Recruit A Friend (RAF):
To the latest beast on the block! The RAF currently giving Jagex a bloody nose on the forums, the source of increasingly vile at Jagex, the evidence proffered that the community has been abandoned and ignored.
The interesting part about RAF is the lack of active Community Management defence of the topic. It’s clear that the Forum Mods were overwhelmed by the hostile reactions of the player base and it is surprising that no single J-Mod has been particularly active on the defence of the idea. With BXPW there were champions of the technique, such as Mod Fnord (with whom I disagreed professionally, but like on a personal basis). With RAF, it was launched by Mod Nexus (who is the standard person to launch updates) and has no figure head, no person who identifies and believe in it as strongly.
The existence of other events has worsened the situation for Jagex. Briefly I intend to highlight each:
- Andrew Gower (and others, possibly Paul) have started a new company Fen Research (partially owned by Jagex, mostly by Andrew). Given most players have little to no understanding of the actual impact of this, or the ownership prior to “glory days” they perceive this as a sign that Jagex is leaving it’s previous player-friendly face and moving increasingly corporate
- Mark Gerhard (CEO) made comment to develop (a games industry developer magazine) stating the 90/10 hypothesis but very blunt language, giving the impression Jagex didn’t care about negative feedback
“No one in the MMO space succeeds by standing still,” he said, “so you have to constantly refresh what you’re offering. At the same time, you have to be very careful about how you read into the feedback from your updates.”
Some people are just angry, Gerhard said. Customers will complain no matter what you do.
“We give people extra free content, some people complain that ‘oh you’re just trying to buy our loyalty’,” he said.
Speaking on stage at Edinburgh Interactive, Gerhard urged developers to listen to feedback but not make rash decisions from it. Hold out and see if your updates stick, he said.
“You’re always going to have trolls, but those who love your updates are completely silent. You have to measure all this feedback. Part of it is quantitative, part of it is qualitative, part of it is gut instinct.”
And it’s also important to get reactions out of the people who are quietly enjoying your game, he said.
“Create the forum threads, stimulate the debate, sometimes kick the hornets’ nest. Don’t just address the trolls.”
- Jagex reversed their previous decision, again removing the Rants forum as Iddison had done, further inviting speculation that Jagex didn’t care about dissenting views.
- Jagex de-modded a well-known player who created and advertised a video which attacked Jagex for not doing enough about the bot situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq9MXlPColw&feature=channel_video_title
- Jagex have stated in their FAQ:
“What precautions will Jagex take to assure that nobody will be buying themselves XP bonuses?”
Mod Nexus: There’s no reason why you can’t refer yourself to create a pure or hybrid account. At some point you may want to subscribe with this account or swap ‘mains’ – if that’s in the first two weeks, or in a year’s time, that’s up to you.
“Isn’t selling XP just like selling GP? By giving players more XP, you are actually giving them GP (instead of using the GP to use on that skill, they can use it on other things).”
Mod Nexus: We looked carefully at the XP boosts. In a gathering skill, like woodcutting, you can get to level 30 at twice the speed, but you have fewer resources to show for it. The aim of this boost was to help your friend get up to speed in the skills and closer to your levels so you can enjoy the game together.
“I was led to believe that “real life financial status” shouldn’t affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape. Has this stance changed?”
Mod Nexus: Whilst we try to minimise any abuse, there will always be a few who are willing to pay extra for advantages. It remains to be seen how much XP players will actually gain in a 7 day period from this.
“What is your current stance on RWT and bots? Don’t you think that this scheme will help bot companies to be more effective?”
Mod Nexus: We are fully aware of the negative impact bots have and how they might use this system.
Double XP from level 1 to 30 means that you will get there a bit quicker, but have fewer resources as a result. In the grand scheme of things, level 30 doesn’t really take that long to achieve. We also looked very carefully at the referrer’s rewards and 10% for 7 days was deemed as acceptable.
The overall impressi0n is that Jagex doesn’t really care about the fact that it is ruining the low end game and devaluing the achievements.
The problem is that RuneScape isn’t WoW. It doesn’t have “end-game content”. Most players don’t “max out”. So whereas WoW can easily afford to this, Jagex really shouldn’t because it creates a trend that destablises the economy, the achievements of players and players goals. The impression I get personally is that they simply haven’t bothered to think about how it affects their game, it’s a case of “that game has it, lets do it”. And cookie-cutter idea pinching will do them no favours.
Overall, I think they need to take a look at the internal problems before they aggressively market it. I don’t want to invite a friend to a game full of bots. Nor does RAF really work. If F2P is a game not a demo, they will play the demo and then subscribe to the bonus pack if it’s tempting. RAF is the WoW model of going straight from not-playing to subscription game play.
They need to work on their product focus, address once and forever the purpose of F2P and fix major problems first. It’s simply not possible to continue to push RAF, BXPW and Loyalty out the door without engaging the community and stating the Jagex policy on these. To do otherwise is corporate suicide for Jagex I fear.
