Runescape

Since there seems to be much debate about the actual facts, figures, and popularity surrounding RuneScape, I'd like to clear this up. Here we have a graph about RuneScape's unique visitors, provided by compete.com:

Now, I will explain the graph. Please note that not all Losses/Gains can be attributed to game features, but large updates at the time of visitor change is a logical reasoning for my given narration.

In July of '07, Jagex released the widely contraversial "Pest Control Update." It was basically a nerf of skillpoints, and did little to help the game besides splitting level groups - which it did improperly. You can see the dip in players visiting the website. The total loss was between 50,000-100,000  visitors.

During August and September, Visitor Decreases are unreliable due to players leaving to begin the school year.

Despite the resistance some players gave to the "Unlimited Store Stock Update" in October of '07, the decrease in macroers was almost immediately visible, and it caused many angry players to return because of the end of store-bots. This, compounded with Lootshare in the same month helped boost visitors.

However, during November of '07, players began to realize that the hyped updates were only half baked, but continued to play and visit because they were told fixes were coming.

NOW FOR THE BIG ONE:

The trading restrictions of December '07, January '08.

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Contrary to statements by many people that macroers leaving caused this large dip you see between December of '07 and January of '08, the fact is that many mainstream macroing tools used by the gold farmers *did not* connect to RuneScape in the normal way, and thus could not have generated website visits. Website visit counts are generated by a web client visiting any page using the Http protocol. Java, however, is not counted in these rankings, since it is a direct and encrypted connection between the client and the server. Therefore, when a macroing utility directly loads the client, it DOES NOT count as a unique visitor.

In the very same month they released the trading restrictions update, they lost over 750,000 visitors (Not macroers!!), and have yet to regain them.

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Some people came back, expecting fixes or changes over the next month, but as it became clear that nothing would change, memberships expired, and players were fed up. Angry veteran players that were reluctant to leave and the initial quitters who had returned, once again left.

In may of '08, the hyped graphical update managed to get some players to return, and some new sign-ups, but once it was released, the flatlined player count says it all: *Not enough RuneScape players care about graphics for it to make a bit of difference.*

The graph will only show August of '08 once the month is complete; it will be interesting to see what the PvP announcement will do to the number of visitors. However, their recent change of putting an ad before allowing a f2p's game to load (sometimes, you may or may not see it) may cancel out the good effects of this announcement (If there were any) or even make the player count drop further, being that most players are f2p, and uncommited (not paying) players generally don't like to wait to play their games.

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Throughout the graph, you may notice that about 3/4ths of the userbase is quite solid: those are the f2ps. Jagex no longer advertised their high member count after the trade release, signialing that logically, a good portion of lost players were the more dedicated p2p's, and still more p2p's switched to f2p.

The reality of it is that they need less f2p servers because f2p players play less consistantly, meaning only several thousand will be on at one time, but will visit 1-5 or so times throughout the month. P2p players generally play the game far more often (twice a week to every day), during longer periods of time, so it seems to be an equal number of p2p's and f2p's on the game at once, but in fact its just that f2ps are lazy gamers. (to put it bluntly)

I hope you enjoyed my anylization of the RuneScape playerbase, and that this sheds some light on the issue.

~ A formerly dedicated RuneScapian ~

~ Simiswimm ~

Nice find Swim! ! !  I enjoyed the read; it made my day much better. 

It looks like they have around 3million unique visitors.  I highly doubt that one of every three visitors is a member; it doesn't seem very likely.

It seems as if JaGeX has dropped below the one million member spot. 

Yea Good Job swimm! I have been wondering where to find this info. Now yes this cannot tell us how many people are actually playing the game, Because i too have logged in randomly for about 5 min at a time, to see if they have done any changes, and I know many that have done the same in the past year. Then we take a look at all the increase in new members from the" lifting of the lil kiddie ban" last june and apprently that didn;t put a dent in the graph because we all know they would not have the patience to play the game long enough to get anything done anyhow. 

They have such a high amount of players comming in from places like mini clip and fun orb but yet no jump in the graph because of their turnover rates. They can get people in the door, but then don;t bother keeping them there.  I have been able to see the player count briefly when i logged in recently quickly before the page loads, and it is always around 73,000 in the last few months . So it appears to me that  there may be alot of site visitors, but not that many actually playing. Prior to the fall trashing of the game, I had never seen the counter below 150,000 even during slow times.It was almost always above 200,000. It is sad and their "opening of the game for the 13 under crowd" and excessive advertising they have been doing lately has not seemed to affect their numbers all that much, because of all the players that have been still giving up on the game since. With the kind of  strong advertising they did out at e3, and miniclip, and on the internet the numbers should have skyrocketed, but nah too many have been disappointed with Jagex for that to happen at this point.

 Alot of players are coming back when the PvP update is out!

We'll when it comes out i'm gonna play runescape for sure 

Originally posted by friidrick

 Alot of players are coming back when the PvP update is out!

 

We'll when it comes out i'm gonna play runescape for sure 

I repeat a previous post; "The new PvP system will drop coins based on the level of player I kill. So when I kill a level 100, I get 800 coins maybe. Great. Well lets say he comes back and kills me? I lose 50 million in armor, because you still lose stuff as usual."

Umm... thats total bs... I would never play that.

EDIT: In addition, I would like to note, about 4 million unique visitors per month before the messed up updates, and 3 million now, means that their 6 million accounts claim proves my point: most people have 2 or more accounts, so Jagex DOES NOT have 6 million unique active players, just 6 million unique active accounts. Nice propaganda, Jagex.

..Look at this everyone (new chart):

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/runescape.com/?metric=uv

 runescape.com 2,682,440 -12.9% -26.8% The number of people visiting a site.

 From 3.75M from the chart SWim had and now this.  Seems like this means they lost 1million unique visitors.

Originally posted by mike470

..Look at this everyone (new chart):

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/runescape.com/?metric=uv

 runescape.com 2,682,440 -12.9% -26.8% The number of people visiting a site.

 

Well then it's official. Runescape is dying. It's had a long healthy life but they shot themselves in the flippin' spleen when they got rid of trade that's what got me most. I didn't PvP much but it had an impact on player levels.. The worse part is, I can't get into any games anymore because runescape had me hooked and i don't like anything with less than 100k players because i need people to talk/level with. I hope the numbers decrease to something really low like 100k and then maybe they'll see some sense and be forced to reverse their changes. Hopefully it will happen really soon like maybe tomorrow lol because i need a game!

Originally posted by mike470

..Look at this everyone (new chart):

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/runescape.com/?metric=uv

 runescape.com 2,682,440 -12.9% -26.8% The number of people visiting a site.

 From 3.75M from the chart SWim had and now this.  Seems like this means they lost 1million unique visitors.

Oi, I got an outdated chart! If I had just waited one day I woulda got a new one lol. Man, yet another big drop when they announced the retarded PvP. Proves that people aren't so stupid after all, and didn't to fall for a dumb PvP system like they were suggesting.