Runes of Magic US / AU

I really miss old wolf's signature with calculation how much cost to get all gear plused and drilled. Just that had price tag way above any popular subscription based game (for multiple years).

I have not played for a while on USA server, so I am kind of out of touch (price of DIAS etc.) but just for fun, what is price of complete end game gear on server atm? (if you get everything off AH and pay in DIAS, getting DIAS at best DIAS deal and selling then in AH)

ps. For some reason I can't get even log in into game, still have it on an old computer (removed form other 2 that I use for gaming) It appears that password reset function does not work. Wonder if I should even bother contacting support.

@ RoMage, This game is expensive yes but I think these comparisons are funny. I know many a player that is geared to the teeth and has never spent a dime on the game. This requires you to play constantly and work and sell the stuff no one else wants to get but its very very do-able. They then buy the dia they need off some guildy that always seems to have them at a deep discount (not the ah goldseller price) on our server guild dia are sold at 60k.

But to justify this there must be players that spend thousands to gear quickly and that buy everything they need instead of farming it so that the F2P player can live a prosperous and happy life. And there are still those people out there as well.

Quoted from "Quaffy2"

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

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's the act of using content, images, tags and phrases in your website content as well as in what are called 'metatags' to boost your website's listing in...you guessed it...search engines. For those kids that don't know, Google and Yahoo are search engines. They crawl the internet looking for page content to index, and in some cases, such as Google, cache for later use.

Not having the proper content on your website hurts your SEO to the point of your Google Rank and Alexa rank dropping. Meaning your webpage rank drops and your website may appear second or third on the list of google searches. For example: meta tags are used on a webpage to put forth keywords to your webpage without actually displaying that information to users. Instead of having a long sentence on the front of your page if you don't want to, you can include the keywords in the meta information that search engines strive on but users won't understand. Keywords such as game, Multiplayer, RPG, housing system are keywords that search engines look for. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element

Looking at the front page of http://us.runesofmagic.gameforge.com I see no such meta content. That really sucks when looking for MMORPG in Google searches and Runes of Magic doesn't even show up in the first 10 pages. 'free-to-play', 'fantasy mmorpg' returned similar results. And it isn't the age of the game, because Ragnarok Online, which was released 12 years ago shows up on the second page. Hell, Ultima Online still shows up in the first 10 pages, and that game was released 16 years ago!

Also, an FYI is that gameforge shot themselves in the foot by making runesofmagic a subdomain of gameforge.com. Note around the time that happened and then it was forced, the Alexa rank plummeted. Alexa is based on how many people visit the URL. Of course runesofmagic.com's rank will be down because the URL doesn't physically exist any longer, it's a redirect (a horrible horrible idea when it comes to SEO and improving page rank in Alexa)

Please just close this already we know the numbers from there are not accurate and it seems to be going off topic.

Holy freaking quote from hell can you just post the cliff-notes cuz im not reading that lol jguy

Refugee, yes getting new players here is important... However once they are here the game has to hold them. If you start a new game and you see the laundry list of things that you would have to do just to be able to be a part of later instance runs.... even on ONLY normal... would you stick around?

I sure as heck wouldn't. I am only still around cause of the time I already have invested in this game and the state at which I am right now. About 10 of the good friends I had in this game all quit cause "I can spend 40 bucks a month and really not get anywhere, just cause I am not in "insert guild name here"". Then they would tell me those guilds wouldn't take them cause they weren't well enough geared. They finally quit and said "there is no reason me playing anymore, nor spending any more money cause I am stalling". These were veteran players, that spend that money for a long time. If the game can make them think it is hopeless... what about newer players? They don't have anything invested... far easier to walk away than people with hundreds invested. Just getting them here is only HALF the battle.

I know this is unpopular, but I hear it a lot on our server. Most guilds don't run the newest, or one to two patches back content because they just cant get enough people to run it. Dungeons being designed for 12 people is totally outdated.. How many guilds can manage that in the USA servers? 10? What percentage is that? Do you think a game can survive when that low of the population can run the stuff?

The main thing here is, if a new player joins, then they find out how much it costs to gear and how much time they have to put in to be instance ready... Then they find out that they wont just have to gear once, but more than once to have (optimal gear) because that is what hard/normal runs require. Then they will have to get in certain guilds, cause other ones are still "trying" to get to that point. Then they find out those guilds aren't openly recruiting. How hopeless does their chance at this game look?

Dungeons need to not be designed for the 1%... plain and simple. They need to be set to scale, for number of players etc. Don't just make easy/normal/hard. If someone Duos normal, the dungeon should adjust for that, If they 4 man hard, the dungeon needs to adjust. GF needs to quit thinking that they will make the most money off of the small group of people that can run the new instances. That has been the status Quo since the Scout nerf. Before then TONS of guilds were running RT and selling gear, and the game was thriving. I would say they had their highest profits then. It has been slowly declining... because they want it to be harder and harder to run. When it was easier they made more money... it really isn't that hard.

Edit to Add: Rui you are right, but it is not JUST stats it is gear and stats. If it was easier for OD gear and all the stats... yes more would spend and gear. All of it needs to be more accessible. With instances not being designed for the top more will be able to run the instances, prices come down, AND more people can gear.

just for the record i do not delete such posts i have a special place for them.
Cammo if you would like to discuss why i removed your posts you can pm me as it is not for this section.

Dkjester,

after many calls to make game more available and easy for new players, and that game should be advertised in USA as well (there is no advertisements at the moment as far as I know, last one I saw in PC Gamer was over 2 years ago) all I got is called troll by Mika and co. and banned.

This is something we talked for 2 years now, and I just came to c/p something from earlier class discussions, and no, I was not surprised to see that NOTHING has changed since I was gone.

Would be childish to expect anything to change... just more empty promises.

yeah I actually remember that, now that I think about it.

I mean I can say that eventually ill probably end up quitting again. All I do now is solo what I can, sell what I get, craft gear and sell it, amass gold, buy some diamonds here and there and work on our gear slowly. However, I know we will hit a ceiling where just the two of us are done. Even with our two new guildies that is only 4 players. They will probably quit here in not too long... or having used us to gear up will jump to another guild and we will be back to just making gold and buying what we want.... just to hit another ceiling.


People shouldn't be forced to join a guild that the politics/community/feel in that guild is all wrong for you... just because you want to be able to run past normal.


I am seriously hoping that people actually are reading this that are working at GF and have control over it. They can see how much I have put into this game, and that I continue to pay... and while you are getting better with some stuff, others stay the same. You cant afford to keep losing your paying players, and hoping new ones will replace them if you keep the status quo.

JGuy's reply was dead on regarding SEO. Not only have they done very little for SEO; what they did looks like they're stuck in 2001.

You can see the effects on the Alexa page too. Only 12% of traffic comes from direct search.The top two linking sources are Yahoo answers and Reddit(French). While those are good for finding answers, depending on the language you speak, you are doing it wrong if any substantial portion of your traffic comes from those sources.


For those that are having a hard time understanding how Alexa rank is relevant here, the Runes of Magic website is the portal through which a person comes to register a new address(among other things). So, as the number of site visitors fall, the number of registrants to the site falls as well. Decreases, of course, can be caused by other things, but when they are paired with noticeable declines in server populations and items in the AH, it is a somewhat safe bet that you might be onto the cause. In fact, it has been mentioned that the website is only rarely used, which could mean the drop in traffic could be even more accurate as an allegory for growth of the game in general.

AFAIK, all the current end gamers that spent 0 money on the game are all from ch1/2, when f2p end gamer was very possible...as people have stated, the cost is getting to endgame, keeping up with endgame as f2p is easy. all those f2p ch1/2 end gamers have just kept themselves endgame...if somebody who starts today can become f2p endgame, I'd be amazed...

Its a great game just needs a company who will dedicate to the game to make it better.

This is going to be long-ish, but here's what I'm seeing are the main weakpoints of RoM:

1. Gear and Stats - There are no limits as to what you can wear and stat with. I know people right now are like, wha??? why would you want to restrict anything? Because as fun as it is to feel OP, it really takes a lot away from the game. All of those epic moments, like FA, NoM, etc... there's even a "movement" going on right now about some guilds who want to only play Ch. 1. No gear beyond a certain level, no stats beyond a certain level, etc...

2. Fast Forward to End-game - At the moment, all I see are toons being plvl'd to 50; do dogmeat until 68; do taz/fires until 73; do hide the encampment until 78; do drinks... basically, it's all about fast forwarding through the game to get to end game levels. Nobody cares about the old stuff, it's all about new stuff and pushing the envelope.

3. Dirty statting vs. Puri-statting - Obviously, this game's biggest strength is the ability to stat what you want on your gear. In the past, it was sufficient to dirty stat in order to clear instances; now it is nearly impossible to run much of anything without puri's. It gets even worse with the need for random attribute extraction stones since most later instances have almost purely dirty purple gear on easy mode.

4. Crap for stats - GF/RW made the decision to make Mem/EoJ pulls pretty much nothing but crap. If you want the bestest of stats, you need to be in a good hard mode run. That's fine. Everyone accepts that, but it's a slap in the face to many players that pulls are soooo horrible now that's it's not worthwhile to pull much of anything.

We can go on, but I think the main issue w/ RoM is that it's very unstructured. If you are a certain level, you can only wear gear of that level. RW got that part right, but they've allowed unbalanced toons by allowing you to use whatever stat/runes you want in your gear. Hey, lets give this lvl 1 toon warrior all orange statted lvl 1 gear so he can quest without any fear of dying. :/ In Ch. 1 & 2, NoM was terrifying... because we had crap for gear w/ crap for stats. Now? someone lvl 15 could prolly clear it w/ full t5 gear clean statted +16 even with the level difference. & that's the whole problem. RW is now ONLY thinking about what to do for the OP toons/players and doesn't think about the average questing player. It's one of those things that boggles my mind to think.. a player in an Easy mode instance needs to buy more expensive RAE's in order to get the stats they want, but someone in a Hard mode instance only uses puri's.

There really should be 3 tiers of stats per instance if it has 3 levels of difficulty. Stat I, Stat II, Stat III -- a Stat I would be about the same "strength" of a Stat II in the previous instance, a Stat II would be about the same "strength" of a Stat III in the previous instance and Stat III's would be the "highest" strength currently in the game. Allow all the bosses to drop gear with 20% clean Stat I on Easy, 40% clean Stat II on Normal, 90% clean Stat III / 10% clean Proof stat on Hard.

RW needs to make the game so players can progress and feel like they're progressing.

Quoted from "ycavan"

This is going to be long-ish, but here's what I'm seeing are the main weakpoints of RoM:

1. Gear and Stats - There are no limits as to what you can wear and stat with. I know people right now are like, wha??? why would you want to restrict anything? Because as fun as it is to feel OP, it really takes a lot away from the game. All of those epic moments, like FA, NoM, etc... there's even a "movement" going on right now about some guilds who want to only play Ch. 1. No gear beyond a certain level, no stats beyond a certain level, etc...

2. Fast Forward to End-game - At the moment, all I see are toons being plvl'd to 50; do dogmeat until 68; do taz/fires until 73; do hide the encampment until 78; do drinks... basically, it's all about fast forwarding through the game to get to end game levels. Nobody cares about the old stuff, it's all about new stuff and pushing the envelope.

3. Dirty statting vs. Puri-statting - Obviously, this game's biggest strength is the ability to stat what you want on your gear. In the past, it was sufficient to dirty stat in order to clear instances; now it is nearly impossible to run much of anything without puri's. It gets even worse with the need for random attribute extraction stones since most later instances have almost purely dirty purple gear on easy mode.

4. Crap for stats - GF/RW made the decision to make Mem/EoJ pulls pretty much nothing but crap. If you want the bestest of stats, you need to be in a good hard mode run. That's fine. Everyone accepts that, but it's a slap in the face to many players that pulls are soooo horrible now that's it's not worthwhile to pull much of anything.

We can go on, but I think the main issue w/ RoM is that it's very unstructured. If you are a certain level, you can only wear gear of that level. RW got that part right, but they've allowed unbalanced toons by allowing you to use whatever stat/runes you want in your gear. Hey, lets give this lvl 1 toon warrior all orange statted lvl 1 gear so he can quest without any fear of dying. :/ In Ch. 1 & 2, NoM was terrifying... because we had crap for gear w/ crap for stats. Now? someone lvl 15 could prolly clear it w/ full t5 gear clean statted +16 even with the level difference. & that's the whole problem. RW is now ONLY thinking about what to do for the OP toons/players and doesn't think about the average questing player. It's one of those things that boggles my mind to think.. a player in an Easy mode instance needs to buy more expensive RAE's in order to get the stats they want, but someone in a Hard mode instance only uses puri's.

There really should be 3 tiers of stats per instance if it has 3 levels of difficulty. Stat I, Stat II, Stat III -- a Stat I would be about the same "strength" of a Stat II in the previous instance, a Stat II would be about the same "strength" of a Stat III in the previous instance and Stat III's would be the "highest" strength currently in the game. Allow all the bosses to drop gear with 20% clean Stat I on Easy, 40% clean Stat II on Normal, 90% clean Stat III / 10% clean Proof stat on Hard.

RW needs to make the game so players can progress and feel like they're progressing.

This point is so true. New toons can never got a party together for NoM, FA, HoTo anymore. And if they do, there's no fun or challenging element to it anymore. I remember getting my ass handed to me in NoM, even at the beginning of chapter 3 and even with higher levels toons in the party. Now that I can even dirty stat some mage gear for my mage with high level stats like Crims and Temples, it's insane what he can do.

And thus the thread devolves from its meager beginning of measuring activity that is not actually game access to general purpose Airing of Grievances. Happy Festivus, everyone!

<-- former player checking forums for the first time since retiring.



I can tell you I left for the reasons ycavan & bleedingblak stated above. "coupled with my lack of faith in management".

I used to spend 200-300 dollars a month playing. "I would love to know what has happened to the diamond market since I left"

Simply when you have to deal with the lack of drops for the effort put in, the lack of +16 stones to finish gear you DID manage to get, Constant fear of every post being deleted, or edited by admins, total lack of faith in management of the game, to many glitches and kinks to name, ect, ect, ect, its time to move on.

so I did. I moved on. took my cash and my time investment and have spent it elsewhere. I'm enjoying life working on my Cuda and spending time with the family instead of grinding all day. heck next spring we are going to take a cruise. All money the I used to spend on RoM now being spent on me instead

Saumess

ycavan hits it right on the head. BB you did too, esp the level 82 +16 gems... still waiting. Siege time may be a big deal.. I don't know. I know lots of people that siege multiple times a day... so *shrug*. But I would be all for changing it, it shouldn't be a big deal. Same with the runes, they would probably make a pretty penny off of me with curse runes for sale, and the new ones...

Saum- if you spent 200-300 a month on diamonds and sold them.. you would probably have billions of gold since prices are near 200k per each.

200k per !!!!! Lol I wish!!

between giving diamonds away spending cash on alts and buying frivilise stuff on my toons I aways seemed to be sitting at around 4-10K dias on my toons. and 100 mil'ish on my char in gold. I think I had to many hobbies in game. "card collecting, tradeskilling, ect. Heck I even maxed out the new title system with item shop items.... though that was probably a mistake " I will say I think I left with like 900 transport runes and a few hundred golden hammers left