After several weeks of community feedback, promises to revert changes and revamp the system, Jagex will scrap the RuneScape Hero Pass entirely and not rework a new version.
When the RuneScape team announced that they would be adding their version of a battle pass shortly after the huge, game changing, Necromancy update, some were skeptical, others were critical, and some decided to give it a chance. Hero Pass: Underworld was a brand new season, designed, the team said, with goals of bringing more, improved rewards and cosmetics into the game, as well as providing some immersive, consistently rewarding goals to aim for instead of waiting for events.
To accomplish this, they would remove things like Daily Challenges and end the long-running Yak Track limited-events. The pass was intended to present a sort of ‘always on’ reward ladder to climb at your own pace during a three-month season. There was a free and a premium pass, as is common with these systems.
The features you could earn were a number of content buffs that you could choose and you were able to get more help with paid tiers. The community raised a number of questions about monetization of the feature, including whether or not RuneScape would be heading in a difficult direction with regard to charges,
After it was released, the feedback was so overwhelmingly negative, that the team decided to revert a number of features as soon as possible, speed up progression for those who were still completing goals on the pass and eventually bring it back in some reworked form after restoring the most requested features. Daily Challenges were set to return this coming Monday, October 9th.
Today, however, the team conceded that adding a battle pass type feature just wasn’t in line with RuneScape. The current pass season will be the only one, as they will run it for the original season length to give those who have decided to chase pass goals have a chance to complete things.
“We will not be releasing another Hero Pass after Underworld ends on December 3rd.
We have done this to recognise questions it raised that do not reflect our direction for the game
If we pursue a new reward-system, it will be built with players and not involve Content Buffs with Membership/paid disparity”
This does not mean they will give up on some kind of additional reward system, but this isn't it and they plan to involve the community in a strong way from the outset instead of just announcing such big overhauls suddenly.
See the full announcement at RuneScape.