In recent weeks, there’s already been a lot of discussion and concern from areas of the community about the update quality and use of micro-transactions (MTX) in RuneScape. Our insufficient response has made us seem distant and uncollaborative, making frustrations worse, and for that we are truly sorry. We’d like to assure you that the time has been spent choosing the right changes. On this page we’ll cover the actual immediate actions being taken and the larger changes we’ll build towards in the longer term.
First, thank you for your own comments, ideas and complaints - yes really! Your care for the game shines via. You’ve seen content material quality and amount start to slide, seen MTX promotions mar on regardless and Jagex going silent on the matter. You are worried that this will just get worse and they are concerned for what it takes in the long term. We hear you, and we shouldn’t have let it get to this point.
It is incredibly important for us because developers that RuneScape has a long and healthy life. An important part of that is providing players with brand new content, improved functions and solid general service. The balance all of us try to strike is that MTX is a main part of the game’s earnings and directly pertains to the Sell RS Gold to us amount we can invest into its continued development. Without which income stream we would have to massively reduce investment into the game and we feel that would be very damaging for RuneScape and the local community. That being said, it's crystal clear that parts of the community feel we’ve neither delivered on the content material nor got the total amount with micro-transactions right. Therefore , we’ve looked critically at ourselves to understand what occurred and how we can perform better by you.
Content
On the content material side, though there have been some good updates, you’ve not received consistently strong releases throughout this year. There are a few aspects: moving toward and then away from the expansions strategy resulted in lots of wastage; we picked too many long-term development projects at the same time, stifling regular releases; and we moved a few developers to focus on building the actual mobile client prior to we’d hired their replacements. Also, our own desire to not over-promise in the RuneScape Shows at RuneFest made it seem like we’d lost our ambition.
We can – and will – do better. The content roadmap has been remade in recent months, directly driven by player demands, and we will be doing a new community study soon to make sure our own content plans are the best they can be. We now have also changed our own development processes to get more of the updates you would like in production and to ensure they're released more regularly. We will soon be adding the content rating system into the game by itself so we can gather feedback from everybody on new content material as you play, which in turn helps us react better.
We are also bringing in new development team members over the coming months to give us greater capacity to provide on content high quality and make the cellular client a reality for you personally. These changes will bring a consistently good flow of content material and we are going to be showing you our brand new team structure and progress on brand new updates in news posts, live streams and videos in the coming weeks. The actual mobile client will also be transformative for RuneScape, offering a lot of convenience to current players, as well as bringing many lapsed and brand new players. We’re self-confident that together this stuff will make for a strong year ahead for RuneScape.
Monetisation
Within the MTX side, all of us let the balance suggestion too far and promotions seemed to dominate the overall game, especially when coupled with underwhelming content updates. The actual Prize Pool promotion design was misjudged and it crossed the line.
While MTX in RuneScape is essential in order to maintaining our development teams and the content material they produce, all of us believe it can be processed (and the harsher edges smoothed out) without significant dents to income. Be assured, we certainly will not be pushing it any harder. The Prize Pool promo will not ever be seen again and we don’t plan to revisit similar mechanics any time soon. Over the next few months i will be experimenting with promotion configuration, such as duration, begin days and advertising levels, to see if there are better trade-offs between visibility and revenue. For one from the first experiments we will not be running second-chance-Tuesday for the rest of the year. We commit to keeping a detailed eye on the game economy and progression rates to make sure promotions aren’t going to cause major effect. And to help in the actual longer term, we are beginning a rework associated with Treasure Hunter, that will have greater emphasis on cosmetics and conveniences.
It is important that we don’t over-promise; to be crystal clear, this doesn’t mean the end of Treasure Hunter promotions. What we are committing to is much better managing their effect, duration and regularity, making some immediate changes in the short term whilst looking to move to a more balanced approach in the mid to long-term.
Communication
In terms of marketing communications, we've not spoken to you enough. We'll pot-up defence and communicate more, show you all what we are going to working on and much better explain our choices.
While we since the game’s developers occasionally seem to have other priorities, we care deeply for the game too. For most of us right here RuneScape is at the actual centre of our lives and careers. We don’t always get it right, but hopefully you can tell we are as passionate about the overall game as you are.
In closing...
Hopefully you can see we're making some immediate changes and planning long-term improvements. You can assist us too, by causing the RuneScape local community the most Cheap RS 2007 Gold positive and welcoming place feasible. After all, the more players we have the much less reliance there is on MTX revenue.
Our own overall goal would be to deliver you frequent, high-quality content updates, bring the game on to more platforms, and tune MTX to be less abrasive. We think this is the right method of ensure RuneScape remains healthy. And general the game is still robust: In the last year membership has remained steady; RuneFest 2017 had been the biggest and most well-known yet; and our own marketing efforts tend to be ramping up to bring in new players. Along with strong content and mobile coming next season, 2018 is framing up to be a excellent year for RuneScape!
