Blood Pressure

[Sobend]

Taking the blood pressure

Sobend

Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

-William Shakespeare

 

When Shakespeare penned those words he probably wasn't thinking about applying the phrase to computer games, but the fact remains that nothing escapes death. People, elephants, car engines, and even planet Earth will eventually face a dark demise. Runescape does not escape that fate. And not many people are denying that.

 

The reason I bring this up is because there are many out there that think Runescape is dying. And there is some reason to believe that. For example, as I am typing this (on a Friday night) there are only 40,000 players online. If you began playing years ago, you are probably more used to having at least 100,000 players online. These numbers make the situation obvious. With this being said, it is interesting to note Jagex’s comments, or rather the lack of comments, about the player decrease. Jagex hasn't really made a public statement solely addressing the decrease and steps that are being made to counter this issue. Jagex also has seemed a bit off the mark when it has made remarks about activity. In a July 2012 interview, Jagex CEO Mark Gehard stated that there are “hundreds of thousands of people playing at any one time.” Also, in a recent news article a Jagex employee stated that Runescape was “as strong as it’s ever been.” What does he mean? If he means more people have 99 strength than ever before he might be onto something, but if he’s talking about the game’s activity he probably hasn’t been getting enough sleep.

 

Despite that, it is quite clear that activity has decreased. But let’s remember that Runescape was hugely popular several years ago. If you were in middle or high school in the mid-2000s, probably most of your friends had at one point wandered through Tutorial Island, although many probably wouldn't admit it. Is it possible that Runescape is just having a dip in popularity and not actually on the way out soon? Possibly. People making the argument of Runescape’s coming death (many of which are also trying to deride the game’s recent content) usually pull out the Google trend for Runescape.com as evidence. In case you are not familiar with it here it is. By the way, this graph may make things look worse than they are because it looks like the game has no activity when it clearly has plenty.

 

 

 

At first glance it looks like the game is dying and has been for some time now. It’s pretty tough to argue with that. Since the peak (December 2006), Runescape has overall been heading down. And let’s not forget that similar games, such as World of Warcraft, have also had a decrease in activity. But even with this graph there is some optimism for the game. If you can get over the massive decrease in activity you may notice that towards the end of the graph the decrease in activity has come to a trickle. In other words over the past year and a half there really hasn’t been that much activity decrease, at least with actual players. The elimination of many bots has led to a decrease in perceived activity but the decrease in regular players lately has been inconsequential.

 

Does this mean I am saying Runescape isn’t dying? Not necessarily. But if it is dying it is dying a lot slower than people make it out to be. In the past year and a half or so Runescape has lost 3 of Google trend’s activity points. For comparison, between July 2009 and January 2011 (also a period of a year and a half) Runescape lost 43 of Google Trend’s activity points. Those who plan on attending Runescape’s funeral shouldn't plan on taking time off from work anytime soon.

 

Of course, as loyal players of the game for years, we don’t want Runescape to be a so-so game, even when it comes to activity. We want Runescape to return to its glory of the 100,000 player days. Anything else is too depressing. So how exactly does Runescape retain its glory? Well, the answer to this isn't too easy. If it were it would have already been done. Many of the improvement ideas floating around in my opinion will not be the magic bullet to Runescape’s problems. I of course have ideas of my own but I’ll save them for another editorial. In the meantime, I hope we can get back to fishing rocktails and mining ores without having to worry about looking for coffins for our characters. For now, anyway.

 

Further Reading

http://www.forbes.co...rmers-universe/

 

Agree? Disagree? (never! :P). Post your comments below!

[zooey]

If the game was actually good, and they got some media attention (YouTube gameplay anyone??) I think there'd be a pretty good prospect of new players.

 

The game is pretty terrible and the genre isn't as popular as it once was though, so I don't see that happening.

[Dimosthimise]

If the game was actually good, and they got some media attention (YouTube gameplay anyone??) I think there'd be a pretty good prospect of new players.

 

Oh my - without looking at that I just wrote this blog article:

 

http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/blog/1673/entry-71422-something-ive-been-considering/

[Luvandpower]

I am still hard set into believing that the game isn't really dying. We have to consider how many bots are still playing/how many were playing. I would like to think that the game is at a turn of the decade type of deal. I would hope we could all agree that nobody likes change, but with or without us change will happen over time.

 

Sure, I can agree that some people have left but you know what some people who left have come back and from experience from seeing a few older friends return even some of the veteran/original players are coming back. Some stay, some don't.

 

I don't think it's fair for us to just say "rs is going to die bro" I mean how would you like it if somebody said "sal is going to die bro" that's just a negative insight. Look at it positively. "jagex is still doing updates bro". Yes, I do agree jagex should do more polls/get insight on updates ( just like they did with prestige).

[Sobend]

I think, personally, it is very difficult for us to say "the game is pretty terrible." We are incredibly biased in that regard simply because 1) we grew up, some of us are even adults and 2) the game is pretty much a different game than we began playing. If Jagex just reverted back to the old game mechanics that existed when we started playing it would be considered outdated and I don't think would do any better. I'm not saying everything Jagex has done is great, but its not near disastrous.

[zooey]

I think, personally, it is very difficult for us to say "the game is pretty terrible." We are incredibly biased in that regard simply because 1) we grew up, some of us are even adults and 2) the game is pretty much a different game than we began playing. If Jagex just reverted back to the old game mechanics that existed when we started playing it would be considered outdated and I don't think would do any better. I'm not saying everything Jagex has done is great, but its not near disastrous.

I guess I should have comparatively terrible. I think a lot of us started Runescape because it was the thing and there weren't a whole lot of other options (Everquest, World of Warcraft?). Now it's extremely easy for anyone to download a good game for free. If Team Fortress 2 was several clicks away like it is now, or Minecraft, or Terraria, or Cube World back in 2006 I probably would not have sprung for Runescape. It was literally one of the best free games (am I wrong in saying that?). Now there are a myriad of choices and all of them have a whole lot more attention and play a whole lot better than Runescape. Why would a kid choose Runescape over anything that's super popular on YouTube right now? I don't see why he would or should.

 

also consoles are way more commonplace now but I don't know a whole lot about that

 

This is just rambling and my observations, I'd love to hear the other side of this though

Edited October 29, 2013 by Zooey

[Shooter585]

Runescape isn't going to die as long as it is profitable. I don't see why it wouldn't be profitable in the near future. They could decide to stop releasing new updates, but it will still exist for at least five more years.

[Sobend]

I think, personally, it is very difficult for us to say "the game is pretty terrible." We are incredibly biased in that regard simply because 1) we grew up, some of us are even adults and 2) the game is pretty much a different game than we began playing. If Jagex just reverted back to the old game mechanics that existed when we started playing it would be considered outdated and I don't think would do any better. I'm not saying everything Jagex has done is great, but its not near disastrous.

I guess I should have comparatively terrible. I think a lot of us started Runescape because it was the thing and there weren't a whole lot of other options (Everquest, World of Warcraft?). Now it's extremely easy for anyone to download a good game for free. If Team Fortress 2 was several clicks away like it is now, or Minecraft, or Terraria, or Cube World back in 2006 I probably would not have sprung for Runescape. It was literally one of the best free games (am I wrong in saying that?). Now there are a myriad of choices and all of them have a whole lot more attention and play a whole lot better than Runescape. Why would a kid choose Runescape over anything that's super popular on YouTube right now? I don't see why he would or should.

 

also consoles are way more commonplace now but I don't know a whole lot about that

 

This is just rambling and my observations, I'd love to hear the other side of this though

Okay I see what you mean. I don't really know modern games inside and out so I can't really argue with you with my lack of knowledge in the subject. However I feel that in the mid 2000s pretty much everybody had a console too, so I'm not sure that's a reason.

 

Perhaps you could also say that mobile devices also lead to a decrease in the need to play games such as Runescape, although I doubt it. These games are much simpler than Runescape and other games like Runecape (minecraft, LoL) are doing great.

 

Runescape isn't going to die as long as it is profitable. I don't see why it wouldn't be profitable in the near future. They could decide to stop releasing new updates, but it will still exist for at least five more years.

Another good observation. Also, Runescape is much more profitable per player now because of bonds, runecoins, and spins.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Sobend

[Fatalysm]

RuneScape has been in steady decline since it's purchase from Insight Venture Partners, whether this is down to them or not isn't the point. Things happened at that point in time that changed a lot of peoples opinions and perspective on the game.

 

The second big thing I can relate to which answers your questions in a way is that Runescape was given that bot nuke thing, which wiped out a lot of bot accounts and cheaters who thusly never returned to the game. I think a large portion of the activity was bots, so in a way when Jagex reflect back and say the games never been stronger, they could be correct.

[Azarath]

That bot nuke did a lot more than just kill bots, it killed the performance for a lot of players which most likely pushed them away from the game. A browser based game shouldn't have given 2 fps on anywhere near a modern PC.