Take a lesson from RuneScape

Community General Discussion
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As an OG RuneScape player since 2002 I’ve seen every chapter in that game, for the better and the worse. RuneScape was a solid game that kept social interactions alive and the grinding for levels and gear “real”.

And then micro-transactions came along. The first one that came was an “exclusive cosmetic” for buying a 90 day subscription card (a katana) and down the road said cosmetic became available for everyone to purchase; that trend caught on. Fast forward to today. The game has virtually zero player interaction and more effort is being put into the in-game shop than actual in-game content.

You want cool pets? The shop has it.
You want cool overrides? The shop has it.
You want cool player titles? The shop has it.
You want XP tokens? The shop has it.

“Back in my day” players then said Jagex wouldn’t do anything like that… Wrong.

Now over to World of Warcraft. They are following the same trend that Jagex did with RuneScape. Not quite to the extent Jagex has but it’s on the same path. Micro-transactions ruined RuneScape and it will ruin World of Warcraft.

Bizzard gave us a good example with the newest buyable transmog set. It’s subjective to say it looks better than anything obtainable in-game, true, but you can’t tell me they didn’t spend more time designing it than any of the raids sets.

Mounts? Shop mounts have unique emotes. What mounts (loot-able in game) have emotes?

My point is these “in-game shops” are a cancer that spreads and kills video games.

Blizzard makes enough money just based off subscriptions alone that an in-game shop is just extra company greed.

Mark my words. Soon the shop will not only offer cosmetics but actual tier grade gear.

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It already does if you understand the transitive property :wink:

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It doesn’t seem like it’s killing FF14.

Your words have been marked…so we can remember your slippery slope argument that turned out to be wrong.

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Unless they release the information themselves or someone here worked on said sets, none of us will know the time spent on anything.

I will say, there’s 12 tier sets, each with 6 different tints, and two different versions… vs. the one ugly store set.

Runescape died before they even offered microtransactions.

People have said this since WotLK. Hasn’t happened yet.

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i agree with most of what you said - but runescape is far from “dead” my friend…

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That’s true. When it comes to video games, dead should always be in quotations, unless the servers actually shut down.

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Going to disagree with that one, the titles are extra lame. PvM titles like silver and gold telos are where it’s at, or minigame/bounty titles

The biggest killer in the shop for rs3 was the keys and chests and predatory gambling it enabled
Basically you were made to feel bad if you did double exp weekend without spending a few 100$s on keys for rainbow or lava lamp promos

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Osrs is fine, rs3 is definitely not. I pretty much knew everyone in the nex and telos community just because there were so few people left lol

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This. A game will be dead to me when I’ll never be able to log into it anymore. Club Penguin is an example of a dead MMO. If I can still log in and have fun, the game is going well enough!

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And it was only recently did they start adding complete transmog set into the shop.

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RuneScape is still very successful, to this day.
So where did the company go wrong?

The cash store probably made them way more money than they’d have ever made otherwise.

I disagree with cash stores. But taking a very successful game and saying “don’t be like this” is silly.
It’s like telling D4 not to be like POE.

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RS3 is a wasteland.

RuneScape is successful, sure, but it’s not because they are running RS3 with a clean conciseness. They have gotten so greedy that they have been investigated by their government in regard to their micro-transactions. It’s unreal. Tell my why the payer base for Old School RuneScape is higher than RS3. No micro-transactions or least very very little.

The company went wrong in 2 ways.

  1. Every skill has an AFK method. You click and can walk away without even paying attention to the screen. Whereas it used to be 1 click = 1 action.
  2. Micro-transactions. Why grind hours and hours when you can buy xp and cut the time to max substantially?

Corporate greed.

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The cash store made them more money. Yes. But it also drove players away by the thousands.

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I remember a day when they fishing guild was so packed! They game would lag and you could never read your text because there was hundreds of people talking all at once lol.

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oh sorry yeah that’s what i meant - osrs. i watch a couple streamers play it, and it’s got a pretty sizeable community

i think they have a better seasonal model there than SoM personally

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hard pass.

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You don’t actually know this for a fact.

Like EVERY game out there, people eventually grow tired of playing it and move on, REGARDLESS of what kind of content is available.

With subscriptions declining, Blizzard had to find new revenue sources. And before some know-it-all rushes in and says “subscriptions wouldn’t drop if they made content ‘fun’”, go back and re-read the preceding paragraph.

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If we have to live with the WoW token in order to have high quality expansions, I’d take it

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The only thing I really think of when I see RuneScape is calling it Run Escape.

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People have been saying that since those transmog crowns were added.

That was 9 years ago.

But sure. “Soon.” “Any day now!”

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