Developers Corner

:THIS IS NOT OFF TOPIC FROM THIS SECTION: (analysis of a successful ex-indy game)

:THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE TROLL BAIT: (their 2nd/3rd NGE type event was held recently, I feel for you who were affected but this isn't the place thank you for not doing so. If you hate the game you're perfectly welcome to do so but talking about the game isn't my point here just some irony that I'd love to share specific to this forum)

Runescape is not the game to bash in the developers corner...

History: indy project that the creator ran with after he realized that the IT architecture could be applied to something a bit more serious

It just amuses to see an indy company that losses it's indy status get bashed soo badly, in a forum that is working on a few similar type projects.

To start with the game made MUCH MUCH more economic sense than most MMOs that have been released. a marketing system that ensures consistent yearly growth no matter what you do to the game, this same system also costs you NOTHING since it is the IT architecture(applet release, instant accessibility to anyone and everyone), enough deviation from the rest of the market so people don't go elsewhere for the same kicks(and higher quality), and a system that encourages constant patronage from your users. Basically they achieved the one point in marketing success for MMOs that could even make poop-fling-international(example title not this one or any other) successful it's the point where the user base generates more interest in your game than the game itself would, basically the point where it goes viral, or when interest generates interest.  

They did exactly what indy development requires, releasing everything you NEED to have a game that the public can see, play, and be a part of. Pretty much when runescape was launched it was an engine test with extra stuff added onto it.

Now lets go to the innovations the game did... well at release it was pretty much a de-innovations and a bringing back of older mechanics with all the extra glitter dusted off , some twisting here and there, and blatant removal of other things. However everything made sense and worked together.  Now they're aiming for a themepark-sandbox and is slightly interesting see what they pull out with in their updates even if you don't play the game. 

:insert flame suit here, just a mildly amusing critque of me spouting about some irony I ended up seeing a couple handful of times in this forum...  not to mention all game bashing makes no sense since by being here you should be moderatly interested in analyzing anything and everything you can, we have the pub for bashing, no matter how bad/good a game is:

Though I am not a fangurl of runescape I do give them credit for some of their ideas.

1. classless system- you had one player that could do everything the game has to offer, and switch tatics during combat giving a better level of unpredictability that is lost in the class based mmorpgs. 

2.  the zoning of the maps allows for players to do things in different areas so it appeals to a wider audience.

3. it has many different things to do in the game besides quests, pvp, and killing npcs.. it has skills that the players  do themselves without npc involvement.

4. pre fall wilderness update.. they had a pvp full loot area seperate from the main area with  areas zoned in for pvp same lvl gradually increasing risk as you went deeper... therefore giving new players as well as  vetran players places where they could hold their own in combat and the risks that were taken were left up to the player.

5. pre fall update .. it had free trade amongst players so that you could help friends by giving them items to help them get started in the game and allow for better enjoyment of the  game by the players.

6. it had lots of mingames to keep players entertained.

7. being a level based system it allowed for players to set goals and try to fulfill them keeping players online in game so that the worlds did not feel empty.

8. the game could be played anywhere .. even at work lol.

now that all being said you may wonder why I dislike the game so much ..

1.well  the slow gamespeed waiting for everything to happen in the game is awful.. if you have 15 min to play at a time .. you don;t want to spend it waiting for a ore to respawn or a tree to grow back .. the game needs a serious adrenaline shot

2. customer support was deplorable.. downright rude if you ask them a question at times If you posted suggestions that might appear that they had better options than what they were going to do with their game they would remove the posts to make the general runescape population not aware of other solutions, not because a post was violating any rules .. they would just say" This is a topic Jagex takes very seriously and we regretfully have to remove this post".

3. the updates were terrible limiting trade, pvp gambling .. they killed most of the fun parts of the game with that one.

4. poor graphics .. though they weren't so bad that i would leave the game over that alone.. just they always had priorities mixed up .. give the players characters faces before you update the monsters ..  that is just common sense.

5. targeting a younger audience. Though they have a 13+ age limit it is uninforced and their recent updates target children.. children do not pay monthly  fees and  make for a poor community.

6. no player rewards for levels.. if someone made a game like that with great rewards for levels it would keep players from being disappointed when they reached them, and give them something better to look forward to, in that game though sadly there is only more suffering not rewards.. 

I wish that someone would take the good from that game  and make a better one .. with better rules and designed for fun not suffering .. I would definately pay to play one if they did... well as long as they didn;t go too cartoony on it .. i can't stand to look at those pokemon type games long enough to play it... Not only would I pay to play it if it was good...I would bring 1000 of my closest friends .. and I would pay for advertising. lol

Yeah, I second everything Deviliscious said.

I played it for a couple months. (Back before the wilderness died)

It's best feature was that there were no classes. This let you have full control of your character, it also made it more fun in combat, if you try to rush an archer he might just pull out a sword and shield... or do a magic 10 second freezing spell and keep shooting at you...

Unfortunately there IS NO combat anymore... (yes, I came back after a couple years hoping to see it was some sort of a April fools, alas no, but I had already quit so I guess I don't care) I decided to give all the weapons in my old "bank account" to the random noobs in Lumbridge, but, apparently it's impossible to hand people stuff now...

As far as game dev goes, I think Jagex did it the right way. The founders coded it themselves, (I think "Jagex" stands for "JAva Gaming EXperts", but I could be wrong). It didn't take them millions of dollars either, just a long time typing code into an IDE.

Their F2P/P2P mix basically allowed the game to advertise itself, there was no player startup cost and P2P "membership" cost only $5 per month. It had a lot of servers (Not something I'm in favor of but it worked good for them) I don't know how much is cost them for each server but let say $500/month (probably less) each server held about 1200 players at a time, and they needed (maybe) about 100 members ($5 each) per server to break even, They simply added new servers whenever they needed to, and when they could afford it, They didn't over spend themselves that way. All in all they did a good job, money wise, except for pulling a SWG:NGE that is...

Originally posted by deviliscious

Though I am not a fangurl of runescape I do give them credit for some of their ideas.

1. classless system- you had one player that could do everything the game has to offer, and switch tatics during combat giving a better level of unpredictability that is lost in the class based mmorpgs. 

2.  the zoning of the maps allows for players to do things in different areas so it appeals to a wider audience.

3. it has many different things to do in the game besides quests, pvp, and killing npcs.. it has skills that the players  do themselves without npc involvement.

4. pre fall wilderness update.. they had a pvp full loot area seperate from the main area with  areas zoned in for pvp same lvl gradually increasing risk as you went deeper... therefore giving new players as well as  vetran players places where they could hold their own in combat and the risks that were taken were left up to the player.

5. pre fall update .. it had free trade amongst players so that you could help friends by giving them items to help them get started in the game and allow for better enjoyment of the  game by the players.

6. it had lots of mingames to keep players entertained.

7. being a level based system it allowed for players to set goals and try to fulfill them keeping players online in game so that the worlds did not feel empty.

8. the game could be played anywhere .. even at work lol.

now that all being said you may wonder why I dislike the game so much ..

1.well  the slow gamespeed waiting for everything to happen in the game is awful.. if you have 15 min to play at a time .. you don;t want to spend it waiting for a ore to respawn or a tree to grow back .. the game needs a serious adrenaline shot

2. customer support was deplorable.. downright rude if you ask them a question at times If you posted suggestions that might appear that they had better options than what they were going to do with their game they would remove the posts to make the general runescape population not aware of other solutions, not because a post was violating any rules .. they would just say" This is a topic Jagex takes very seriously and we regretfully have to remove this post".

3. the updates were terrible limiting trade, pvp gambling .. they killed most of the fun parts of the game with that one.

4. poor graphics .. though they weren't so bad that i would leave the game over that alone.. just they always had priorities mixed up .. give the players characters faces before you update the monsters ..  that is just common sense.

5. targeting a younger audience. Though they have a 13+ age limit it is uninforced and their recent updates target children.. children do not pay monthly  fees and  make for a poor community.

6. no player rewards for levels.. if someone made a game like that with great rewards for levels it would keep players from being disappointed when they reached them, and give them something better to look forward to, in that game though sadly there is only more suffering not rewards.. 

I wish that someone would take the good from that game  and make a better one .. with better rules and designed for fun not suffering .. I would definately pay to play one if they did... well as long as they didn;t go too cartoony on it .. i can't stand to look at those pokemon type games long enough to play it... Not only would I pay to play it if it was good...I would bring 1000 of my closest friends .. and I would pay for advertising. lol

I fail to see why other companies (especially new & old)  have not taken anything from RuneScape.  Do they fail to see that they implemented the perfect PVP to go along with their game. 

People make all these WoW clones,, but where are the RuneScape clones?  This game has 1million members, yet people fail to see the success that the game could offer.

RuneScape is the most overlooked game in the buisness.  If someone took Andrew's ideas and fixed up some things, it will be a huge success.

P.S.  I am talking about before the update.

I place most of runescape's sucess on accessibility.  I'm sure most others do as well.

People do not play  a game for 7 years because of accessibility. I think you are mistaken by thinking that was what made people play runescape. Hmmm... I don;t see people that actually played the game for years posting that they played it because it was accessible .. and that is all. But you see people posting because it had content they could not find anywhere else. I played games before and after that game, and have yet to find what I am looking for in  a game because noone else makes one with that sort of content. These forums have been flooded with ex scapers looking for similar games and no developer even takes notice. Alot of people only found this site trying to find a game similar to that game, but yet the devs don;t take notice.  I am beginning to think they are blind. Find me one game out there that has the " good " content I listed above in it and that fixes the problems with runescape? you cannot because it does not exist.. why ? because developers seem to think that people play a game for 7 years because it is accessible.. and do not look at the real reason people play it.  Everyone I know that played could care less if they have to buy it, download it, or whatever.. They want to find a game that has the good stuff they are looking for in a game.

Originally posted by deviliscious

People do not play  a game for 7 years because of accessibility. I think you are mistaken by thinking that was what made people play runescape. Hmmm... I don;t see people that actually played the game for years posting that they played it because it was accessible .. and that is all. But you see people posting because it had content they could not find anywhere else. I played games before and after that game, and have yet to find what I am looking for in  a game because noone else makes one with that sort of content. These forums have been flooded with POES looking for similar games and no developer even takes notice. Alot of people only found this site trying to find a game similar to that game, but yet the devs don;t take notice.  I am beginning to think they are blind. Find me one game out there that has the " good " content I listed above in it and that fixes the problems with runescape? you cannot because it does not exist.. why ? because developers seem to think that people play a game for 7 years because it is accessible.. and do not look at the real reason people play it.  Everyone I know that played could care less if they have to buy it, download it, or whatever.. They want to find a game that has the good stuff they are looking for in a game.

1)  I had to fix ex scapers to POES

2)  I entirely agree.  People did not only play Runescape because it was browser based.  Sure, it was a perk, but it was not a reason why people played.  They realized that RuneScape was different than every other game in the market. 

The fact taht it was eaily accessible only made people find the game.  THAT IS ALL.  1 million payign members don't play becuase it was "easily accessible".  That is a joke.  People played because it was different.

While Jagex did ruin the game with their updates, and there are better games in development at the moment, they still had some very nice attributes to the game.  Any member of POES will tell you that.