Runes of Magic US / AU

The reason I dont think they advertise, is well, because they know the game is, dieing, and has alot of bugs, they dont want reviewers to give it a bad name, so instead of a bad name, just have no name at all. They know what us players have to say about the game.

At least with advertising they would have a chance barly anyone knows about the game that doesn't still play it.

Quoted from "bleedingblak"

none of what is posted makes any difference.

players have been saying this for years, but it still was being said when there were 3x the players. so that isn't the problem. none of them are.

This fails to take into account the product lifecycle. Businesses are not static and, instead, tend to build to a peak and then slowly decline until they either go defunct or level out to become mainstays of the market. The process looks like this:



During the first three phases of the cycle, RoM was able to benefit almost solely from the superiority of their product. When they should have been focusing on stacking profits, reinvesting them in their brand, and further improving on an already awesome product, they did absolutely nothing. They could have put a few coders on the staff and could have had many of the problems reverse-engineered and fixed despite a lack of support from Runewaker and could actually be growing the game themselves.

RoM is now in the fourth phase of the product lifecycle. Generally speaking, unless an organization reinvisions itself and pushes for a re-introduction, it's all downhill from here. This is not impossible, but I doubt we will see it from this dev team. Innovation would be required and they do not strike me as the most inventive lot. How many years did it take them to acquiesce to the idea of regular communication with the player base?

Some of the biggest problems that have led to the decline of the game are:

1. Lack of a dedicated marketing team
2. Lack of clear and easily navigable routes of communication
3. Lack of a strategic focus on customer service
4. A pass the buck mentality for quality control

The actual problems in game are just things that come with running a game. Problems happen, but when the consumer sees an effort is being made to consistently resolve them they are generally content. The problem is 100% the fault of the management team/s, and that's why they keep firing successive waves of them.



Edit:.................................................................................

I was going over the Alexa data and saw the SEO score, so I figured I'd scan it. I fired up Screaming Frog, and what really surprised me was that it was as high as a C.


They have done absolutely nothing for SEO beyond what looks to be the intent to implement blackhat keyword stuffing in titles, h1/h2 tags, as well as meta descriptions(WTF?). I say that because every single page in the directory has a duplicate for each of those categories and the meta description for each page is "keywords."(what year is this again?) These people could not have a more negative impact on their traffic if they wanted to. They are actively shooting themselves in the foot every day by not fixing that.

At this point, I am really beginning to wonder what the employees of RoM actually do. There are obviously a few that check and post to the forums from time to time, but there is little evidence of an active staff from any other perspective.

I wonder how many in those numbers are goldsellers going to the website to create more accounts. Now that far less goldsellers care to come here anymore...

All the advertising in the world doesn't change the fact that this game is very expensive if one wants to progress at all. Sure new people will join fast but exit even faster when they see a mount alone is like $10.

Quoted from "TWMXC"

All the advertising in the world doesn't change the fact that this game is very expensive if one wants to progress at all. Sure new people will join fast but exit even faster when they see a mount alone is like $10.

yeah, the dagger mount was like $25 w/o double dias...sure it was rare and all, but still...for that price i could go to a subscription game and get multiple mounts, and even get some unique items from farming rare mobs for the couple months subscription it would pay for...

Quoted from "bleedingblak"

rom is dying, why?

New Player comes to site.
New Player makes game account & begins downloading client.
New Player makes forum account whilst waiting.
New Player sees forum thread with title "RoM is dying".
New Player cancels download and heads off to find other game.

Quoted from "Inferiority"

New Player comes to site.
New Player makes game account & begins downloading client.
New Player makes forum account whilst waiting.
New Player sees forum thread with title "RoM is dying".
New Player cancels download and heads off to find other game.

not to mention all the posts saying RoM costs thousands of dollars to be endgame...

Quoted from "Cike"

Quoted from "Inferiority"



New Player comes to site.
New Player makes game account & begins downloading client.
New Player makes forum account whilst waiting.
New Player sees forum thread with title "RoM is dying".
New Player cancels download and heads off to find other game.

not to mention all the posts saying RoM costs thousands of dollars to be endgame...

Which is true.

Quoted from "Borella"

Which is true.

which is one of the things driving people away from this game....

Quoted from "bleedingblak"

no one comes to these forums. com'on now guys.

Truest quote ever!!!!!!!

Quoted from "bleedingblak"

no one comes to these forums. com'on now guys.

Quoted from "Cike"

Quoted from "Borella"

Which is true.

which is one of the things driving people away from this game....

So...the truth about the game is driving people away?

Quoted from "Deltaninethc"

Edit:.................................................................................

I was going over the Alexa data and saw the SEO score, so I figured I'd scan it. I fired up Screaming Frog, and what really surprised me was that it was as high as a C.

They have done absolutely nothing for SEO beyond what looks to be the
intent to implement blackhat keyword stuffing in titles, h1/h2 tags, as
well as meta descriptions(WTF?). I say that because every single page in
the directory has a duplicate for each of those categories and the meta
description for each page is "keywords."(what year is this again?)
These people could not have a more negative impact on their traffic if
they wanted to. They are actively shooting themselves in the foot every
day by not fixing that.

This seems interesting, can someone explain this to me like I'm 5

Quoted from "Quaffy2"

This seems interesting, can someone explain this to me like I'm 5

i was gonna ask the same question, but i thought i had hit my stupid question limit on these forums, thanks quaffy!

K here is my thoughts and list

1) The fail of releasing a class with only one gender (first it shows they were too lazy to program in the other gender). This scared some people about the future of the game and a lot that I know of quit then.

2) Hackings, that again put some serious distrust in the game. More importantly made them think "why should I fight my way through the game when others just cheat". Also when people were banned and a lot that benefitted.. these people knew they would never play legit and try to get back to where they were.

3) I will admit that last few patches have been pretty underwhelming. Level 82 gear, mostly worthless, so not many regeared. Beth gear from what I see is not THAT much better than KBN Hard gear, so not many upgraded (Like BB stayed the same I think for a while). So it went KBN Hard... then CoB-drag/underwhelming. Beth- which was easy to farm at first, then Belathis. This caused a lot of staleness in Endgamers that either 1) didn't farm Beth a ton when it was easier, or 2) those that just got bored, to leave the game. Maybe to never return.

4) As the game progresses there is more and more than new players need to do to catch up: Level pets, get all the foods, level housekeepers, not to mention level (all classes, with not enough quests), fully gear, etc. It is the continuous setting of "too much to get there, I will just quit here". We have a few new guildies in our guild and even though ill run them through easy instances for gear, they have trouble getting stats (besides bag stats), and bawk at the cost to plus and stat them. Thanks to the exp even they got leveled pretty good on one class, now have to sit around and wait for dailies for the other classes.

5) all this compounds with less diamond sellers and inflation of everything. Which all came obvious after the hackers were caught and banned... so they were no longer flooding the market... Which caused a huge sticker shock when it skyrocketed.

I think that a lot of this has always been there, but less people are putting up with it. So there is still the steady decline, there is still the lack of incentive for players to start anew. Add to that the hackers, diamond inflation, Lack of interest of endgamers, etc... it is just all coming to a head now.

They can advertise from now until the end of time... If all the content is not reasonably achievable by new players... they will quit. The normal rate of 1% of all new players end up running endgame content... is way too low... and I think I am being generous saying 1%. I know people want their "challenges". If you want the game to be cheaper overall... not needing as much for content is a good way to reduce the cost. If instances don't take T8 gear, +16, all the perfect stats and 6-12 players geared that way, then more people can enjoy it, and would have more incentive to actually spend to get there....


Not to mention stuff like Ant Queen/Varanas Nightmare/World Bosses that can be killed by people wanting to monopolize them also doesn't give the game a real friendly feel also. Especially since world bosses are the only way to get PoMs.. I mean things that are designed to place groups of players against one another... also doesn't help the game

Wait i think i fell asleep while attempting to read this

First, both sites linked n the original post are counting traffic on the forums, not the game. Many people in game only visit the forum to create a new account, or when they have some problem.

Second, game is currently aimed at 'old' players. Very few actual new players stick around because lower zones are empty. When I started, it was extremely common to have to wait to kill beetles in logar. I have been running some toons up to try different combinations, and never saw another low level player for several days.

RoM needs to advertise and draw in new players, players need to use word of mouth to get new players/friends involved. Need to reduce the 'drive' to hit level cap as fast as possible.

Get more players to quest some alts up, or keep a couple at lower levels to make the game look occupied for new players. Nothing will drive away new blood like logging in and not seeing anyone for days.

Imo, one thing they could do is increase stat drop rate in instances. More stats = cheaper price and more supply = everyone can gear up easier. Aside from the fun factor, its rather discouraging to do a Beth Normal full run and see 0 nice stats drop for the entire run. And even then, most guilds are limited to easy mode, and find that enough of a challenge already.

Stat drop should be at least 70% decent stats in normal and hard, 35% decent stats in easy mode. Easy mode should never be a "trash mode" that people use to farm Stam/Def and Int/ma. It should be tailored to be able to get people ready for normal mode content - and that means somewhat decent gear and a larger variety of decent stats.

Heck, make easy mode drop decent stats from normal mode of the previous instance, and have the last boss drop stats equal to normal mode of the current instance.

At the same time, more people gearing = more diamond spent. Newer players who see the abundance of stats will be less discouraged by their task of gearing. They can run easy mode and actually progress their gear by a decent amount, rather than having only the option to farm minigames everyday.

And if siege at all levels would be more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbvMSE6uKQM from 25:00 - 33:00 in the video, this game would be thriving... (ok, maybe minus the fact that all the mages die in the first 3 seconds... Can we get a Pdef increase on cloth gear please? Leather gear doesn't have half the Mdef compared to Pdef like cloth gear has half of Pdef compared to Mdef >.>)

Quoted from "SaitoHajime"

"I have no idea why my posts with insults or "$illegal_rom_server is soooo nice" were deleted" ..../sarcasm.

-2 posts btw. One for obvious reasons and the other was just an entire full quote of it, there wouldn't be anything left after editing.

hahahha, if you actually read my posts i didn't say either of those things. I know my posts were insults, and no, the '$illegal_rom_server' as you put it is not "soooooo nice". Sigils and Wines in the IS make it stupidly easy but hey, you guys have thrown AU to the scrap heap and after Mika clearly saying it was a matter of discussion at the time and info will be available 'next week', we are still waiting for this 'info' many months later. Then you broke my US guild with some of the most stupid bans i have ever seen and hence there i am on this easy but at least more populated '$illegal_rom_server'.

So please Saito, i dont care if you're German or not, go be 'blunt' and quote more incorrect sentences elsewhere.