Jagex messed up hardcore this time

[Guthix]

Gonna do a quick TL;DR for those who just want the basics of what happened and then I am going to bullet point highlights.

TL;DR - Jagex sent out a survey to certain players in the community. This survey employs a certain strategy (which they openly admitted to using it in their "update post"), that is widely known in the business/marketing community, in which they are trying to obtain the average "quit limit" pricing for the community as a whole. This essentially means that they are attempting to figure out how much they can charge for membership as well as other "add-ons" before people would quit en-masse.

Now to the meat.

My background - I am a 2 decade veteran with more than a year of in-game play time and a comp cape as well as a MQC. I have had a reoccurring subscription for more than a decade and I have been a staunch advocate for Jagex/RS in the past. I feel that it is important for me to state that before I get into everything as I do not just want people to think I am some rage-baiter who is steaming over nothing.

The Survey - As stated above, this survey was sent out to specific players in both the RS3 and OSRS community. It was a survey that employed a particular strategy that is common in the business world in which they try to ascertain the average dollar amount a community would be willing to pay at max for membership, and certain additional services, before they would start quitting in droves. The employment of this strategy was openly admitted by Jagex in their "update post" which was in response to the outrage of the survey.

The contents of the survey - A lot of the survey centered around different pricing options for different tiers of membership. This is one of the most troubling pieces of the survey as we already had a significant 20-30% price increase of membership on average for players around the world (excluding grandfathered rates). These pricing options stemmed anywhere from $10 (with ads mind you) all the way up to $32 with "additional features" which should already be included in what they are referring to as the "base membership." Some examples include "enhanced customer support" or even a "streamlined account recovery system. These options should not be offered at a premium, but instead they should honestly be a part of the basic expectations of any subscription game. There were also notions of revoking certain privileges such as being able to play either OSRS or RS3 with one account subscription and then offering that "benefit" up at a premium. There are several other items that were suggested which honestly most of them were just asinine, but for the sake of not making this a novel I will let you do research of your own.

Jagex's response - Earlier today Jagex sent a response out to the OSRS community. This response was later sent to the RS3 community but oopsies, they forgot to mention the RS3 community on the response they copy and pasted from their post from OSRS. Not a great start honestly and it really just shows how much Jagex values and cares about the RS3 community. Anyway in this post (which is up to interpretation) they essentially didn't back pedal on any of the 'hypothetical situations' they were proposing and instead essentially said that 'we need to be ok with "awkward conversations."' They also used very specific wording to try to shut the player base up by saying 'there are no plans for this stuff and a bunch of these things are just hypothetical proposals in which we are just trying to listen to the community.' Their specific word choice made it so that they were not ruling out any of the proposed hypothetical situations for the future.

What this all means - While nothing is definitive, we can look at Jagex's history to gain some idea of what will happen. Based off of historical precedence, there will be a significant membership price hike in the near future (1-2 years). This price hike is also coming directly after the single greatest price increase in runescape history. Almost certainly some "perks," which the community currently has (ex. afk timer for osrs), will be revoked by Jagex and offered back up at a premium. Certain services which should be a basic offering by the company, such as a comprehensive customer support service, will be offered up at a premium.

Was the survey all bad? - There were some decent concepts that the survey provided which the rs community has long asked for, such as a single subscription for access to multiple member characters, but the issue with these not half bad ideas being proposed is that they are being used as a way to milk even more out of the player base when in fact most mmo's offer these benefits for free and so should runescape.

My take - I have long been a devout RS'er and on many occasions stood up for Jagex, but with the train wreck that has been the last few years I can no longer stand with them. I do not blame the devs, I blame their leadership and the overly greedy investments firms that have passed around Runescape, and it's community, like some cheap street hooker. I am not naive, I know they are a business and they need to make money for their shareholders, but with the current strategy they are using (being that they artificially inflate profits for a couple years and then sell Jagex at a staggering profit at the expense of the community) it is going to put the nail in the coffin for RS3 and rip OSRS away from its golden age.

To new players - This is not the game for you, and this is not the game it once was. You will be paying AAA prices YEARLY to play a game that is comparable to some of the games being made by small indie studious nowadays which you can purchase for as little as $20 for a one time price. You will also be nickel and dimed on every single thing in this game including packages and perks that should already be included in your membership.

To those defending Jagex on this - If you are one of those who are trying to downplay this or make a joke out of people's frustration with what is obviously a maliciously anti-consumer/anti-community move on Jagex's part, I honestly don't know what to say to you. If you are solely looking at this from the scope of this specific situation (even then this is comparable in scale to EOC frustrations back in 2013) I pray you un-lodge your head from your posterior and wake up. This is a huge issue and it brings RS3 one step closer to maintenance mode. While at this point that is inevitable, and it's just a matter of when, this significantly sped things up in that direction.

Conclusion - This is honestly the biggest ♥♥♥♥ up (and series of ♥♥♥♥ ups) Jagex has had since the release of evolution of combat. And before anyone accuses me of being some hater from OSRS, I have literally less than 10 hours of game play in OSRS across all accounts, so don't give me that BS. I was at a point last year where I was like "Jagex apologized so I'll give them another go," but after every single time they mess up and soon after apologize, they literally go right back to messing up and often times outdoing themselves from the time before. Honestly I have never really felt so betrayed and unheard than I do now as a consumer and there have been plenty of times that has happened. No amount of "I'm sorry" at this point will ever lead me to "forgive and forget" what Jagex has done to my beloved game. While I most assuredly will play a day here and a day there every few years to get my nostalgia hit this is me saying goodbye to a game that has been such a huge part of my life. Anyway, I hope what those less experienced than me will take away from this is that Jagex does not care, they will milk you dry, they will constantly push your boundaries, they will mess up near consistently, and they will not learn from their mistakes no matter how many times they say they will. Save yourself some heartache, unlike I have, and spend your time doing something else.

[Guthix]

Originally posted by Hatsodoom:

I usually defend Jagex but this is... sketchy. You used to be 5 dollars a month. I know inflation is a thing but this is exceeding that.

The recent price hike actually is well above the cumulative inflation percentage since the last price hike. So as stated above, inflation really has nothing to do with it.

What's happening is a bunch of venture capital investment firms are playing a game of hot potato with Jagex. Artificially pump the numbers/valuation up after they purchase the company, at the expense of the consumer (you), to then just turn around and sell it at an insanely higher price 2-3 years later. Mind you that this is not me being speculative at all. They literally have had 3-4 different owners who were venture capitalist firms in the last decade who when they bought Jagex made them add more and more MTX AND made them do significant membership price hikes to then just turn around and sell it the next venture capitalist firm for an egregiously higher price with the promise that they could do the exact same thing that they did.

Hell, out of everything that I have said, even the naysayers who continue to be bootlickers to Jagex can't refute that fact.

[Guthix]

Originally posted by Varpushaukka:

Originally posted by Jimmy Hunter:

It's amazing that anyone can be lured into that false sense of security by Jagex. I've never seen a company blunder in so many different way again and again. But I suppose even Charley Brown couldn't figure out how to make Lucy stop pulling the ball away.

The only hope I can see is Jagex going bankrupt and having to sell off the Runescape intellectual property, so that someone else (maybe even Andrew Gower) would buy it and actually give a damn. But that'd require players voting with their wallets, so it's just copium.

I mean as you probably know that is essentially impossible within the next 20 years, at the very least. Even if they like royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up (not saying that they already haven't) to the point where we would see people quitting in the same manner as the EOC release, they would still be in a substantially far better financial position to the point where they could lose 30-40% of their profit margins and still come out even or with 10% net profit annually.

Literally from an objective standpoint, venture capital investment firms/private equity firms will always own Jagex. They will continue the proverbial game of hot potato they've been playing with the company, which ultimately will always require the next company to demand more from the player base than the prior company until it gets to the point where they are losing more by the players leaving the game (due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like what just happened) than they gain by milking the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of those who stay. It's just basic economics/business.

Also none of these investment firms are looking for long term investments (which has been proven by the last decade in which we have had 3-4 different investment firms, apart from the current) who have owned Jagex. The strategy is to buy the company, do as previous investment firms have done and push the absolute limits of the player base, artificially inflate the earnings/overall company valuation, then sell it 2-3 years later to the next investment firm with the promise that they can do what they did and make ♥♥♥♥ load of money at the expense of the player base. I mean it's not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rocket science like some of the bozo's in these forums are trying to make it out to be.

But lastly, on your point with wanting Andrew Gower to purchase Jagex back, that will never happen unless he has the financial backing of an investment firm, which ultimately puts us right back in the same position we are in (even though I think Andrew Gower would have the best of intentions). He sold Jagex for pennies on the dollar compared to the $1.1 Billion dollar purchase of it recently by CVC & Haveli, so he has nowhere near the amount needed in personal net worth, even if they went bankrupt, to purchase Jagex. I'm talking that he probably sold it for at most $50 million (and that might even be overly generous) in comparison to it's now, albeit over-valued, valuation of $1.1 billion.