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"Jagex reckons that RuneScape makes "possibly" as much money as World of Warcraft, and is officially "the world's biggest free game". "More than 10 million [people play RuneScape]," Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard told Eurogamer. "[But] It depends if you're taking a day, a week, three months. We did another stat for the Guinness Book of World Records that was total active unique [users] over time, and that was just over 105 million. So 105 million people have touched it." "An honest answer is we don't measure the success of the business based on financial returns," he said. "The company is very strong financially, and it is thanks to RuneScape, but for us it's all about active players. It doesn't matter to us really if they're free or paying for the expansion - as long as it's going north we really don't care." RuneScape has been around for nine years, and has around "a million lines of scripted content", which Gerhard believes classes the free-to-play MMO as "an epic game". Even now, Jagex updates the MMO weekly with fresh content, and that hefty backlog is "the only reason why RuneScape is always ahead of the curve", designer Henrique Olifiers chimed in. RuneScape was completely free for almost four years and supported by adverts, but financial pressure eventually forced Jagex to introduce an optional "premium content kind of thing", he said, that could have swung either way. Luckily, Jagex did well out of it. "Overnight 20 per cent of our players just switched." Gerhard revealed that that percentage of paying customers remains the same today. "But we're very, very conscious that every game has to be completely free: no demo, no trial - it's a completely free game. If you like it, if you want more, then there's the expansion pack too," said Gerhard. Jagex now employs a whopping 400 people across two Cambridge studios (and one London branch), and puts them to work on RuneScape, casual portal FunOrb and new sci-fi MMO MechScape. The latter has had tens of millions of pounds of investment and is nearly ready to be unveiled."
Taken from Euro gamer, Runescape was my first MMORPG and it was like how UO is for others. It was simply the most fun i ever had in my life but seems like this game is looked down alot on these forums but oh well. The developers are now making another game codename Mechscape, its a sci-fi game with no exp or levels "something totally different" and is aimed at a older audience, What are your thoughts on this? |
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9/01/09 2:45:21 PM#2
I've tried so many times to like this game. I like the skill system, I like the crafting but other than that the graphics and combat blow so hard I can't stay in the game more than 30 minutes at a time. I would rather go back and play the original NWN.
Playing: WoW, EvE Interested in: TOR, ER, GW2, WoD, Dust514 |
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Kyleran
 Elite Member
Joined: 9/13/06
A simple truth-"What people want and what is good for an mmo is not always the same thing"-mrw0lf |
9/01/09 2:49:06 PM#3
Hmm.... i can't say I believe this, certainly not because the dev's say so. I personally know a lot of people who play MMO's, and not one of them plays Runescape. Not young players nor older, so who is the target audience? No one in my world, that's for sure.
"Just because you aren't paying doesn't mean it's not PTW." - Amaranthar |
Originally posted by Kyleran
Well it is the guinness world book for the most popular free game so can't say there lying, and to the other poster yes i agree on the combat part, i guess you can't have everything but on the higher end the combat was actually quite fun. |
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9/01/09 4:22:23 PM#5
To see the target audience of runescape one just needs to go to the library and see who is logged on to it on the public computers. |
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9/05/09 1:14:50 PM#6
20% of their 10 million players pay the alternate subscription of $5.00 = $ million per month. WoW generates far more than that with US subscriptions alone, nevermind the $ made on subs in other countries and the pay-per-hour fees generated in Asian markets. The claim that they make more $ befuddles me :/ __________________________ Malianea |
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9/05/09 3:45:50 PM#7
World's biggest free game? FarmVille had 33 million active users last month alone. Significantly more than the 10 mill Runescape claims, and it wouldn't surprise me if they're total unique active user count was around the same as the Guiness record too. ...unless they mean the other definition of "big" (game world size :P ) |
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Originally posted by Malianea
There free members see advertisements and when there's 9 million of them, alot of revenue is generated from there. As for only 1mil people paying sub, im not really sure last time i checked it was about 1.5+ and i don't they have to pay as much money on technical stuff which wow has to since it runs on a browser. Again this isn't me who put up the facts, i just copied what it said on Eurogamer. Also to the above poster, is that even a mmorpg? |
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9/05/09 7:54:59 PM#9
I can honestly say that out of all the mmorpgs ive played so far...runescape is the best. There is only a few things wrong with it, races, classes, the duel arena and the community. However what makes it good is the company actually knows what they are doing. Take Godswar for example. Igg thought it was soooo good to add a bot system so nobody does anything where as in runescape the players actually have to try. And as stated before, jagex keeps everything fair. Whether you are a multi billionaire or a homeless guy with access to an internet cafe, you have the same chance to be great.
Nowadays it seems that its a MUST to have an item mall of some sort in mmorpgs or where you have to spend real money for a special currency which makes you better than anyone else. the more money you spend the better you will always be than the free players. In runescape if you want to play free and still have a chance there are servers for that. If you want to spend a little money for better things yet not have to have a spending war to be the best, then they have servers for that. It seems in modern mmorpgs its just a spending war to be the best.
are runescape graphics the crappiest? yes however they have the best ethics of any mmorpg made today and they actually care about your suggestions. |
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Ramonski7
 Spotlight Poster
Joined: 5/21/03
"A wise man has something to say, but a fool just has to say something." |
9/05/09 8:03:57 PM#10
I played this for a little bit, good if you don't want to install a MMO on someone's PC. But pulling the same cash as WoW.......oh pulllease.
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9/05/09 8:06:09 PM#11
I used to play this game a lot in middle-school. Almost every single person I know has played this game at least once. I like the leveling and crafting a ton. The combat I don't really care if it's intuitive or not. It's somehow fun to see larger and larger numbers fly up as you level. As for graphics. It's done as much as I can expect from a browser-based game running 3-D. |
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9/05/09 8:21:04 PM#12
Time to get owned in pink letters... Do any of you any understand how advertising works? When you go to a site where you get pop up ads or site ads each time that ad shows up X company has to pay X amount. Under some circumstances X company only pays X amount of times per day for each unique user. So if they have 1.5 million people paying 5.00 bucks thats actually where they make less money but it generates a stable, expected revenue to base off of. Secondly the type of hardware and servers used to house RuneScape are farrrrrrrrr cheaper than WOW. Back to Advertisement information. So if 105 million unqiue users saw each of the possible 10 ads in a given day of their activity they company made say .10 per view... now if those people logged in every day of the month or even 4 days a week which are the general playing times of MMO gamers and each time they see the add .10 ... do the math and go back to school. Stop rolling on WoWs electronic testicles. "Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean" |
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9/05/09 9:52:37 PM#13
www.mechscapeworld.com/forums/index.php Jagerx's revenue for 2008 45Million, advertising represents 7% of their total revenue www.gamespot.com/news/6185347.html Blizzard's revenue for 2007 before they merged with Activision, 1.2Billion The companies are not in the same league
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9/05/09 10:29:39 PM#14
Originally posted by kdkirmse
thats Blizzard... not WoW... the single game.,.. and now start subtracting the yearly salaries of all of its employee's, the costs of all of it's offices, electronics, and bills. This discussion was over WOW and RuneScape not Blizzard vs Runescape... l2r "Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean" |
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9/05/09 10:33:56 PM#15
The game is great, no doubt, I played all the way up to the point where I had to move.
/sarcasm PAST: UO-SWG-DAOC-WOW-DDO-VG-AOC-WAR-FE-DFO-LOTRO-RIFT-SWG |
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9/05/09 10:37:46 PM#16
It was my first and I still resort back to it from time to time...regardless of its official status there is no denying its popular and must be appealing to someone (thats evident upon logging in)...there are always people on..the game itself was always fun to me I AM like the wind! |
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9/05/09 11:24:27 PM#17
Total blizzard upkeep expendatures for WOW 2004 - 2008 200M www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/09/total-operating/ Blizzard makes more profit from WOW each month then Runescape makes in a year. |
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9/05/09 11:55:48 PM#18
WoW by itself does make more than $1 billion a year. WoW makes more than $100 million a month. Learn to research. |
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9/06/09 12:06:16 AM#19
people keep knockin' runescape cause it has shitty graphics and is for kids. oh wait that also describes WoW. and one is a failboat, the other isn't. |
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Comnitus
 Advanced Member
Joined: 6/03/09
Revenge is a dish best served with mayonnaise and those little cheesy things on sticks. |
9/06/09 12:09:39 AM#20
Originally posted by Axehilt They should've specified: It's the world's biggest browser based free MMO. If you're going to make the argument that FarmVille is an MMO, I'm going to laugh.
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