Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "sepsis"

only 10-20 players shown as being online

I don't know where you get this info. The actual number is much higher. Players keep themselves away from each other for various reasons and then feel lonely.

As for the forums' usual moaning: keep in mind that the people who post are often the angriest of the angry. Of course it would look daunting, just like a listing of Yelp reviews for a well-established eatery.

I suggest: try it. Come back, join a moderate to large guild so you don't feel alone, and see what's available to you. There are still thriving sub-populations for various modes of play: endgame, midgame, PvP focused, craft focused, etc. Keep in mind that some things have changed over time. If you just want to chat it out, maybe try logging into IRC and see what questions you can get answered.

Quoted from "sepsis"

I say that because logging into the game last night and using the player search function returned those results unless that search function no longler works that way. I also noticed all my old toons are gone. It says I have one on the server when I select it but its not there.

If I recall the player search function only shows those in the same zone as you.

Honestly, every player's experience is going to be subjective. The short answer of course is this is not the same game you left a few years ago. The population has indeed declined quite a bit which is why there are now only 2 active US servers with some of us asking for a final merger to just 1.

The question you should really be asking yourself is what your expectations are if you decide to come back. Do you plan on being a hard core end-gamer, a casual player or even just a player who focuses solely on siege/pvp? There are quite of few players now who just siege so you will see a large influx of players logging in around 7 p.m. server time and logging off about an hour later.

There just isn't a one-size-fits-all response to your question I'm afraid. As Heron suggested, you can always just give it a try. Maybe give yourself a timeline of a week or two to see if you still find playing it enjoyable or not. Ask random players on your sever what their thoughts are on the current state of the game. Relatively few players actually post on the forums anymore so that would probably give you the most honest and unbiased views.

If you're worried about the economy, I'd advise staying away from the AH - especially on Erebos. You'll definitely get a bit of "sticker shock" seeing how expensive things have become there. There are still deals to be had but they seem to come from players offering goods in world/trade chat.

If you're looking to go back to playing at end game, you'll have some leveling and likely some regearing to do. Not sure when you stopped playing but now, +20 rings and +20/t12 weapon are pretty standard for end game. In other words, I don't know that you'll be able to simply log in and continue where you left off without committing some time/money towards it. I'd recommend at least logging on and checking with some of the end game guilds to get an idea of what to focus on based on your current setup. Hope that helps

you can still do pretty much everything you could before, including nightly endgame. However its a much smaller community you are doing it with is all. And that's something you either like or do not like as a player I find it nice knowing everyone you see to some or a large extent, as i'm a fairly social player, so in that sense I like the game. As for a hardcore gamer looking to be the best and very competitive. There is still a little of that, mostly in siege, but even then not much, so this game may not be suitable for that sort of player anymore. As auqa said, give it a try, it is free afterall, just hold off on dias if you are a p2p player until youve decided.

Drama is always alive and well however its easy to stay out of if you chose to ^.^ but yea both servers pretty much run the current top instance nightly so no troubles there if you put in the effort

The best course of action now would be fusing the rest of the US server and fusing that us server with all the English speaking eu servers this will help a lot imo.
Also siege is still the same beta and no more golden eggs or pet exp charms

Quoted from "sepsis"

As for siege has it been fixed? Also the pet system i know they locked that down for awhile and golden eggs pretty much disappeared due to botting there for awhile?

Seige is still in Beta, and as far as I know there is no intention to bring it out of Beta. There have been several significant modifications though since you last played, mostly good.
The pet system remains pretty much the same. As you mentioned they eliminated the botting of golden eggs, but there is certainly no shortage of eggs as they are readily obtained or given as rewards. "not an issue"

Actually taking siege out of beta is one of the things the developers are currently working on, or so the CM said about 2 months ago in a post highlighting what updates are to come. Don't feel like looking for the actual post...

Quoted from "Celes"

So what still needs to be done?
....
☐ It's high time that the siege wars dropped their beta status.

I. RoMmunity Letter

Closest I could find.

I think R2P was trying to reference this but it doesn't actually mention siege.

Nah it was a different post, might be older than i realize... If im bored later maybe ill look around for the one im referring too ^.^

If things were so rosy, people wouldn't be here complaining or asking problems that are 2-3 years old to be fixed


There are probably more than 20 people.. Most of the are alt's

They've said Siege was out of beta about a year ago.
Of course it's still an Alpha product

Quoted from "Rougetopriest"

Actually taking siege out of beta is one of the things the developers are currently working on, or so the CM said about 2 months ago in a post highlighting what updates are to come. Don't feel like looking for the actual post...