To my mind Runescape has some communication issues. And one can totally understand how that can happen. The game has millions of players, yet game designers do not have much time. So as players vie to be heard by game designers what happens is that the most amenable are heard. None of us wants to be around unpleasantness, so players who are agreeable are more likely to be heard and most likely to ask least of game designers. This is purely a practicality of limited time, talking to hundreds of different people is impossible on any meaningful level, so people make decisions that limit their circles.

It seems to be the case that only massive numbers of complaints generate change in Jagex philosophy.

The best example of this is the introduction of Evolution of Combat and the resulting bedlam on the forums. Around a thousand customers at a time were on forums complaining. It was a fascinating example of chaos when pages of posts were generated in seconds.

In response Jagex responded with the 2007 servers. Apparently they had no later game versions saved. Which to most players seemed like a lie. Why would a games company keep no record of their different game versions?

The answer to that question is probably Jagex thought a very old version would cover those that liked creating private game servers of that era and also be a holding pen for players that were angry at the time but would eventually see the benefits of EoC and come back. A game version close to EoC's time would have lessened the difference and would mean fewer players returning after their "tantrum" over EoC.

Credit where it is due...

The four Jagex staff that work with the Old School servers do a great job. Ash, Reach, Nexus and Matt K, have an exhaustive method of obtaining player feedback. They are inspirational.

Back to my complaining...

Another example of how Jagex talks is how the CEO, Mark Gerhard talks. When the gambling initiative Squeal of Fortune was instituted Mark insisted that if you used your free daily spins you loved Squeal of Fortune, even the paying to gamble and buy in-game items part. As a result he declared that 90% of players were loving Squeal of Fortune.

The free spins are a couple of spins you get daily to habituate you to using the wheel, and hopefully get you to gamble on it with real money. The spins were thrown in your face upon login. So players use them to get rid of the popup screen as well as get free stuff. What is interesting is that 10% of players still didn't want that free stuff.

Mark Gerhard usually posts on Runescape forums about once a year. Early in 2013 he declared the Year of the Player. And then he vanished. Players generally refer to 2013 as Year of the Payer as a result.

In Runescape's case all this is exacerbated by a Forum volunteer system that has to be the worst I've even seen. Forum moderators, commonly called Fmods, are rude and arrogant. No shop would survive with the service they give, and it is one of the reasons Runescape is failing. Effectively the forums are a shop front, with rude staff.