Tag: Runescape

RuneScape Celebrates All-Time High Membership In 2019


Everything’s coming up Glouphrie in RuneScape for 2019.

As RuneScape enters its twentieth year of existence, Jagex is celebrating a successful 2019. RuneScape as a franchise enjoyed the highest membership count of all time with well over a million subscribers while Old School RuneScape achieved its highest daily active players thanks in part to a launch on mobile that has drawn in over 8 million installs, and was also awarded a BAFTA for mobile game of the year and best mobile game at the Develop Star Awards.

In 2019 Jagex hired over 100 new employees as part of a big hiring drive including former EA Development Director Melissa Bachman-Wood joining as VP of Studios, Product Director at Blizzard Entertainment Ryan Ward joining as Executive Producer of RuneScape, and Rob Hendry, previously Head of Studio London at Natural Motion, joining as Executive Producer of Old School RuneScape.

CEO Phil Mansell, aka Mod Pips, stated:

“This level of success only comes with the passion of huge player communities, who engage with our games because of the amazing craft and care from our talented teams. It is thanks to these efforts that we’ve been able to greatly increase our investment in our existing games, new product development and the broader business with more than 100 new hires coming onboard in the last 12 months. This includes senior leaders joining from EA, Blizzard, Activision, Ubisoft, Riot and more, adding more than 250 years of cumulative games industry experience to the Jagex team.”

RuneScape raised over £250 grand in charity with Jagex being voted the Best Places To Work award by Gamesindustry.biz.

More details on RuneScape’s future will be released in the coming months.

Twitch: RuneScape Umbral Packs Now Available


The next set of Twitch Prime items are now available in RuneScape. The pack is free for all Twitch Prime members and includes the umbral cloak, umbral bow, and umbral staff, as well as previous items in the umbral set if you haven’t previously received them. You will need to link your Twitch and RuneScape accounts and the rewards can only be redeemed once.

The umbral pack is available until February 3. Get it here.

Diaries From Gielinor: The Yak Track Made Me Hate RuneScape


I’ve made several comments over the years about how Jagex seems to struggle with conflicting priorities, and nothing really exemplifies that in recent history more than the Yak Track.

For those of you who play RuneScape, the Yak Track ends today (January 5). I liked the idea of the Yak Track in theory; an alternative to the battle pass that was given away for free to those who shelled out additional money for the Premier Pack. It’s pure selfishness, but for people like me who are still grandfathered in at the $5 monthly subscription you kinda have to give us something in the bundle to make that price difference worth it.

The Yak Track was such an exercise in tedium that it made me resent RuneScape. I managed to swallow 25 of the 50 levels and theoretically can’t really “quit” the game because I have 600+ days accumulated in excess membership thanks to various giveaways over the past 15 years. I’ve just spent the last couple of months playing the Twisted League in Old School RuneScape.

Contextually the Yak Track couldn’t come out at a more ridiculous and dare I say stupidly contradictory time in RuneScape history. It represents a mind-numbing tedium that Jagex has gone back and forth on in terms of stamping out in the game.

The Yak Track is a battle pass that presents players with 50 tiers of rewards with each tier having its own option of one of two tasks. Some of the tiers are joke tasks, like collect 28 cabbages or talk to an NPC, something you can do it 5 minutes. The majority of the tasks however are ridiculously tedious. Fletch thousands of bows, make thousands of potions, invest endless hours into slayer, etc. It isn’t fun and it’s a stark reminder of one of Jagex’s worst business practices that the company has admitted it is trying to push away from.

Jagex, like Ubisoft, has a habit of creating a problem and then selling players the solution. Don’t want to slog through 30+ tiers of godawful grind for this time-limited event and cosmetics you’ll never be able to obtain again? Well Jagex will sell you bonds to skip the content that they artificially inflated the tedium for in order to sell you bonds to skip the grind that they artificially inflated to make you pay real cash to skip. Nothing stokes resentment quite like the company that has had numerous apology videos over the past few months about their predatory monetization practices doing exactly what they are apologizing for, while they are apologizing.

It also dampens the fact that two weeks after the Yak Track launched, Jagex overhauled the way daily quests in RuneScape work because they saw players getting indignant about the tedium of taking excessive time away every day for dailies that didn’t really reward them. Yep, Jagex will overhaul a system so you don’t need to talk to an NPC to turn in a daily task while at the same time instituting another system that forces you to mine three thousand coal for 1/50th of a reward tier.

I’d like to believe Jagex’s thousandth apology and promise to do better when it comes to predatory microtransactions, but they could at least wipe the crumbs off of their face before promising that they’ll stop stealing from the cookie jar.

RuneScape Reduces DailyScape Grind


DailyScape is the not-exactly-positive name given to RuneScape by players who are somewhat fed up with the game’s daily grind. Not so much over the game itself, which is a massive grind no matter where you look in it, but over Jagex’s insistence on daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that start to feel more like busy work than something worth accomplishing.

This month Jagex took aim at daily challenges, a feature that is often long and tedious, requires the player to hand over their creations, and go out of their way to complete the task. Imagine being told to make hundreds of bows only to hand them over for a reward kinda worth the value of the goods that went into it. With this week’s update, RuneScape daily challenges will be more manageable and consistently rewarding;

“So, to solve this issue we’ve simply increased player agency. Instead of having several Challenges per skill, most of the time there will now be only one. This single Challenge will require you to interact with the skill in a manner of your choosing. You might be asked to run five laps of an Agility Course, but you’re free to pick which one. Or maybe you’ll need to cut 28 logs – if so, you’ll be able to choose from whichever trees you like.”

The daily challenge rework blog post can be found here.

Old School RuneScape Suffers Major Technical Difficulties Over Weekend


(Update: Old School RuneScape underwent maintenance this morning that appears to have fixed the issue)

If you have tried to play Old School RuneScape this weekend, especially over mobile, odds are your experience has been less than desirable. Absolutely horrible more like.

Long story short, Old School RuneScape has been suffering issues causing the game to be completely unplayable for many people on mobile and the official client and Jagex has yet to figure out what is causing the problem or the million dollar question of how to fix it. The last update to an alert posted on December 7 notes that the issue is still being looked into, but as of midnight on December 9 the problem has yet to be fixed.

The issues are still actively being investigated and resolved. We’ve also edited the article to reflect the issues that some players are experiencing with the desktop client. We’re also aware of issues affecting some Old School RuneScape players when attempting to connect to the official Old School RuneScape game client. These players are experiencing long loading times, with ‘Loading configuration’, ‘Loading application resources’ and ‘Loading application’ all taking a long time. Our SysAdmin and our Game Engine teams are investigating and are working on resolving the issues as a matter of priority.

In addition to the connection problems, players who have been able to log in have reported major server lag with some servers suffering more than others.

Source: RuneScape

Super Rewards Is Dead, RuneScape Survey Takers Grieve


It is with great sorrow that I post the news at 1:30a.m. on Tuesday December 3 that Super Rewards, the place most of you RuneScape players went to for (occasionally) free keys in return for signing your name, email, and phone number to some of the internet’s shadiest scam artists, has disappeared.

If you head over to RuneScape and try to earn some free loot box keys with the Super Rewards service, you’ll be met with the message above. Now if you want your identity stolen in return for some RuneScape keys you’ll need to go with Jagex’s surviving partner, Peanut Labs. Peanuts, an apt description of the size of the payout.

 

Jagex Grinds Out 120 Farming/Herblore This Week


Jagex this week gave its players a new reason to grind out those levels and farm those farms with the expansion of two skills and introduction of new content to RuneScape.

Foremost on the list of additions this week is the expansion of the Farming and Herblore skills, increasing the skill caps to 120 and enabling an array of new content to make that level grind a little bit more worth the time. On the farming side, players now have access to the Ranch Out Of Time (Blue Cheese Out Of Time for players in Buffalo) where players can farm and breed dinosaurs in a new set of farming paddocks located on Anachronia. In addition to dinosaurs, players will also be able to grow a set of new plants and access new farming plots.

On the herblore side, leveling past 99 will give access to potion bombs.

“As players work towards 120 Farming, they’ll unlock new content at every single level: new mushrooms, new cactus patches, and the elusive Money Tree await. They’ll be able to use all these new ingredients to make potent potions that provide short-but-powerful benefits on a whole range of attributes, and the new herblore skills will allow players to concoct something even more explosive: bombs!  Sticky bombs, poison bombs, vulnerability bombs and more – the higher your Herblore level, the more efficient you will become at crafting bombs. Have fun on our rather ferocious farm!”

This week also marks the launch of the Yak Track, RuneScape’s answer to the titular battle pass. \

Source: RuneScape

RuneScape: Yak Tracks, Premier Club, Double Experience


RuneScape; it’s a game where you scape runes. There’s a bunch of stuff coming to RuneScape in the next week or so and MMO Fallout is here to detail them on another website.

First up is an update on activity pets. At the end of October Jagex launched a poll asking people for their opinions on which activity pets (pets obtained through activities) they would like to see added into the game. The verdict? People would rather not see them at all.

“While these opinions aren’t necessarily shared by everyone, we were still surprised about the number of negative posts.”

While not cancelled entirely, the number of activity pets has been reduced from six to three plus a Runescore (achievement score) pet.

Second up on the docket is the Yak Track. Yak Track is another rendition of the season pass formula and appears to be exclusive to the Premier Club membership. The Yak Track launched on November 25 and will task players with completing a variety of tasks in return for cosmetic rewards.

“We’re really confident that we’ve packed a huge amount of value into Yak Track. In fact, if you’re a Premier Club member and you make your way along the whole track, you’ll receive a whopping 33 cosmetics including four pets, three outfits, six animation overrides and 15 weapons!”

And speaking of Premier Club, it’s back! The top tier of the Premier Club runs for $89.99 this year and includes a year’s membership, 150,000 loyalty points, 1 additional key daily, 3 Premier Club tokens, 50% discount on Runemetrics, the premier artifact, and more. For more information, check out the official website.

And finally, another double experience weekend kicks off this week. Instead of cramming you into a two or three day window, Jagex is giving players 36 hours of double experience spread out to your leisure over the course of ten days.

“Double XP Weekend: Extended is designed to be a lot more relaxing than before. This time you’re all going to be able to maximise every one of the precious Double XP hours but without the worry of cramming it all into a single weekend. Instead, Double XP Weekend: Extended will offer 36 hours of Double XP goodness but spread over the course of 10 days! That’s seven extra days!”

Simply log in after November 22 and you can use your 36 hours at your convenience, as long as it’s within ten days.

Old School RuneScape Launches Twisted League


Get those peppercorns out, because it’s time to grind.

Jagex today has released the latest game mode for Old School RuneScape in the form of the Twisted League. Twisted League is a temporary game mode that throws players on an ironman character and locks them to the land of Kourend and Kebos (main world not accessible). Ironman of course means no trading, no picking up others drops, and no auction house. To assist players in this temporary league, base experience is increased by 5x and shops will carry more items and restock at an accelerated rate.

So what is the point of the League? As you complete tasks you gain points that can be used to unlock powerful buffs from a relic such as infinite run energy. Cosmetic items can be unlocked in the main game based on your performance in the league, and future leagues will have exclusive worlds that can be visited based on your performance in prior leagues. Otherwise, it’s all about the prestige.

For more information on Twisted League, check out the official website.

Jagex Will Discuss RuneScape Monetization On November 5 Stream


RuneScape. Financially the game is in a fantastic position; back in May we discussed how Jagex had posted a 9.3% increase in overall revenue with subscription numbers at their highest ever in the game’s history thanks to the launch of Old School mobile.

But all has not been great on the western front. MMO Fallout has reported for several years on how RuneScape’s monetization efforts have been very successful, but also very polarizing in the community. Every couple of years, Jagex reaches out to try to pull on the brakes of the game’s heavy microtransactions and it looks like it’s time for another heart to heart. Community animosity has been high ever since a UK parliamentary report from September specifically called out the developer when discussing egregious microtransactions, pointing to one player who had spent more than $62,000 USD.

On November 5, several Jagex staff will host a stream discussing the future of microtransactions in RuneScape. Those of you placing bets should keep in mind that Jagex receives one third of its revenue from these microtransactions.

“Tune in at 5PM GMT on November 5th for a very important livestream. Mods Osborne, Warden and MIC will be on the couch discussing plans for the future of MTX in RuneScape.

Ask your questions in the Discord room, on the forums, or in the dedicated Reddit thread – or email Mod Warden directly at AskModWarden@jagex.com. Your opinion is important to us, especially when it comes to controversial topics like this one – so let us hear your thoughts!”

Source: RuneScape