Runescape Q&A- Mark Gerhard part -2

From Jagex-
26) Hellroses333 asks;
Now that you have upgraded your bot detection systems, is there any possibility of free trade returning to RuneScape?

I'm tired of using junk to trade occasionally when buying or selling something - it seems completely idiotic to me: you're basically giving someone a rising item and some junk that won't sell in the GE, but essentially you're getting the item for midprice anyways, so the buyer always ends up with profit.

If you will not be planning to return free trade, then is there a possibility that you may try returning free trade for a minimum of one week, just to see how it goes? Obviously it would take months of testing to witness the true number of gold-farmers you would be dealing with again, but hopefully your macro-detection systems would catch them before they did any real damage to the RS economy or your company again.

Our ability to detect all botting is not really related to free trade. We are looking at improving the trade system, and we may consider relaxing our trade limits a little more in the future, but this is still under discussion at the moment.



27) Nightgon172 asks;
Recently you have updated the Clan side of RuneScape, by adding Tools for Games. This has proved popular amongst the clan community, including myself .

My Question is: Do you intend to add more to the clan perspective of RuneScape? Say, by making clans more interactive?

For example having a clan bank, but having a trade limit to avoid Real World Trading issues, or being able to set up clan shops.

These are interesting ideas and we are looking at ways of providing more support to clans.



28) Infota asks;
Don't you think that you should find out what players think about updates using polls before releasing them? I think this would therefore cut down on the aftershock of the RuneScape community. Thanks.

The only way to find out what players think about new content is to actually show it to them. We could do all new content as a beta first, but then you have the problem of some people loving it and others not. Then what do you do? Do you say if more than 51% like it, keep it? We find that it is typically only the players that don’t like something that respond - the rest of the community just enjoy the content and say nothing. If you look at the Rants feedback, it is typically less than 0.5% of the total players that respond to an apparently unpopular update. Does that mean the other 99.5% like it and it should stay? We would never knowingly create new content that we knew would be unpopular. Our developers want all their work to be appreciated by the community and to enhance the game for all.



29) Timmy7072 asks;
I hear rumours of a "Name Changing System" can this be confirmed? If so, how would such a system work?

Yes, we are planning to release a new display name system shortly. This will essentially allow you to change your in-game display name to be different from your login name.



30) Themyth 2004 asks;
My question is... RuneScape hasn't had a huge amount of advertising, as far as I am aware the growth of RuneScape has been fairly unique in that it has consisted mostly of word of mouth and then later on mini-clip, yet there is over 1 million members nowadays and a huge number of F2P players.

Advertising has picked up for MMORPGs for the last year or two... I was wondering if there is any plans to expand advertising for RuneScape, and if you could tell me what other kinds of advertising RuneScape participates in at this moment in time?

You are right, we haven’t done any marketing in the past and we still have one of the biggest communities in the gaming world as a result. We love this game and I’m confident it has a very bright future, indeed. We do plan to build an in-house marketing and PR team to spread the word like other companies do, but, ultimately, we know that nothing beats our own players telling their friends about RuneScape.



31) Bluesonic43 asks;
According to "Forum Focus (21-Jan-2009)" the top choices (although less than 50,000 voted) were to include a image of your avatar, adjust formatting of posts, etc. I would like to know when I could make words italic or bold. Thank you

We have taken player feedback onboard and, as mentioned previously, we are now planning on improving the forums with avatars as well as other new features.



32) Sir Sral asks;
Being a fan of the RS music, I'd love to see many of the awesome and creative tracks made into very high quality versions available for download. Do you see something similar to this as a worthwhile addition at some point in the not too distant future?

This is a great idea, I will go and speak with the audio team now!



33) M4g3r Ownage asks;
Are you planning on releasing worlds that have an experience requirement to enter? By requirements I mean: in game experience, time played in game, total level, combat level, etc.

Yes, this is still something that we plan to do based on players’ total XP level.



34) Haon Nave asks;
Well I was wondering if there will ever be a RuneScape app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Who knows what the future may bring? What features would you like to see on the iPhone?



35) Svew asks;
Does Jagex as a whole believe the Quality Assurance team is doing their job well? If so, please explain why there has been a significant increase of major bugs that have tainted the game within the last few months.

We have been really ambitious with our updates over the last six months, which has been a challenge for everyone at Jagex. The QA team do a fantastic job and would never knowingly release updates with bugs, but, as I’m sure you will understand, that the game is so epic it is almost impossible to catch everything.



36) Bionic Cool2 asks;
With so many other MMORPG's out there constantly making their graphics, game play and features better, do you feel RuneScape has had to compete with them by making updates bigger and better then they had been before?

We don’t look to our competitors for our strategies. If anything, we tend to get shamelessly copied by the industry. We have always tried to make our games and updates the best that they could possibly be, regardless of the competition. We still have one of the world’s largest, and still growing, communities, not to mention the Guinness World Record for the most popular free game, which tells me that we are doing the right things overall.



37) Robeddarknes asks;
Hi I was wondering when you were planning on releasing the ability for us to look at our character's statistics such as number of x-monster killed and x-number of hours played and what date our accounts were created, as this has always interested me and I believe I read you were planning to release it.

Yes, we currently have a project underway to provide players with a lot more information about their avatar progress and status in game.



38) Gilly 2811 asks;
I've heard a player-made rumour, that Jagex is considering making Wallie Cards/other available in every country, and then removing all credit card payment options in the future.

If so, this would make it possible for Jagex to re-implement the wild, take away trade limits, thus allowing old pking, and uneven trades (which isn't so bad, you can donate to friends again, and scam/be scammed, which teaches lessons.), which would settle pkers arguments. Is this somewhat true, and if so; would prices rise?

I don’t expect we will ever remove credit card payments as this is still, by far, the most popular method of payment for our players. Also, the majority of our members like the convenience of being able to automatically renew their monthly membership via credit card. We are keen to offer subscribers a wide variety of payment methods and will ensure that we continue to rollout RuneScape payment cards worldwide.



39) Bigb4199 asks;
Due to the growing size of your company, more resources have become available to you. To compete with other MMO's, do you intend to use voice actors to bring NPCs to new life?

This is an interesting idea and one we are currently discussing.



40) Volcor117 asks;
Would it be possible to free up some usernames, by this I mean, would it be possible to give players that are currently active a chance to use names that were already used up by people that have stopped playing, like people that haven't been active for the past 2 years. Thanks for your time.

I love the idea of preserving all player accounts, so that they can play again whenever they want too. Interestingly enough, we have recently seen a significant number of former players return to the game. We may reset the accounts for players that have been permanently banned and make those account names available again; however, we are also working on a new display names systems to allow players to change their in-game name, and there will be a subsequent update to the system that will allow players to choose longer player names, which will provide a lot more choice.



41) 2h And Spork asks;
What does Jagex think of private servers that are smaller copies of RuneScape, do you believe that you should fight against such servers or just let them be? I point this out because private servers have been growing in size over the years.

We strongly oppose private servers, irrespective of their size, and always look to shut them down. We have also been very successful in taking their ringleaders to court.



42) 583saradomin asks;
Why doesn't Mod MMG post everything he said in his clan (if everyone is telling the truth that he did say future updates in his clan) on the forums? It is so hard to trust word of mouth in this game.

I don’t talk about future updates or content in my Clan Chat as I wouldn’t want to spoil future updates and content isn’t really my area of expertise anyway - that’s what the RuneScape team do really well. I just enjoy the content as a typical player on my choob account and I just use the Clan Chat as an opportunity to talk to players about every day stuff, usually have a bit of a laugh and sometimes they give me feedback on new content or things that annoy them in game which is also helpful. So since we just chat about random and everyday stuff I don’t think it is important to get transcripts on the forums.

The reason why we have regular Q&As with the players is to officially answer questions relating to the game.



43) Feppie64 asks;
Do you have any plans to look for ways to reduce the shipping costs at the Jagex store for non UK countries? For example, in my country the shipping costs of the mouse pad are twice the price of the mouse pad itself.

Absolutely! We are currently pushing our current supplier to bring their shipping costs down. If they don’t soon we will move to another supplier that can provide low worldwide shipping costs.



44) Rizwan151 asks;
Is your job as CEO of Jagex purely that of leading the company financially and as a business? Or do you also take part in the development of the game? I am just concerned as to whether a person whose account is only in the level 60-80 range would be making the best decisions for what is to be done for the game in the future.

I get involved with all aspects of the studio’s operation; however, I have very little input into the development of the game - the main game decisions are actually made by the RuneScape Content team, My choob account recently went over level 90 combat.



45) Father Lawec asks;
(This one is for Mod MMG ;P) What is the one thing that really annoys you in the game of RuneScape? And if you could, how would you change it?

I can’t think of anything that really annoys me, but I do wish I wasn’t so poor and had more cash. Then, I guess I’ve just got to earn it like everyone else.

well there are a lot of questions can u tell me what the pole is talking about?

if you like the q & a or not...

how do i like questions? if anything i despise questions.... at our school we have to write our answers in complete sentences(including part of the question in ur answer)

look at it this way,did you think the poll was interesting or not?

sure i guess i did

ok it doesn't really matter.

lol i know thats what im trying to say