Finally, some semblance of common sense has struck the dense people who run Jagex. I hereby announce Jagex's best update yet; releasing a 2007 version of RuneScape which is free-to-play for everyone. In other words, their best update is having undone eight years of updates. This really begs the question, what the hell are the people at Jagex doing?
I won't speak for other industries, but in the video game industry where customer's perception of a product is of utmost importance, Jagex has been nothing short of abysmal in pleasing their customers. Never have I seen another MMORPG who time and again releases wildly unpopular updates only to remove them a couple of years down the road.
Jagex has made all the wrong moves since RuneScape was created, but perhaps the Evolution of Combat update was the last straw for many people. Jagex even resorted to recreating a shell of the former combat system within RuneScape 3 itself, where players could select between three combat systems. Does Jagex not know how hard they've failed when they have to come up with such a remedy for the horrendously bad Evolution of Combat update?
A large reason that Old School RuneScape is seeing considerable success is because RuneScape 3, for lack of a better word, sucks. I'll admit it, the graphics are obviously better, fullscreen gameplay is much more pleasing to the eye, and the resizable HUD elements, especially the minimap, is very useful for making the dreary task of navigation much easier. I won't discount the technicalities, I'd much rather have RuneScape 3 without Evolution of Combat over 2007 RuneScape.
Then we come to the content, which is the heart and soul of any game. Great games were made purely out of text, as the gaming industry has seen with text-based RPGs. In this regard, Jagex has done a fine job in utterly destroying RuneScape, with the introduction of updates which fundamentally changed what people originally liked about the game. Besides the dreadful Evolution of Combat itself, Jagex has brainstormed various other brilliant ideas to destroy the game such as removal of free trade, introduction of pay-to-win measures and various other ways to milk cash out of players in order to enjoy certain advantages in the game. Then, they had to revert their decision on many occasions after the players complained. I absolutely cannot fathom how a company can disregard their players and customers like that.
What is the reasoning behind all the bad decisions made at Jagex? That's something that lies behind closed doors but we can surely speculate. Jagex is majority owned by Insight Venture Partners. It is more than likely not that all these pay-to-win measures were forced upon the developers as a business decision so that the profits would fulfil somebody's KPIs. Orders which came from directors and managers who more likely than not, have never spent a single second getting onto RuneScape and knowing about their product.
And such is the sad state of RuneScape, where the culmination of their updates is one where the last eight years are undone. At least, we get to enjoy RuneScape without that Evolution of Combat crap now. Let's just hope Jagex doesn't think of how to screw up Old School RuneScape, something which they've proven to be too good at.
