"Our study shows that the maximum global number of active concurrent players for RuneScape is around 250,000. However, this number is strongly driven by the mood of the player base. Figure 2 depicts the number of active concurrent users for RuneScape over a period of two months. A highly unpopular decision issued on 10 December 2007 results in massive account cancelations; the number of active concurrent players drops by over 30,000 units (a quarter of its value) in less than one day. Under intense pressure, the game operators agree to amend the changes; the number of active concurrent players raises again, but to only 95% of the previous value. On 18 December 2007 and on 15 January 2008, the game operators release new content; a period of about one week after each release sees an over 50% surge of the number of active concurrent players"

http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~iosup/mmog08sc.pdf

Also Configurable graph of RuneScape Population (cheers Runescape Reader's Digest Blog )

Thanks Ren for the info.

Good PR = Growth of a Community
Bad PR = Decrease in Community

I'll look into the pdf file more later... that's a lot of charts and information to digest.

Hmm, that is rather interesting.

I was under the impression that all of the "QQ" found on the Runescape boards about how "such and such" update or nerf was going to result in a considerable amount of canceled accounts was just a load of nonsense.

I wonder why that is. Perhaps it has to do with the age demographic of Runescape? I know that even if WoW implements a controversial or ill received update / nerf their numbers generally don't dwindle so easily.

Furthermore, if the demographic is so "flaky" in terms of canceling and reactivating their accounts, I wonder what type of affect Mechscape will have. Do you suppose (metaphorical "suppose" not directed at anyone in specific) that Runescape will encounter a temporary decrease in members?

There will be a number of players that are sure to move to MechScape. I'm sure it will setback their numbers once again but they will be members of MechScape so really it's not winning nor loosing just transferring the members.

If WoW did what RuneScape went though... I'm positive that thousands of members would quit.

In terms of net income, no it won't make a difference if a certain percentage of Runescape players switched to Mechscape. In terms of Runescape's growth, however, could it not be possible for there to be some unintended consequence?

For example, if Mechscape were to receive those players and thus the additional funding, whereas Runescape is no longer as popular, it would be logical for Jagex to focus more on Mechscape. Consequently, those who stayed with Runescape might feel as if their game was the "neglected child."

This is all, of course, just speculation. I wish for it to be noted that this is in no way meant to be hysteria, such as "OH NOES RS IS GOING TO DIE!!111one!!" In fact, I no longer play the game and do not intend to until, perhaps, at a much later date.

Now of course if this worry were to ever reach a Jmod's ears, (s)he would probably respond with something to the effect of, "we have separate teams devoted to each game, and have no intention of decreasing the Runescape development staff in favor of Mechscape."

Nevertheless, looking at this from a purely business perspective it would make sense. Even if Game A and Game B's profits are your own, if Game B is the one making more money, then it has more available funds to grow and develop.

Not to mention that in this case Game B has more potential for growth due to being a new, fresh game devoted to a different demographic and is a genre that has hardly been tapped (seriously, how many major sci-fi mmorpgs exist out there? eve?).

Just as a side note, I am only posting this to spark a hopefully intelligent conversation based on the insight and data presented by Ren. I assumed the thread was devoted to such conversations that pertained to said info and its possible applications.

I somewhat agree with you...

How many of those games are free-to-play, how many pay-to-play, and how many some mixture of both?

Also, how many must be downloaded to play and how many are browser driven downloading only temporary files?

Downloaded games are typically machine specific while browser driven will work on any machine with a supported browser.

Since RS is browser driven and a mixture of players (and I assume MS will follow the same path), weeding out any with a different component mix must be done before comparing otherwise you wind up comparing "apple and oranges" and do not get a true picture.

Alot more than I thought

well it was obvious and still is obvious that less and less players actually play runescape ever since the removal of wilderness and imposition of unfairly low, and even the existence of, trade limits.


Before the trade limits and wilderness removal, everywhere i went there were people on f2p worlds, People were spamming "Bank Sale, No Noobs" or trying to merchant off various items of reasonably high value. Even in P2P there were loads of people selling stuff, such as in seers village.

Nowadays its gotten so horrible that it reminds me of a ghost town, a town that is nearly empty of people if not totally empty. It's gotten so bad and so lonely, i've quit runescape alltogether due to the depressive feelings i get when i walk around and envision/remember what it used to be, where all the players used to stand and makes sales/purchases, only to flash back to the present and find it empty, dead, devoid of life. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The only thing that really kept me going was the free trade, but eh, that went out the door and i tried my hand in the ge, but even that go boring and useless, it takes way too long to make proper money.

I believe it, whenever they fail-update I quit for a few months.

Actually if the price is higher than RuneScape (which according to MMG it probably will be) then it will be a win for Jagex, ideally they would keep customers on all three services.

Edit: Old topic is old.

Wow......i didnt realize this topic was uber old until you just brought it up Hay

Quick aside that I always notice whenever this topic comes around is everyone always points out that x-thousands of members 'quit' the game.

See, I stepped back and looked at it a different way. Yes I'm sure there were many legitimate players that did decide that RuneScape was no longer for them when the changes were made. However, the real impact to the player numbers, in my opinion and I'm sure there's numbers locked in a vault in Jagex that may support my idea is this: The huge number of 'players' that quit weren't players. They were the bots and the sweatshoppers and the gold farmers that were no longer able to operate as they once could.

These aren't flight by night businesses without direction; these are multimillion dollar businesses in their own right. There are hundreds of companies. It takes little effect to start a team of macroing bots on a world.

Here's some figures that I've pulled out of thin air but they still might explain some of my thinking.

1 gold farming company employs 50 people: each of those 5 people are responsible for 100 bots: 5000 bots running around: half are members maybe: 2500member accounts that 'quit' due to the changes made to combat RWT.

Now times that by the hundreds of the companies that existed before the RWT changes - pretty much converges on the number of players that 'quit'.

I'll reiterate that this is my opinion and the numbers above are just made up but this seriously would not surprise me.

To help the debate here are some figures from Jagex:

"during 2007 the company took more than 525 billion farmed gold pieces out of its game world... We had tens of thousands of accounts in China that were just bots working the game to make gold and then sell it" (source)

"the clean-up cost RuneScape 60,000 subscribers" (source) <Note: Article does not estimate what proportion of those were bots>.

Very interesting numbers Ren, I still think getting rid of all those bots was worth the cost of any one who quit, and i think alot of those accounts were bot accounts.