What do we learn from RuneScape?

[Telemediocrity]

Raph's mention of RuneScape in his really interesting hour long interview got me thinking - RuneScape is one of the biggest MMO success stories that gets disproportionately little attention from the "big guys".  They've got hundreds of thousands of subscribers, which, while only paying 5 bucks a month, still affords them a better cashflow than many supposedly "professional" MMOs, and presumably with less overhead.

Their game mechanics are, as Raph noted, the closest thing to UO out there right now.  There's plenty of PK.  And yet, they're reaching a huge demographic that skews much younger (With, I'd wager from my limited experience, a higher percentage of females than the average MMO).

What does RuneScape teach us about the conventional wisdom of the players all being a bunch of graphics whores, or that Diku mechanics are what sells?

Also, RuneScape is the only major MMO currently playable by Java.  Since a version of Java is what most modern mobile phones are running, RuneScape is scarily well positioned to be the first truly mobile MMO, though if that happens it'll probably happen in Asia first. (RuneScape has a Japanese client, not sure about Korean...)

I know I'm only pointing out the interesting stuff and ignoring the factors that would say there's less than meets the eye to RuneScape's success, but I think that it's clear there's some need for a corrective - for people who like to pontificate about the future of the MMO industry, we really give RuneScape disproportionately little attention compared to its significance.

[Morfiend]

I was surfing Bruce's mmogchart the other day and noticed that he had runescape as the number 2 or 3 in total subscribers, under WoW. This supprised me since I had never heard of it. I tried to look in to it a little bit, but rapidly lost intrest.

[Yoru]

A nitpick. Puzzle Pirates is also a Java MMO. I don't know whether or not you want to count that as major. I've yet to try out Runescape (it's on the list of stuff to do), though, so hopefully this thread gives a taste.

[Venkman]

A lot of people have been saying this, and not just about Runescape. There's many MMOGs that don't make the cut because they either weren't built by those who came from MUDs, or didn't make the cut for MMOGchart.

Both lacks are easy to understand.

• MUD makers are making MUDs, with graphics. They talk to people who like those things. Their business model and production pipeline are built for these, as is their revenue expectations. They are, effectively, making games for themselves.
• MMOGcharts covers only those games that have as most/all of their business the collection of monthly subscription fees. That's all SirBruce can get comparative data from, which is why I think it so funny how myopic some in this industry are, most notably the "Challenges facing MMOs" piece.

I call it "myopic" because there's a whole slew of MMOGs out there and coming that are not coming through BioWare Austin nor Brad. And they're so disconnected from the establishment that they're not even seeking the advice of SB nor Nick Yee. The genre is growing both through the establishment and through others who are adding layers to it completely separately.

Runescape is an example of a game that spans both the establishment and the new thinking. A better example would be Gaia Online and Mapplestory, things like Space Cowboy and Habbo Hotel. These games might not appeal to us here, but they've got huge numbers, feature ingame sales, and are hits in other areas.

So it's important to separate thinking between "games I'd like" and "games by which the genre will be measured in a year or few". The latter is not always going to be the former.

[shiznitz]

People pay Nick Yee for advice? That is scary.

[Nebu]

My daughter (12 years old) plays Runescape with her friends for hours.  I made an account to play with her and went insane after about 5 mins.  I decided to watch her play for an hour or so and see what the appeal was from her perspective:

1) She had a fun place to chat with her friends. 

2) She could buy outfits and customize her appearance.

3) Entry into the game was very easy.

4) You could play the game for free even though not all of the content was available.

For her, runescape is a chatroom with perks.  That's the best way I can describe it.  It's just different enough from real life to make for a nice escape world where she can chat with friends.  If there were a free 3d game that was free and had similar features, I'm sure she'd play that instead.

[Engels]

Sounds like she's ready for EVE 

[Yegolev]

She does seem to enjoy the general activities surrounding running a crappy 0.0 alliance.

Edit: I notice that a large town and swamp are named Lumbridge, and they are on the Lum River.

[Xilren's Twin]

I'd said we learned some of the same lessons Pardo touched on with WoW....

New and Improved, “Keys to Success”
-Easy to Learn, difficult to Master
-PvP
-Low system Requirements
-Solo-able until endgame
-Seamless Newbie Experience
-Get players right in the action
-Easy to find quests

And of course, the main difference; free play for probably over half of the content and LOW monthly fee.  Get tons of people trying it, and those who like it probably will stick around for the low cost to see the top part of your game.

Runescape seems to be huge among the grade school age kids (1-5th grade); when the move to middle school where WoW is king.
Gateway drug.

Xilren

[HaemishM]

Even my 11-year old nephew plays Runescape. Runescape should teach us another iteration of the Pokemon principle: it doesn't have to be good for thousands upon thousands of kids to like it, but it mostly likely DOES have to offend our delicate adult/mature sensibilities.

[Margalis]

Exactly. My rules for success:

Aim for the 9-12 demographic.

[damijin]

Runescape is playable from behind your office firewall, thanks to our good ol' friend port 80.

This alone should be reason enough to make browser based MMOs.

Edit: but on the other hand, I could only play for about 15 minutes before I decided that working was more fun.

[Viin]

The graphics hurt my eyes. I'm not a graphics whore, but I'd prefer no graphics to bad graphics.

[Righ]

Runescape is playable from behind your office firewall, thanks to our good ol' friend port 80.

This alone should be reason enough to make browser based MMOs.

You don't need a browser to go through port 80. And unless there's a proxy on the firewall, you don't even need to tunnel through HTTP.

[damijin]

Runescape is playable from behind your office firewall, thanks to our good ol' friend port 80.

This alone should be reason enough to make browser based MMOs.

You don't need a browser to go through port 80. And unless there's a proxy on the firewall, you don't even need to tunnel through HTTP.

don't go trying to teach a man to fish, you'll put people out of a job

[Telemediocrity]

I think you guys are selling RuneScape way too short by dismissing it as "that game those little kids play".  I think there's more to it than that, and just as people long overestimated how young gamers were, I think it's a reflection of our social circles (We hang with the kind of people who would be playing WoW or EQ2, disproportionately) that the only people we know playing RuneScape are our little cousins/siblings.  (It's true for me too - four of my little cousins play RuneScape)

They don't just use it as a glorified chatroom though - though disproportionately, that's what the girls seem to use it for.  The differing usage habits of the only MMO popular among young girls and young boys in America is a really interesting thing to behold, and someone should be effin' writing about it already.

RuneScape is a hybrid between Sandbox and Diku gameplay in much the same way that Asheron's Call is - the Diku gameplay is there, and sometimes serves a gatekeeper function, but by giving the player simply enough varied shit to do (as opposed to variations on the same theme) there's sort of emergent sandbox functionality.

Toontown wouldn't really work for studying how young kids respond to MMOs and socialize themselves into virtual worlds, because it's so narrow.  But RuneScape gives the freedom to both slay the dragon and customize your outfit / be a famous cook / spend time learning to portal your friends to cool places or chop down a forest or mine materials for crafting, or just sit around fishing.  It's all there, and so you can get a lot more data from the choices people make.

If child development psychologists interested in virtual worlds haven't contacted Jagex yet, they're really missing out.

That said, RuneScape brings a lot to the table simply as a MMO, independent of its appeal to the young.  Its quests are not merely hack-and-slash; some of them are branching, with your decision having a lasting impact on how NPCs treat you.  Some of them involve lever puzzles, challenges remniscent of old adventure games where you have to figure out how items go together to solve the quest, etc.  They all work on a principle that's somewhat immersion-breaking, but nonetheless interesting in practice; semi-instancing.  You're all in the same world solving the same lever puzzle, but a door that appears open to you might be closed for someone else, and so it will sometimes appear that people are walking through closed doors - other people can't solve the puzzle for you.

Also, the really broad range of freedom RuneScape has is second only to UO in many ways - you have player justice, crafting that's not just "make the widget" but allows you to fish, cut down trees, cook, etc. in ways that make it feel like a fleshed-out world, a magic system slightly remniscent of Meridian 59, with regents of differing rarities...

Not to mention, it's just a game with a shitload of content.  Whoever wrote that half of it was free couldn't be more wrong; five or six years ago, more than half the content was free.  They've kept adding paid content since then, and now maybe 75% of the content is behind the pay-wall, without anything being moved there that was once free.  There's just plain a ton of stuff.

It's nice how freeform the game can be.  There's incentives for every type of player; an extensive PvP system (Everything from CtF to duels to PvP+ No Man's Land that's directly analogous to 0.0 space in Eve) for the killers, the glorified chatroom and appearance options for the socializers (as mentioned on this thread), a huge amount of quests and constantly expanding/adding land masses for the explorers (Back when I played, every few months it'd be "Oh, there's a new island with a bunch of stuff on it going live this week") and incentives to explore (A special guild you can only enter if you've completed all different quests, instead of just grinding up levels), and the Achievers get their dings at a frequent pace in much the same way UO provided them, along with some uber-bosses if you're into that sort of thing.

RuneScape's strength has primarily been in the dev team's approach.  Most dev teams are about adding new content that's along the same lines as the old, tweaking balance, etc.  Jagex (The RuneScape team) does some of that, but perhaps due to their simplified dev platform, their emphasis has always been adding new types of content, modes of play, whole islands and ecosystems, etc.  The end result is that every time you step away from a year, you come back and the game doesn't just seem the same + mudflation and balance tweaks; it feels expanded.  That feeling of the world's constant expansion is a pretty cool thing.  New content is rarely just "more of the same", and it creates a diversity of experience that feels really sand-boxy.


I played for a few months about 5 years ago, and then quit.  But I've followed the game semi-closely ever since, because it struck me as a really remarkable and unique MMO.

I think what Raph said about the "It's not an innovation we made, so we'll ignore it" attitude among the industry is really true.  The most interesting MMOs (EVE, Asheron's Call, Puzzle Pirates, UO, City of Heroes, and RuneScape among them) rarely get their unique features copied by other games, even though they become fan favorites.  Nobody else is doing EVE's advancement based on time played, or AC's allegiance system and over a thousand dungeons when other games maybe have a couple dozen, or Puzzle Pirates', well, everything, or City of Heroes' travel powers, or RuneScape's emphasis on expanding the game with new systems rather than just new content.

It seems like it's always the boring features that build incrementally on each other (We'll have a grind, but less grind!) and the innovative ones that get done once, everyone likes them, and then nobody tries them ever again.

[Slyfeind]

I can see the appeal of it. Not for me, though. I wonder if the hundreds of thousands of accounts includes the non-subscribers, because I'm not cancelling. I may want to go back to it, just like Space Cowboy SUCCESSOK~!! so I'm contributing to their enormous playerbase.

[Telemediocrity]

The hundreds of thousands number you hear tossed around is strictly paying subscribers.

Also, someone in this thread mentioned MapleStory?

In Korea, MapleStory is their RuneScape in terms of capturing the young audience.  There are a ton of product tie-ins all over the place; I was on a cruise of the Han river, and my friend was looking for something non-alcoholic to drink at the bar - she settled on a MapleStory soda.

Which reminds me: Whoever owns the license missed out huge by not opening a Pokemon MMO a few years ago.  Imagine, literally, a reskinned toontown; exact same game.  That shit would have been off the charts.

[Hellinar]

 I checked out Runescape years ago, intrigued by the Java connection, and found it way too simple. I checked it out again recently, intrigued by the big subscription numbers, and found it had expanded a lot. In particular, the quest writing seemed much better than I recall it being. I’d find myself clicking on the obvious “wrong answer” just so see the often humorous one-liner I would get in response.  That left me feeling the game had been “polished” in the same sense as WoW. I don’t recall doing any quest that didn’t work.

Even more than WoW, they use low end graphics to their best advantage. Sprite based graphics may be ancient, but they do let you create a huge number of outfits at low cost. If you have a powerful computer, it seems like a waste. But if you don’t, you are not left feeling you are just seeing the second rate version of the game. The fact that the graphics are “capped” at such a low level is probably an advantage in their market. You may be able to get your parents to pay $5 a month for the game. But opening up the family computer for new hardware might be a tougher sell. That isn't needed in Runescape.

[StGabe]

I think Runescape both gets overestimated and underestimated based on what ideas the person in question is trying to sell.

More than anything I think it's a new market that is undersaturated and underexploited.  And so one, not terribly high quality game is doing a good job of soaking up a big audience.  Give it a few years and there will be 5+ products in that market competing for shares.

The lesson is the same lesson learned again in again in any changing market: new audiences are right around the corner and the first people to find them will make some money.

[damijin]

Somehow I doubt the people behind Runescape were shooting for the audience that they got. The graphics aren't really cutesy or childish in the way that people who are really trying to get kids interested usually make them. It seems to me that some guys just wanted to see if making a browser based Java MMO would work. All of a sudden they had kids flocking to their free game, so they just went with it. Now they make lots of money.

So far I have yet to see many companies  in the west *TRY* for this market and actually succeed in getting it. Toontown is too restrictive and cute for 12 year olds who want to feel like badasses. Maple story is too simple (though also quite popular over here, all things considering). I guess what I'm trying to say is... Runescape is of most interest to me because it seems like an accident. They gave all the freedom that an "adult" MMO would need, and they found out that it's exactly what kids want. Which really isn't all that much of a secret, I think it's just that big companies are afraid to give it to them. The last thing they need is a lawsuit from some parents because their kid got molested in toontown, or something worse.

[Margalis]

Another issue about the casual market - how much money a year will casual gamers spend?

A guy like Schild might buy 2-3 games a month. Sims players probably will not. A lot of casual games may do well now because as was pointed out, the market is undersaturated.

[stray]

A guy like Schild might buy 23 games a month.

Fixed.

[Nebu]

Here's what I think I've learned from playing Runescape:

1) When it comes to gaming, young players have lower standards than more experienced players.

2) Free games with a chat interface and some degree of character customization will attract a decent sized player base.

3) They will stick around if you give them loot to collect and monsters to kill.

4) You can never have too many players with anime or LotR names.

I've played like every mmog released and a few never released.  I could not leave this game fast enough.  My daughter enjoys it and for that reason, I'll do my best to not be too negative.  I still can't get over the fact that it reminded me of Rogue (the ascii version) with the WoW general chat channel affixed.

[MahrinSkel]

Oddly enough, my 9-year-old reacted to it like most older gamers: "Looks awful, too boring," and went back to playing WoW.  I think it's fairly accurate to class it as a "gateway game", something that those that can't afford a full-on MMO play.  The question is if they will graduate out of it into a "real" (meaning AAA production values) MMO.

--Dave

[Signe]

One of my best friends played Runescape for a while.  He would probably enjoy something like EQ2 or WoW more but he doesn't run anything but Linux on any of his computers.  Old Linux, at that. 

[Nebu]

Oddly enough, my 9-year-old reacted to it like most older gamers: "Looks awful, too boring," and went back to playing WoW.  I think it's fairly accurate to class it as a "gateway game", something that those that can't afford a full-on MMO play.  The question is if they will graduate out of it into a "real" (meaning AAA production values) MMO.

--Dave

That's the funny thing.  My daughter has played DAoC, EQ2, and CoH in short stints.  She always returns to Runescape.  I think it's a combination of familiarity and the fact that she has established a social network there.  I always knew there was something to that whole social/retention thingy.

[Venkman]

Exactly. My rules for success:

Aim for the 9-12 demographic.

You and a whole bunch of companies :)

[HaemishM]

Oddly enough, my 9-year-old reacted to it like most older gamers: "Looks awful, too boring," and went back to playing WoW.  I think it's fairly accurate to class it as a "gateway game", something that those that can't afford a full-on MMO play.  The question is if they will graduate out of it into a "real" (meaning AAA production values) MMO.

--Dave

That's the funny thing.  My daughter has played DAoC, EQ2, and CoH in short stints.  She always returns to Runescape.  I think it's a combination of familiarity and the fact that she has established a social network there.  I always knew there was something to that whole social/retention thingy.

It may have more to do with "your first MMOG where you generate a social network is always the one you compare others to." In Dave's daughter's case, she played WoW first and Runescape wasn't better, plus she had a social network in WoW. Nebu's daughter had the social network in Runescape.

[Yegolev]

Another issue about the casual market - how much money a year will casual gamers spend?

A guy like Schild might buy 2-3 games a month. Sims players probably will not. A lot of casual games may do well now because as was pointed out, the market is undersaturated.

I can give you some insight to what a The Sims player might do.  My wife hates EA with a Schild-like passion, but she just can't quit The Sims as if it was Jack Fucking Twist.  She buys each expansion on release.  Yes, even though she knows each one is a bug-ridden turd that could very well cause her game to break.  EA has also innovated the expansion pack and produces things called content packs, which is basically a $19.95 CD with a bunch of furniture, wallpapers, outfits, etc.  My wife buys these on release day as well, cursing EA to the depths of hell all the way.  She subscribes to several third-party sites that do nothing but sell furniture, clothes, floors, etc., for something like two or three dollars a month (actually these subscription prices may be going up, as MOG subs did a few years back).  She also buys items a-la-carte.  Honestly, I'm glad that the market for The Sims crap hasn't expanded to huge proportions because I have a fucking mortgage to pay.

Now, is my wife a casual gamer?  In the prehistoric definition we often use, yes (aw, it's the fucking Sims, dude).  However, if she played more games than just The Sims on her Alienware Area 51-M with the same fervor, she'd be one of the hardcore.

[agathon]

It is kind of funny how people knock RuneScape for its graphics. It looks better than UO to me.

My 8-year-old plays RuneScape, and enjoys it for the sandbox + lots of content combination. I've played it with her a bit, and the amount of content in the game puts most "grown up" MMOGs to shame.

[Venkman]

Another issue about the casual market - how much money a year will casual gamers spend?

A guy like Schild might buy 2-3 games a month. Sims players probably will not. A lot of casual games may do well now because as was pointed out, the market is undersaturated.

The market is pretty huge actually, but like Runescape and casual browser-based MMOs in general, it's for a different demographic than the immersive EQ-playalikes. Casual games are primarily for 35+ women right now (has been for a few years, so not new knowledge). Most of the money was made, for awhile, through trial downloads that were converted to full purchases after some duration of demoing the game. Across the industry having a conversion rate of 2% was deemed a big success. 2% of the currently-estimated 50+ million casual online gamers is almost 1mil purchases. But when you consider services can be pushing out as many as 1-2 million downloads a day, that money adds up.

It's not immersive/harder-core monthly fee or microtransaction numbers, but then, casual online games cost mere fractions of a million to make, and are basically one-off games for the most part, more like single-player games in most cases. There's been an upsurge over the last year or so of online multiplayer type arrangements that either carry extra premium when purchased or are part of a monthly access fee one signs up to pay. But the vast majority of games are single-purchases with maybe some sort of uploaded leaderboard type high score system still. For now.

MMORPGs generate a lot more money per player than COGs, with microtransaction-based games generating far more per account than the flat-monthly-fee ones (easy to understand: few actually track what they spend. Think M:TG versus WoW, or text-messaging versus just a monthly service fee. Stuff adds up after the fact, and most don't track their spending well). But there's simply fewer people playing MMOs and casual online games of various types. Funny thing too is that in casual games, people do typically spend what we'd consider "hardcore" number of hours per week playing. It's just that unlike in MMOs, the need to spend that time isn't waved in your face. You could spend 30 hours a week playing Diner Dash 27 by accident. At endgame WoW, you almost know you need to do that to play at a certain level (particularly if you wanted to Raid and be high Rank PvP).

I laugh when people talk about WoW being a "mass market" game. It's certainly less fundamentally alienating than EQ, but "mass market" is a completely different breed. There's some overlap in behavior, but the motivations are as different as the business models. Puzzle Pirates does not span this gap. It would be more appropriate to say Xbox Live Arcade will eventually with more integrated community features.

[Simond]

I laugh when people talk about WoW being a "mass market" game. It's certainly less fundamentally alienating than EQ, but "mass market" is a completely different breed. There's some overlap in behavior, but the motivations are as different as the business models. Puzzle Pirates does not span this gap. It would be more appropriate to say Xbox Live Arcade will eventually with more integrated community features.

Well, bearing in mind that WoW has outsold every PC game this century except The Sims (2) and Diablo 2, I don't see how it could get much bigger within the PC market.

[schild]

The lists of best-selling games never includes stuff like Snood, or Bejeweled, or Zuma. I'd love to see the numbers on the independently distributed shit.

[Venkman]

Well, bearing in mind that WoW has outsold every PC game this century except The Sims (2) and Diablo 2, I don't see how it could get much bigger within the PC market

It really tells you something when The Sims and D2, which didn't launch in anywhere near as many territories, has still sold more boxes. But then, WoW has made a lot more many than either title, probably both together, including all of their expansions.

But that's irrelevant anyway. The number one Console titles outsell the number of PC titles by a margin of 4 to 1, at least. And yet, even those are more hardcore than mass.

By some measures, the average casual online game through a COG network sells more per year than the average PC title.