Runescape Dying? [Discussion/Observation]

[Kimberly]

Before the recent success in bot removal, the population was inflated between 20-30% if regular declining populations after bots were broken or the game updated. That's the best guess the community has come up with after looking through those things.

 

I'm not exactly sure how that tidbit was forgotten given how people posted data points almost monthly demonstrating this.

 

Again, I am not saying the decline was entirely bots. That would be asinine. But natural decline along with the removal of bots has been a staggering hit to the amount of subscribers per month.

[Fallstar]

Before the recent success in bot removal, the population was inflated between 20-30% if regular declining populations after bots were broken or the game updated. That's the best guess the community has come up with after looking through those things.

 

I'm not exactly sure how that tidbit was forgotten given how people posted data points almost monthly demonstrating this.

 

Again, I am not saying the decline was entirely bots. That would be asinine. But natural decline along with the removal of bots has been a staggering hit to the amount of subscribers per month.

 

The best way of comparing it is from now to the October 2011 botnuke, which was briefly successful in eliminating over 98% of bots - a higher % than botwatch has managed as of yet. The player count on the live game was consistently between 60-80k at that time, and there was the same doomsayers when those figures were reached. (Less than 100k people online at 2100-0300 GMT????? Omfg its over) Now we're lucky to reach half that number on the live game at peak time.

 

With a bot nuke that is less successful than those few days were, (i.e. a higher % of bots) we're at about half the population that we were then.

 

That represents a very significant decline in the number of actual players.

[God Of Lego]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/45154/Jagex-set-for-new-round-of-layoffs

 

Hot dayum. Told you they'll start laying off people.

[Riptide Mage]

http://www.develop-o...ound-of-layoffs

 

Hot dayum. Told you they'll start laying off people.

 

That article says they are laying off customer support people because they are outsourcing.

[God Of Lego]

http://www.develop-o...ound-of-layoffs

 

Hot dayum. Told you they'll start laying off people.

 

That article says they are laying off customer support people because they are outsourcing.

 

Last month Jagex laid off ten employees working on what it called new and experimental projects, which it felt did not warrant further investment.

 

Prior to that, the Cambridge-based developer had cut 13 staff from its Transformers Universe development team.

 

Also the outsourcing is the 3 youtubers that got J-mod status. They dont even get paid right?

 

They also laid off Drebin, Sabre and Phoenix

 

Point is, they are starting to lay off people. With simple excuses as outsourcing. Thats 23 employees that have been laid off. With the potential more to come.

[ilovecuttingyews]

Cutting staff from the Transformers game has nothing to do with Runescape dying. It's natural that they downsize their staff as the number of players lowers. They have what, like 400 employees? Reducing 5% is hardly a sign of death.

[God Of Lego]

Cutting staff from the Transformers game has nothing to do with Runescape dying. It's natural that they downsize their staff as the number of players lowers. They have what, like 400 employees? Reducing 5% is hardly a sign of death.

 

Its a start. They'll beat around the bush as much as they can untill it hits RuneScape directly. And that were only the 13 staff from Transformers. The rest is RuneScape based.

[Peever]

How is it a surprise? When there was alot more members (bots included) it made sense to have more staff..... Population lowered, less subsciptions so lay offs are bound to happen. Though the article says no redundancies have happened as of yet....so that is to imply its just temporary lay offs... Its cheaper to lay say 20 people off and leave a room or 2 empty of people so minimal eletrical use etc

[Sy_Accursed]

I don't really see the relevance of those staff cuts listed to Runescape.

1) Out sourcing customer support, pretty standard move these days to improve profit margins

2) Cutting staff from Transformers different game with a different budget. If that's going wrong it's not really Runescape's fault.

3) Cutting staff from 'experimental' projects nothing really all that new here, Jagex has often done a number of experimental projects that just ended up failing (stellar dawn, funorb etc.)

 

Trying to claim this as a sign of Runescape dying is like saying a national superstore chain laying off staff in a tiny store in the backend of nowhere that wasn't being profitable is a sign the whole company is tanking. Or that they are tanking by 'outsourcing' the checkout system via self-service.

[Guest Smelly Paws]

Cutting staff from the Transformers game has nothing to do with Runescape dying. It's natural that they downsize their staff as the number of players lowers. They have what, like 400 employees? Reducing 5% is hardly a sign of death.

 

Its a start. They'll beat around the bush as much as they can untill it hits RuneScape directly. And that were only the 13 staff from Transformers. The rest is RuneScape based.

 

According to same article "Last week Jagex claimed that it had had its most successful year to date, and saw turnover rise above £50 million for the first time in the studio’s history.". So it's unlikely that RS is 'dying'. It is also natural for many companies to outsource these days to cut costs. Not nice if you're on the recieving end of it but that's life.

[God Of Lego]

The cutting is likely to keep up profits. Yeah last year was profitable. Because the Micropayments. That hype has died down alot since then with the introduction of eoc and drop of players. This will mean less money per player. So this year they are much worse off than they were last year in terms of profits.

 

The more the playerbase goes down the more staff they cut. As soon as they cut staff to a point where it hits dirrectly into the development teams thats when it will have an effect on RuneScape. Causing delays. Less updates. Lack of major updates. Slowly but surely. Then ontop of that is the people that are not satified with the updates coming out. Meaning even more loss. It'll go in a cycle.

 

Its the start. It doesn't mean runescapes dead. But it definitely means its a start of a slow death. Death of a game is not all about profits. The company will be fine and end with millions in their pockets. But players left will be lucky to even have servers up with no updates.

 

Please dont act like this is all happening tomorrow. It'll stretch out over a few years. But eventually it will speed up.

 

You all also need to remember. RuneScapes Jagex's main income. They cut things like transformers to avoid cutting RuneScapes developers. They are just beating around the bush.

[Tres]

this image not too old i could guess that max 2 years back when worlds was packed

 

[highlanders]

Is RS dying? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is I'm not playing anymore. I stopped around EoC, I didn't like spamming skills. The solomon store also annoyed me, if the items had been tradable for gp I might not have minded so much, that way you could have gotten things through normal playing. I logged in briefly to check out this "Runescape 3" hype. There is no RS3, all I see is RS2 with slightly different graphics, all hype if I ever saw it. Maybe the engine behind the game is better or something, doesn't change much to me. Back in RS1 when RS2 was being made, we didn't get any updates for like a year. When RS2 came out, it was a new game, truly a 2.0. This is not the case here. From comments divination doesn't sound that interesting. Obviously I'm interested enough in the game to come here and check up on things, but for now I see no reason to return.

[Kaida23]

this image not too old i could guess that max 2 years back when worlds was packed

 

 

That's from before the Bot Nuke, so it's at least two years old (you can tell because W1 is still F2P). If it is from 2011, then that's at the height of the bot problem. Those numbers dropped dramatically after the Nuke. I don't think even Jagex realized just how bad the bot problem was and how much of an impact it had on the number of actual players.

[V O R K]

Is RS dying? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is I'm not playing anymore. I stopped around EoC, I didn't like spamming skills. The solomon store also annoyed me, if the items had been tradable for gp I might not have minded so much, that way you could have gotten things through normal playing. I logged in briefly to check out this "Runescape 3" hype. There is no RS3, all I see is RS2 with slightly different graphics, all hype if I ever saw it. Maybe the engine behind the game is better or something, doesn't change much to me. Back in RS1 when RS2 was being made, we didn't get any updates for like a year. When RS2 came out, it was a new game, truly a 2.0. This is not the case here. From comments divination doesn't sound that interesting. Obviously I'm interested enough in the game to come here and check up on things, but for now I see no reason to return.

 

the painful truth :P

[Sy_Accursed]

In many ways I wonder if 2014-16 will be a turn around for jagex/rs.

Between rs3 and hopefully html5 upping the game as it were plus (assuming it stays like it is now) the non-bot-riddled status will disseminate via word of mouth and do some work on healing the games rep.

 

Cracking tablets could also offer potential for turn around as if people are playing on tablets there's more chance that people will be playing in front of friends or in public which ought to help "word of mouth" growth more than us all sat in your bedrooms/offices squirreling away at the computer with no-one to see 9/10.

[Saradomin_Mage]

In many ways I wonder if 2014-16 will be a turn around for jagex/rs.

I'm pretty sure we thought this last year for 2013 :P

 

But yeah, there are more compelling reasons that would make the next few years look more positive. These last few just seem to have been spent building up infrastructure like EOC/HTML5/NIS, hopefully next year's projects aren't of this type.

[Guest Smelly Paws]

In many ways I wonder if 2014-16 will be a turn around for jagex/rs.

Between rs3 and hopefully html5 upping the game as it were plus (assuming it stays like it is now) the non-bot-riddled status will disseminate via word of mouth and do some work on healing the games rep.

 

Cracking tablets could also offer potential for turn around as if people are playing on tablets there's more chance that people will be playing in front of friends or in public which ought to help "word of mouth" growth more than us all sat in your bedrooms/offices squirreling away at the computer with no-one to see 9/10.

 

I just wish they'd stop updating the game to be honest or at least slow down a little. I preferred it when the updates where a little more sporadic.

[Sy_Accursed]

When exactly were these sporadic updates supposed to be happening?

 

We've had near weekly updates for like 90% of the time rs has existed, about the only prolonged period without them was in 01 just after launch when it was still basically andrew paul and ted and not a formal company with extra employees to help out.

[Peever]

At least into 2003 there was not weekly updates that I can remember. I think they need to slow down as well though..... Instead of pumping out new content work on what is already in the game....rework skills.....change mini games etc.

[Sy_Accursed]

The thing is though they haven't exactly been 'pumping out' new content. As well as the weekly patch notes we've had 2 or 3 weeks dedicated solely to fixes in the past 2 years. Not to mention numerous reworks of older content that has become dated like the eoc and quest remakes.

 

Plus they have actively mentioned desires to rework agility summoning smithing and mining, plus we know of a construction rework due later this year. And they have expressed awareness of most minigames needing some TLC, just a matter of prioritising them.

 

I just don't see the need for them to 'slow down' to work on existing content, they are already managing to give us a good mixture of new content and upgrades to older content; plus the frequent update schedule is what keeps the game fresh and exciting for many players, you only have to look at the amount of people complaining of being bored on non-update weeks or weeks that don't apply to them to see an idea of the damage to play figures extended periods of non-update would bring.

 

I could see the benefits of rebalancing the ratio of reworking to new content in favour of rework for a year or 2, but I don't see the need to slow down.

[Kaida23]

I'd just be happy if they could update stuff without breaking it. The last NIS update made things worse than they were before. It's been a week and the problems (that didn't exist before the update) still haven't been fixed.

[God Of Lego]

I want Mod Mark replaced. I dont like his game plan. But thats just me. (and probably a good few others)

[ilovecuttingyews]

I actually like the direction of the game atm. Getting the gods involved in our day to day lives could make for very interesting lore / quests / lols. As well, the HTML5 and EOC updates are an effort to modernize the game which I've been advocating for for years. I realize not everyone likes change as much as I do, but that's just my opinion.

[Guest Smelly Paws]

When exactly were these sporadic updates supposed to be happening?

 

We've had near weekly updates for like 90% of the time rs has existed, about the only prolonged period without them was in 01 just after launch when it was still basically andrew paul and ted and not a formal company with extra employees to help out.

 

I think you've jumped to the wrong conclusions here. I'm talking over the last few years. Even without EOC the game has changed for me beyond all recognition. I don't hammer the game for hours every day as I simply don't have the time, nor the inclination, so the changes are more visible every time I log in. I agree with Peever here, I would rather they slowed down a little.