is rather recent, the trend of a declining player base is a recent trend, not an old one. Furthermore, a declining player base is a bad thing, for everyone. Including older players. It means that as times goes on, Jagex, as all businesses in such a situation must do, will need to execute more accounting tricks: extracting the same level of profit (if not more) from a smaller base that they previously extracted from a larger player base. To an extent, we have already seen that, that's what SOF and SGS is for: getting more money out of a diminishing player base, increase the avenues for revenues. I don't see how anyone can write this off. It's worrying trend when the game's membership is not growing as fast as it used to. A game cannot simply survive with a dedicated old hardcore base, it needs new blood here and there, as the old blood will eventually dry up. It's not just a matter of whether they're putting out updates, we're talking about the economics of the game. That affects us all, and I imagine even Jagex isn't too happy with that.

That's never really an excuse, but putting that aside, their business model is failing. They're profitable, sure, but their player base is shrinking and is a mere fraction of what it used to be. This is because people no longer have time for nonsense where leisurely games feel like work, with little reward. New players are not being recruited as fast as they used to be in the past, and f2p has suffered a stark decline. It's simply not marketable. RS is losing to other games, and its losing fast.

I concur on Vorago, it's already rather difficult, it should either be left alone or made somewhat easier. This is causing a rift between the combat triangle, with T90 melee being incredibly easy to get, whereas T90 mage stuff being as valuable as a Party Hat. Sort of ridiculous. I like the OVL timer. However, I do wish it would go back to being 5 minutes per dose rather 1 death. it really sucks for PVP minigame areas where you have to resip cause you keep getting piled. I am excited for the quest, however I do hope that it is a real GM quest, unlike the last few which, despite being fun quality wise, have been not been up to the magnificent standard for all GM quests that WGS and ROTM set. I was really hoping for a Zaros/Mahjarrat/TWW sequel quest, though.

I am doubtful that is the real list. Most of that list wouldn't even qualify as a normal challenge must less a 'super' challenge.

That outfit does look nifty.

Now it would be nice if they make them easier to click on! Sometimes I go crazy when it moves around like mad and I missclick 20 times. :mad:. Making them slightly bigger or less fast would do the trick.

Supposedly prices aren't changing for loyalty items. If so, great.