A Resurgence in the game?
1 year, 5 days. It has been that long since I last posted anything into this blog, and for that, I am very sorry. This past year has been arguably the biggest in Runescape's history, since starting its life as a little game known as DeviousMUD. The player base, as far as I have known, since starting in late 2006, has always been vocal, and whenever JAGeX stood out of line in terms of their updates, the player base has been key in letting the company know how they have felt. Other players of the game have silently tried to make something of these updates, to try and make sense of them and incorporate them into their game, and some had just wanted the game to be updated anyway.
Before I get too side tracked, we must remember what type of game Runescape is. Believe it or not, the social aspect of the game was just as important as the gameplay itself. This type of game makes it very unique and personal, and the players 'bond' to their account, make it theirs, so to speak. Such interaction is hard to find these days, and Runescape seemingly had the perfect combination. Back in 2007, the game seemed to hit new heights, even recognized by the 'Guiness Gaming book of World Records', published in 2008. It was huge, to the point that people could talk about the game to each other. We found crimes committed for 'gold' and items, and people fully addicted to the game. JAGeX got more and more confident as a result, and also got more daring, not afraid to try new things. But that is another story.
To cut it short, as JAGeX updated the game more and more, less and less people were playing the game. The game was still played in big numbers, but slowly, and surely, the game lost its buzz. And, maybe due to this, JAGeX tried to revive the game. New skills, new graphics, new places and new quests, all new content was added into the game to try and persuade new players to join or old players to come back, and some did, but the numbers fell. What was a 200,000 players online, every world packed game was soon becoming a shadow of its former self. World 2 was starting to become 'not full', as it used to be almost impossible to find a space in the world, JAGeX had to accept that drastic measures needed to be taken to revive the game. But they could not revert back to the old ways, that would be backwards development, and most importantly, that would have been admitting a mistake.
About a year to the day ago, JAGeX took perhaps the biggest step, and possibly their last resort, into trying to change the game for the better, they introduced the 'Evolution of Combat'. In fact, the update was so 'evolutionary' , that the term 'EoC' is still used to describe the current game, rather than what JAGeX would prefer 'RS3'. But, without commenting on what is of the current game, numbers almost halved, and the game looked dead and buried.
Then Runescape 07 was released, after several months of probing from oldschool nostalgia junkies who simply couldn't understand the Evolution of Combat. Runescape got attention like no other, the memories was trending worldwide on Twitter. The resurgence was imminent. Runescape soon hit 100,000 players online, for the first time in a long time.
The game, Runescape 07, however, lacked support from JAGeX, as they (understandably) want to concentrate on the main game. There weren't updates and the appeal really died down, as people swiftly got bored of the game, or didn't want to spend time re creating their character. After a few months the game steadily declined to less than 10,000 players online at any given time. The JAGeX staff knew that they had to act.
As mentioned before, player interaction was crucial to the progress of the game, and to keep people happy, you need to know what they want. And the way JAGeX did this was through polls. They made a conscious decision to make this game about US. This means that they cannot enforce any content without our permission, and this seems to be having a great effect so far. Rather than halting all development, updates and new content have been added at a rate of knots recently, and to good effect. People who played the game for a certain aspect, whether it be PvM, skills, or PvP, have now got their wish without it being ruined. And to top it off, JAGeX introduced the first 'Free Weekend' in 07, and the fruits of their thinking seems to work.
As I am playing now, there is approximately 18,000 on 07, and 50,000 on EoC. And it isn't just the hype of the recent updates, it has been steady like this for a week or so. I think JAGeX may have learnt something, as the community seems to be re growing. The passion for the game was always there, now it just takes some intelligent thinking on behalf of JAGeX, to try and bring about a resurgence. And with that, I feel the need to say, thank you, JAGeX.
