RuneScape - The New Game Mode Is Set Up To Fail
So the news post for Runescape's brand new game mode just dropped, and it's called Fresh Start Worlds, so I thought we'd take a look at the news post together, and I'll give you guys some thoughts on it. I've already read through the news post and I have a lot of opinions and a lot of ideas about it, but I want to take you guys through it first and foremost.
So, fresh start world, come live on September the 12th. You get a pet if you sign up. Runescape Together is a special four-month member event where everyone plays. On a level playing field, you start your new character with fresh skills in a fresh world and a new economy in Grand Exchange, level up fast with xp boosts and gameplay buffs, so basically it's similar to old school leagues.
They have a several-month long time limited event where you log into these special worlds, and in these worlds, it's basically a restart. I think this is a really good idea because it allows you to fast track the end game. Say you're a casual RuneScape player and you haven't played in a while. It gives you the ability to use all these boosts and experience more of the game than you normally would for your time, which I think is really cool.
They're talking about how it's going to be on a level playing field, so there might be some cool content to make and there may be some really interesting competitions. So you've got xp boost buffs, all the new grand exchange rewards, and high scores. So take a quick look at some of the rewards. These look pretty interesting.
Challenger armor i'm not huge into cosmetics, but yeah, for some people this could be really interesting. You've got a lance that levels up as your combat levels rise, so that could be interesting as well for a great number of things, but now let's get into the details of this actual game mode. The first thing here is that, for the first eight weeks, all players can compete for a fresh start in world high scores and world firsts.
It seems good. Mtx will be limited during the first eight weeks to ruin coins and bonds to keep the race fair. If I was racing, and the person next to me was buying bonds for effectively infinite GP. I wouldn't really call that fair, and already we're running into issues where you can now get a competitive advantage right off release, by buying bonds, and I think this whole idea of, you know, giving people a fresh start and re-experience Runescape, but it's not really a fresh start if you're immediately throwing Mtx in the middle of it, and then you've got world-first broadcasts throughout the event that surely, if they're based on xp or skills or boss skills.
would go to people who are buying bonds to be able to fund what they're doing, so anyway, that's sort of the whole news post except there's one more thing, which is that fresh start worlds require a new account and subscription. I think it's tough as a Runescape 3 player because we've wanted limited-time game modes for so long that I'm borderline excited about this just because it's a limited-time game mode of some kind.
The idea is really good and it could be extremely fun, but there are a lot of issues with this, in my opinion. The fact that the old school's leagues get a ton of brand new, unique, original content in that time-limited event. They also get all of the other perks, and they're allowed to play on their own accounts, but for RS3, we have to make a new one and repay the membership and subscribe again.
To me, that doesn't seem okay. RS3 leagues would be so cool. And then they do things like this that kind of set them up, in my opinion, to fail. This does not look like something I'd be interested in playing, and I could see a lot of the content creators choosing not to play this game mode. I've been looking forward to this for probably four years, just the idea that Runescape 3 was going to get their own seasonal event or this limited-time event, and I think the actual idea is incredible.
But I don't know how you can say all players can compete for fresh start worlds and then the line under talks about how there's going to be some mtx for the first half and all mtx for the back half and then two lines under that you've got that it requires a new account and a subscription, so anyway, my thoughts on this are that I think if they keep it like this.
I don't see it being remotely successful. I don't think a lot of people are going to be interested in playing it, and that's a really big shame because it might even send the wrong message to Jagex. That's like, yeah, limited time events don't work at RS3, but I think they absolutely do. No one wants to feel like they're playing a cash cow game, and this was a perfect opportunity for Runescape and Jeggex to come up with something that was exciting, awesome, and could be played by a massive number of players and really create a lot of momentum and excitement for the game.
It gives new players an opportunity to spend less time grinding and more time experiencing the end game, and it could have been really, really fun, but, in my opinion, this specific implementation was really, really disappointing and, to me, it sets it up for failure. That's my opinion. I'd love to hear yours.
I know you know a lot of people have different opinions. A lot of people might say, you know, it's not a big deal, it's okay, I'm going to enjoy it, I'm going to play, and that's totally fair too. The last thing I want to say too is that I don't want to see anyone like personally attacking any devs or the people that have actually worked on this update because this is not their fault.
They're doing the best they can with the situation that is given to them, and they have design objectives. I think some of these decisions were made because you could give your player base a good reason rather than this being a money grab. For example, do you know why micro transactions are going to be available or why we need a new account when the old one didn't?
I think a lot of the success of this update is going to depend on how they can actually respond to these criticisms, because I think they're pretty fair criticisms. But either way, we'll have to see what happens; we'll have to see how it plays out. As of right now, if it was released tomorrow, I don't think I would be playing this game mode, but we'll have to see how the next month goes.
And yeah, we'll keep covering this update following it, and hopefully in a month's time, we've got ourselves a brand new limited-time event that you know, is something that could be really fun for a lot of people to play. It also possibly gives them an opportunity to make some changes, which would be really good.
