Runescape is jacking up their subscription prices next month, going from like 12 bucks to 14 bucks a month. The increases range from 20% to 56% in price depending on currency. Players are PISSED about it especially since the company got bought out by some investment firm earlier this year, and they see it as a shameless cash grab.
Here’s a mega thread about the price increase on Reddit. Overwhelmingly negative feedback on the price increase
https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/s/samPRjFSCn
So I decided to make a post on Reddit basically asking in a neutral way if it would deter people from playing… And I was met with the most hostile, toxic keyboard warriors basically telling me “maybe stop working at McDonalds and you can afford it” and defending the company for the price increase. After an hour, my post was removed, and I was banned for a year without any explanation.
I’m honestly in shock that I would get banned just for asking a question, like they are that angry about people talking about the price increase?
Not a big surprise on the Huffman Shitshow. A lot of subs over there are insanely toxic. But yeah, a ban for that? That’s crazy.
I didn’t even know RuneScape had a subscription! I think I briefly played it about 15 years ago. Good game, I just don’t have the time to play it, unfortunately. I assume you play? What’s the community like over there?
I just looked up their pricing and it makes sense for them to have an optional subscription. $14 a month is in line with other similar games (e.g. wow). Would be nice if they had a couple of tiers of subscription. Maybe a $7 and a $14. But that might complicate things. How much can you do on the free mode?
My brother has been playing for years and has a few paid accounts. Here’s how he explained it to me. All paid accounts had their prices locked in until you cancelled them. His first, and main, account had a price of $5 a month because he first bought it 15 years ago.
There are also “ironman” modes that exist in the main game. It’s an option at character creation that will restrict your account from trading with other players forcing you to obtain all items on your own instead of just buying them from the trade board. Since you need to make a new character, this is also another payment. My brother has two ironman accounts.
There are “leagues” which are new temporary servers where the rules are different and XP gain is incredibly fast. You’re given tasks to complete before the “league” ends and are awarded cosmetic items based on how much you complete. This requires its own paid account to play. My brother has one of these too.
In total he spent about $20 a month on the game for his various accounts. This change to the subscription will set every single one of his subscriptions to $14 a month raising his monthly payment to something like $56 a month which is ridiculous. He plans on ending all of his subscriptions since there is now no incentive to stay subscribed (the price is no longer locked in). So my brother, a long time and devoted customer, will play the game less and give less money because Jagex is hoping most people like him won’t go through the hassle of unsubscribing.
He, and lots of other long time players, are hoping that Jagex does what other MMOs do and allow multiple accounts for one subscription price.
You don’t need a separate account to play Leagues or any other temporary game modes. You are correct however that you do need to pay a separate membership for each character unless you’re okay with that character only being able to do F2P activities.
20 years ago it was $5 and maybe like 10% of skills were locked behind it. I noticed very little impact from it. But I’m pretty sure end game stuff was locked. IIRC, dragon armor was locked and may have been the best armor.
I’d be surprised if that general model changed significantly.
The model hasn’t changed, but as development of new content has continued, 95% of new content is subscription only.
That said, I can’t speak for Runescape “proper” aka Runescape 3, the current “main” version. I’ve heard a lot of concerning things about all sorts of mobile game style predatory shit going on there.
I’ve only played Runescape 2, now called “Old School Runescape”, which is a fork of the game from (I think) 2006.
Essentially, right around that time they completely overhauled combat, stat progression, and a bunch of other stuff, and called it Runescape 3. A lot of people didn’t like the changes and started hosting custom servers from before the changes.
Eventually they made an official version, called it Old School Runescape, and have been developing it side by side with “normal” Runescape since.
Old School isn’t predatory in my opinion. Outside of occasional “leagues” on special servers with specific challenges applied, there’s no FOMO. The f2p game has plenty of content enjoyable on its own. The subscription just unlocks a mountain of more content, including alternative ways to level up through early game. Technically you can advance faster with a subscription, but that’s due to having more options to turn into an over optimized plan, not some shit exp multiplier or something.
Shout out to the open source Runescape remakes
https://rsc.vet/ - 2003 era remake
https://2009scape.org - 2009 era remake
https://darkan.org/ - 2012 era remake
There are other open source remakes (2004, 2006) but they’re not as popular. I’ve actually contributed upstream to all 3 of the above, it’s a very nice community!
Oh no a massive time sink
(thanks! I have a lot of nostalgia for Runescape but don’t want to waste months of my life, so I’m considering getting a single player server up and running with a like 10x exp multiplier. Now to decide on 2003, 2009 or 2012…)
https://vidyascape.org/ also anon client
I just found an quite old repo https://github.com/Terremer/VidyaScape and issue tracker with website code on https://gitlab.com/vscape
It seems the source is closed, but you can ask on irc.rizon.net OR odelvidyascape@gmail.com.
Thanks!
I played it a looong time ago, mined a lot lol.
Tried it later and it was more 3D-ish and I didn’t like that very much.
Any idea which one I should try out?
Cheers!
I would say play whichever era you played in the past :P. If you played RuneScape classic, OpenRSC (the 2003 remake) is the best, otherwise 2009scape is a good shout. You could also check out 2004scape.org, their beta starts soon
Those things normally get shutdown for copyright related claims though, no?
The difference between $12 and $14 is not equal to 50% of $12.
There are other currencies in the world.
Euro is going from 8 to 12.5, which is higher than 50%
That’s 36% but I’m sure it’s higher in some other currencies. 50% would have to be 16.
edit: This is the worst comment I have ever left on this website. I’m leaving it up so people can see what happens when you do math early in the morning. Embrace it, learn from it, live with it.
Thats fair, but equally you should read the post.
Like you have never had to dilute a clickbaity title before…
“Invest Firms” are doing this all over. My company as well as several other prominent southwest construction companies just got bought out, too.
This is the end game of capitalism. Firms buying other firms to squeeze every dime out of them. Its about to get fucken bumpy.
I mean this with all the love in the world, but you’re surprised that mods, in a gaming subreddit, are complete assholes?
This last year reddit has just been fucking trash all around, and I just… quit going, even though I still have things that the Fediverse just plain can’t provide any useful content for.
Not because of anything spez did, or whatever stupid-ass money seeking bullshit they’re trying next, but just that the content is crap and has gone from interesting and useful to trash. For example, the selfhosted subreddits went from cool software to being stuffed full of people who do NOTHING but argue about hosting email, and marketers telling you how easy it is to host something you can use to spam people. Just a degradation from good to shit.
And, even when it’s not immediately obviously worse, it’s still full of shitty bots, and the mods run around like they’re fucking royalty and we should lick their boots.
I barely browse there anymore cuz well, I’m banned from the site as a whole for apparently being racist by pointing out racist behaviour of some black users to white people.
Reddit is so shite nowadays, there’s barely any nuance or context consideration when it comes to mods’/admins’ decision making process in doling out bans. Something as little as making a joke without adding a ‘/s’ to indicate sarcasm can get you PERMANENTLY banned from a subreddit as a whole. Efforts to appeal only lead to one being muted from the mod mail. I honestly don’t know how some people can have such a big power trip over being a fucking moderator of all things. Absolutely horrendous.
