I think Jagex realized the huge population of people who never went p2p because they were perfectly satisfied with the PK content that existed with the original wilderness. F2p high level pking is ridiculously slow because rune weapons are worthless against full rune and 65+ def. But, by creating pures with low Def and high strength/range/mage the combat pace is a lot faster with f2p weapons. Now with the Bounty Hunter system in place, only the characters in each of the highest bracket are able to successfully PvP without relying on total luck pile jumps. The luckier f2p pures had characters within the high 40 to low 50's range and I'm sure, had some fun while it lasted. But once they got stuck into the medium crater, pking became a lot of boring 0's and "no armor" duels. For the unlucky pures who got stuck out of the low level crater by a couple of levels most likely quit that character. I think that this resulted in people refering back to their mains only to find it extremely boring in f2p. The pures who got stuck out of the low level crater by a few levels might want to train to be able to get into the medium level crater but not only to find the training impossibly boring, their goal was filled with slow paced combat. The only option that would give them a reason to stay active in runescape is to become a member, combined with Jagex's offer of a cheaper subscription, it gives people more motivation to pay to play. What are the activities of runescape that creates a challenge and sparks interest in people? Questing, PvP, Boss Monsters, mini games, etc. When you gimp PvP in f2p what do you end up with? No challenges to keep up player interest. I think its contradictory how Jagex slows down combat and strategy by dumbing it down to 1 v 1 but then tries to make it complicated again by giving people a Pile jump teleport. Frustrating people into p2p must be their new marketing strategy.
