[Kimojuno]

Q) Lordjay82 - Make the forums F2P.
A) Mod Mmg - Okay.

(Taken from Jagex CEO Mod Mmg’s ‘Even More Answers’ thread posted on 16th Feb 2009)

So, we said we would open up our forums to free players, and later this month, we will! We want to let you know about such a fundamental update in advance, as we recognise it’s a pretty big change from what you’ve been used to.

As Mod Mmg commented, RuneScape is different from all other MMOs in that the free game has over 12,000 hours of game time to max out all the quests, skills, content, and truly stands alone in its own right. We’re also continuing to improve the free game without taking anything away from members’ benefits - and that’s where this update comes in.

Now, before you think the forums will be overrun by so many new players that they will be flooded …Don’t Panic! We’ve actually thought about how to go about doing this

For now, we will open the forums up to a limited number of free players over a certain XP level, who will have invested a great deal of time and effort into their RuneScape account. We feel they definitely can add to the vibrant forum community that already exists with their experiences, tales, questions…and hopefully quite a lot of fun!

We reckon there will be around 250,000 new forum users to add to the current active forum users, and over the coming weeks and months, we will gradually enable more high level free players to have access. We’re adding more Jmods into the Player Support Community Management team to be able to support free players, as well as our current forum users, and we’ll be looking to invite more Forum Moderators too – both from members and free playing communities.

Please let us know what you think. Personally, and I think I speak for all at Jagex Game Studios, we’re quite excited at the prospect of free players being able, for the first time in years, to fully interact with every RuneScape player on our forums, and we can’t wait.

As your new Community Manager, these are exciting times for us all where our Jmods in Community Management are busy attending your events, posting on the forums, helping you out in game, speaking to fansites, creating community events like the Clan Cup and generally reaching out to all communities within RuneScape – not to mention working with our Content teams to see what else we can do for the Community.

I welcome your thoughts, input and comments, and I’d love it if you could join me in welcoming them when the update goes live!

If you want to discuss this post, follow this link to the Future Updates Thread of the same name as this News Post

Mod Kelvin – Community Manager, Player Support

Quick find code: 13-14-635-58620892

[Kimojuno]

Hi guys,
We’ve been taking an interest in the comments posted regarding our decision to allow a certain number of free players access to the forums. Your views are definitely important to us, hence why we decided to gather your opinions and thoughts before we made the change. A few subjects have been raised more than others so we wanted to cover those off here and hopefully clear up a few points.

We’re massively interested in the comments posted regarding our decision to allow high level free players over 12.5 million XP to post on the forums. Your views are definitely important to us, so we decided to gather your opinions and thoughts before we made the change, and we want to keep that going now. A few subjects have been raised more than others so we wanted to cover those off here and hopefully clear up a few points.

“I’m concerned about spam”

We believe that the players we’ll be inviting in are at such a level that spam should not be a concern. These players have put a huge amount of time and effort into playing the game, and we believe they will definitely add to the forum community. We think they’ll spend their time adding to the wide number of subjects being discussed rather than waste time spamming. Of course, regardless of membership, everyone is subject to the forum guidelines!

“Bleurgh I don’t like F2P”

We’d like to think people are open minded enough to give the F2P players a chance before tarring a whole community with the same brush. We’ve already invited a number of F2P into the FunOrb community with great success, and we hope we’ll have the same success with RuneScape. The F2P community is as diverse as the P2P, and we hope you’ll judge people as individuals not as a group.

“Forums are a membership benefit!”

We’re not taking anything away from our members; we’re providing an extra benefit to a certain number of free players. Our aim in all of this is not to devalue membership but to enhance the forum community. Membership still holds a huge number of benefits that F2P don’t get such as extra quests, extra skills, player-owned houses, a vastly increased world to explore, full screen mode and so on.

“The forums are busy enough already”

Certain areas of the forum are busy but others less so. We’re often hearing players comment that they wish the forums were faster, better and more active. We really don’t see how active forums would be a bad thing and we’re really looking forward to enhancing the community by inviting new players in. Yes some threads will move faster than others but that’s got to be better than a quiet community...

“We don’t want F2P asking for member content”

Whenever you give a group of people a voice, it’s human nature to ask for more. That doesn’t mean that we will agree to those requests! We really value our members and will always be looking to improve membership and the benefits that come with it. We also want to make sure the F2P experience is a good one, and hopefully that will naturally lead to those players wanting to try out membership. Yes we may make strides to improve the F2P experience, but we’re determined to improve our game for members too!

“We don’t want F2P trying to join member clans”

Yes F2P may try to join member clans but we feel this would be a pointless exercise. If the clan is only open to members, and they’re active on member worlds, then the F2P would be unable to participate anyway. We’re hoping that we’ll see a good mix of F2P and Members Clans, and that the community as a whole will benefit.

We realise that any change can be daunting and we appreciate that not everybody will always agree with our decisions, but we're excited about the opportunity to improve the community further.

Thanks for your comments and opinions so far. We're interested in all of them!

Mod Markg

Quick find code: 16-17-303-58639010

[Kimojuno]

Hello F2P,

I’m sure that over the years, many of you have read threads on the forums that you’d love to respond to but frustratingly enough, you’ve not been able to due to not having paid for extra content. You guys make up a large percentage of our great community though and so of course, we’d love to know what you have to say too.

That’s why from today, we’re giving you, the free to play community, a voice in the forums by inviting several thousand of you to post your thoughts, your feedback and your suggestions.

If you’re one of those players who can now post, it’s because you’ve put a lot of time into RuneScape and clearly have an account with a very respectable level, achieving 12.5million XP tells us that you’ve totally earned your place on the forums.

If you’re still seeing the “you can’t post” message, don’t panic! At some point in the not too distant future, we’ll be inviting more of you to post. If you can’t wait that long, you know what to do, hit 12.5million XP and then jump in to boast about your achievement!

We’re really pleased to have you along and look forward to hearing what you have to say. All we ask is that before you get all creative, you read the forum code of conduct and any rules that are forum specific.

You are of course welcome to post anywhere on the forums but here seems like a pretty good place to start so why not introduce yourself to the forum community right now?
Now pull up a kitten, make yourself comfortable and tell us something awesome.

Welcome!

Paul M

[Kimojuno]

Today, we have opened up the forums for high level free players to be able to post!

All free players who have earned over 12.5 million XP (that roughly equates to someone having all F2P skills on level 72) are now able to post. Exciting times!

There could be around 250,000 new forum users to add to the current active forum users, and over the coming weeks and months, we will gradually enable more high level free players to have access.

If you’re a member currently, and already have access to post on the forums, we’d appreciate it if you could give our new forum guests a warm welcome.

If you’re new to the forums, have a read of the Forum Code of Conduct and please check the Forum Specific Rules on the forums you want to post on. There’s also a welcome thread in the Recent Updates forum – check it out.

Enjoy!

Mod Kelvin
Community Manager, Player Support

[Troll]

How about allowing old Members to post.