MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh was at the recent E3. While there, she spoke with Henrique Olifiers, Head of Games Content at Jagex. Jagex is the company behind the quiet hit MMORPG, Runescape.

Runescape. Everyone's heard of Runescape. Or at least, everyone who reads about the business side of the gaming industry. Runescape boasts six million registered players and one million paying subscribers. An MMOG with one of the largest player bases. So what exactly is Runescape? Not much has been written about it here on mmorpg.com since 2004. So I spoke with Henrique Olifiers, Head of Games Content at Jagex to get a quick run down of the game and where it is going.

The original Runescape launched in 2001 was little more than a 2-D interface for a MUD (Multi-User Dungeons) game. Remember those text based MUD games? The precursors to MMORPGs? Maybe not. Not if you are under 35. What this basically means is that Runescape is story and quest heavy. It is a high fantasy world populated by knights, wizards and dragons. It is not fast paced by any means, but the underlying storyline is quite involved and important. Several gods in this world are striving for supremacy and your actions in game can tilt the scale towards any of them.

Read the whole thing here.

Missing the "Here" link.

Under 35? Come on, many of my friends play MUD. And I'm 19. It's not dead yet !

Man remember when runescape was a joke in the genre, crazy how it's gotten soo popular just because it's free.

so, what does the "full" game cost in US dollars

seems to be a secret until you create an account

Calling this game free-to-play is a real stretch.   You can start out as free-to-play to sample some of what the game offers, but you really have to suscribe to this game if you want to do anything beyond the demo stage.

This game limits free-to-play audience to only a very limited portion of the actual game, very much unlike other free-to-play games. 

Originally posted by gatheris

so, what does the "full" game cost in US dollars

seems to be a secret until you create an account

 

 

around $6.00 a month I think not too sure.

Runescape has really come a long way from when I used to play it, to when I quit (around level 95, give or take) in the discovery of other MMOG's out there. It's nice to come back to see one of the first few games I played nearly non-stop and see how much it's developed among the years and the success it has , regardless of the constant negative thing said about it nearly everywhere. Hopefully it'll continue it's growth to the point when we see a full fledged client and all the goods that come in MMO's today. :)

I actually never got into runescape ,i am pretty sure i did load it up at one time but didn't like it.I don't think i stuck around for any actual game play it was merely the graphics that turned me off.

I will give them credit for revamping the graphics with more detail,that takes some work.The difference is quite noticeable.It is a very old game and it still survives.good for them.I just don't have  the time anymore to try every single game,but i think this old game is at least worth a try and costs nothing.

As an example,look at all the money WOW has made,you think they'd show some respect and give that game the makeover it badly needs and the player base deserves?no way,they figure they got a ton of suckers who are willing to pay for anything.I don't care what anyone tries to say WOW graphics and models are terrible and Blizzard most deff has the money to re vamp the looks.

Good to see some small guys can still hang in the big boys market.I never even heard of JAGEX until now lol.

I remember back when it started in Classic when you could PK anyone anywhere... Didn't last long haha.

I was kind of shocked to see me favorite game on the front page of MMORPG...

It's fun and stuff, but they tend to be a bit overprotective of players... Oh well, child safety is important. It is still very enjoyable. However annoying some effects of recent changes are, there always is some benefit of about equal or greater value somewhere else.

And they must have done something right to get this many players... They don't even advertise anywhere!

Originally posted by JustBe

Man remember when runescape was a joke in the genre, crazy how it's gotten soo popular just because it's free.

  It just shows you how well Ultima Online could do if EA woke up and realized it's potential as a Free to Play MMO, but with the micro payment system for perks of course. They could open a couple new servers for it so the sub servers stay as is as not to upset the vets.

i cant wait for jagex to release mechscape im sure that game will become popular quick if they do the right things with it.

im still pretty mad that they took away wilderness pking and i dont really like bounty hunter that much but i still play rs there more to this game than pking you know.

Originally posted by Vanake

Under 35? Come on, many of my friends play MUD. And I'm 19. It's not dead yet !

Kudos to your friends!    Do you play as well?    No, it's not dead yet.  Not by a long country mile.

The game was semi good for its time.  But seeing how the graphics still suck and how there "Upgrades" got rid of pking and now let you summon a mosquito.  This game has really not inproved at all and the developers really have stoped trying as they are content with there money. 

P.s.  I wasnt kiding, there new skill of summoning has the worst summons nonimaginable.  including a rat and a snale...

runescape was at E3?....

I don't agree with you, Ozmodan. The Free-2-Play part is huge, you can do 2/3 of the skills, compared to other F2P/P2P Games.

There is NO trial, and you can stay a free player for as long as you like, and when you want to pay, you can always do it.. And when you stop, you can still play as a free player, Most games I've played don't allow you to play as a free player.

The Graphical Update really made the game more enjoyable for the players that were out there for the looks of a game.

I still enjoy RuneScape, Cutting some Maple Trees and Mining some Essences..

Ormeon

 Though I am not a fangurl of what Jagex has done to runescape in recent times, and I for one am not that impressed with the graphics updates or their recent updates, 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. What you actually do mmost on this game is wait for everything to happen. waiting is boring not fun. 

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". They have mass banned good players and made scamming players mods in this game. It appears that they think of everything in the game that would make it better.... then do the exact opposite.

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, even with the new high detail it still  wayy behind on the times in the graphics department. Since they really can't compete with the graphics in todays games their money and time  would be better spent improving  gameplay where the game is lacking.

5. targeting a younger audience. Though they had a 13+ age limit it was uninforced and their recent updates target children.. children do not pay monthly  fees and  make for a poor community. Instead of repairing their community they did just the opposite of what needed to be done and now you cannot log into any world for any amount of time without seeing misspelled swear words, insults, and vulgar language. Though this game had one of the strictest chat filters I have seen as of yet it had more sexually explict chat, profanity and rude  language out of any game I have played by far. In this game it is a common occurance to see 12 year olds dating 53 year old truck drivers, 16 year olds dating grannies and 11 year old children made into moderators.  Regardless of them stating that this is a child safe game it would not be reccomended for any parent to allow their child to play this game unattended, because the community is so poor and the report system is so lacking.

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.. 

7. The game is very player freedom limited since their recent updates. You can no longer give friends birthday gifts, halloween gifts, or christmas presents in the game. You can no longer make  supplies for freinds in the game  such as arrows, food, runes, potions ect.  If you cannot enjoy the game with your friends it becomes a very self centered game. The entire point of this game now is to stockpile poorly drawn pixel junk for your toon so that you can run around and look like princess barbie.  Though that may be entertaining for 8 year olds I do not think that appeals to mature players, thus greatly limiting their target audience and people mho actually want to pay for the game. 

8.  The limited point and click movement of this game makes it very difficult to move around on the main screen without having to constantly click  for very short distances. You can use the mini map  to move, but actually trying to move on the main screen in  anything other than the overhead view is very difficult. The lacking of WASD movement  options is a very limiting factor on this game.

9. The AI on this game is extremely predictable. Honestly there is nothing hard on this game. Even their hardest NPC's on this game are easier than the easier  bosses on  most other games.

10. There are many skills to do on this game but no reason for doing them. The  economy was nerfed on this game when they removed the trade and wilderness because they killed the games supply and demand. Players only need one set of armor now and each crafter makes thousands of each type, so there are way more sellers than buyers at all times. There is no profit in actually doing the skills in this game because the supplies are worth more than the finished products, so in order to train most of the skills you take a loss instead of being rewarded.  For example: Ores and bars are worth more than  smithed armor,  herbs are worth more than potions, raw fish are worth more than cooked. So why would anyone want to train those skills if it is more rewarding not to?

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

-----------------------------------------------

Now that being said, I would also like to state that prior to the fall updates I had many positive things to say about the game, and defended it constantly, but then Jagex finally made me throw in the towel when they killed the best parts of the game.

Runescape......The game that sparked the flames to all of our passions for MMOG's today

I played this game for 7 years, it started out as a greatest game ever, but now  me and many others call it  "Ruinedscape".  The reason for this is that last christmas they totally changed the game. First they removed staking, then wilderness pking, then trading, everything that made this game good. Even when u die, u dont lose ur stuff anymore, so there is no risk at all anymore! All this shit was made to remove bots and irl traders. Well.. they failed, there are still a lot of bots and ppl selling gp for $. Jagex is just bunch of idiots, they dont listen to their players at all, there is an offical forum where u can suggest stuff, but they dont care.  No matter if the forum is full of complaints, still they dont fucking care. I hate this game so much now, I hate jagex cause they ruined my favourite game.

 As usual 'Devillicious' has covered most of the real truth of this game!

We are all different people in the world and so was our characters in the game controlled by us so even though words may not be exact for our feelings we can understand this truth.

For me I always hated the wild originally like most of my adult friends since kids didn't use consideration or understand how others needed to go there for quests and clues thus idiots offen killed us doing this just for the hell of it - yes you may be one of those thoughtless idiots too especially if you are a 'generation Y' or more unfortunately a 'Generation Z' with 'Z' predicted to die before their parents, what you eat and how you sleep determine the length and quality of life you will live by not from rubbish toxic food or greenharvested veges & fruit and certainly not from DRUG companies that use lawyers to hide the truth of natural products being better for your health (Drug companies own the words 'Heal' & 'Cure' but none of their products do this as the pure food you eat is the only way to replace Vitamins, Minerals, Essential Fatty Acids and Glyconutrients).

So now with the game changed to remove most of the teenagers from it, more often I found it was more adult orientated as we stayed there but adjusted to having it more of a chat client - that was until they let Gen Z into the game and speech hit an all time low. It is certainly more chat orientated but with aditions like 'Clan Chat' this bought about people joining in the middle of several different conversations on screen at once so hence the person joining in the middle got the wrong idea and wammo another long friendship ruined unless someone could get through to them! Why chat you think, well if it takes 5 times as long to cut 1 log ore mine 1 ore as when I started the what else is there to do?

 Seems this person here never talked to those that truely understand the game but instead found a sales person as for a start 'NO WAY IS THERE 40% F2P AREA' but instead more like 5% of the game to play F2P (free to play)while improvements are almost always solely for P2P (pay to play). The updates since the Trade Limit death of the game are more a desperate attempt to fix the crack in the leaking dam with clay while the water flows through more senario - no update has been enjoyable for the majority since before the removal of Wildy Pking and the more recent thing Jagex did was to reclaim some of their declining revenue by allowing under 13 kids to play - it provides no other benefit to the game and means that with the majority of accounts quit after friends of kids hacked their mates accounts, this activity is even more encouraged by Jagex.

Do you think Jagex care?  I tried help so many genuine players but Jagex ignored all attempts to bring justice to the honest players. In 'Forums' my comments were usually removed as they were too honest and would have negative impact on the game for dishonest players aswell as 'Forums' Mods lieing to me about costs of my membership always increasing when our dollar here was getting stronger all the time against all currencies where they claimed it has never gone up & if $US improved it would cost me less where our $ was 80c to $US and now is 60c ($5NZ was $4US and now is $3US) so any idiot can see I have to pay more now, I tried the bug/complaint report and got response from the same Mods so then went direct to Jagex and the same Mods replied again  so you now see Jagex is just a few incompetent people taken over the running of the game from it's previous decent designers and now have lost the original direction solely in attempt to make more money while ignoring dedicated players by squashing all the hard work they had done previously (my bank took a hit of 3/10ths its value with the Trade Limit & GE trap)!!!