Right Debrin, riiight. Jagex is following the path of companies like Perfect World Entertainment. If you've ever played their games, then you already know what grim path this game is headed to. Next thing you know, they'll allow people to sell RS coins for gp. Runescape will turn into a p2w (pay 2 win) type of MMO. Well, SoF seems to be taking that aspect of the game. You can't buy armor and such but you can win loads of xp from lamps.
Must I keep posting this ironic message that your current CEO stated?
“The problem was, a year or so ago, there was -- let me say confusion, as a subtle word -- as to what part of the business was important. I expect the CEO’s focus was just sort of on the profit and loss column, and all of the attention was sort of on "members members members and members conversions" and getting free players to convert to Members by putting members hooks in the free game. Unfortunately that had a really negative effect on the community, as you've taken what was an epic entirely free game and turned it into a sort of demo for the members game which was never the idea.
So unfortunately we had a year where we did that. One of my first orders of business in February was ripping that part out. There are various things we did to “monetize” the free players. Such as serving long-standing free players video ads. Something like 10 or 15 seconds. Which whilst profitable was simply wrong, not in the spirit of the free game, absolutely wrong.”
— Mark Gerhard
28-Aug-2012 21:50:52
