Runes of Magic US / AU

Not long, usually after the Advanced Unbinders went on sale there would be a lot of new items in the Auction House for sale. However, after the last 2 sales on unbinders there was nothing new.
The Auction Hose is the best indicator of the heath of the game it gives you a good idea of how many people are still connected to the game buying new items or selling old ones as they level up and improve their gear.
Now nothing is there what was once a dozen pages of each piece of gear is down to as low as 4 or 5 items, I play on 2 different servers looking for items, it is just a sad story now. On one server there were only 4 crossbows 2 level 30s 1 level 45 and a level 85 and 3 of the cross bows were white.
Prices were meaningless there was nothing that anyone wanted. If there is nothing that people want available people leave and they are in droves.
No new players coming in because no advertising no efforts to get new players. It was the advertising and bunches of free stuff to join that got so many of us to join years ago. Now, no one other than those of us play the game even know it exists. Every other game has articles and ads that show up regularly on the net and in magazines and keep growing but for some reason management has decided to hide the existence of ROM from the world and keep it a secret. If that doesn't change immediately you can start the countdown until the end.

While there are not many new people coming to rom I have noticed a large uptick of returning people from way back,, at least on reni. A few people from indigo have appeared on reni after coming back to indigo after a couple year hiatus and finding noone around there.

You know it's threads like this that people see and then turn away from the forum (and the game) completely.

I sure as heck wouldn't even think twice about sticking around if I came to the forums and saw a thread spelling out potential doom for a game.

GF is still looking for GM's. There's content for this game still planned at least up through level 92. the GM's are more active everywhere then they used to be. Sales are still happening. Ticket response times are moderately faster than they used to be. the IRC channel is booming with people. Most of the servers worldwide are still full of people. Hell, they just released a server for Italy not too long ago! Their own server! If GF didn't have any interest in Runes of Magic why would they do that?

Personally, I think the PLAYERS are making the game less desireable to play, not GF. Sure, advertising might be nice. But the constant fighting amongst players on the forums and then threads like this get put up? Come on. Think logically.

gotta +1 that post, Jguy :)

I also believe that it is we, the players, that make the game less desireable to play.

Does the game have issues? ayup. Do other games have issues? ayup.

I've come to the realization that the newer zones, quests and instances are really more grind-y than the old stuff.

I started a brand new toon the other day ( even though I have like 5 classes on my main ) and you know what? It's a blast! It was fun killing lvl 1 mushrooms with beginner gear and seeing the exp go up like crazy.

That's the rush that we all remember and that's what's missing in the newer zones. At too high a level, it just takes soo much grinding to really feel like there's much of anything worthwhile... there's this lack of a "sweet spot" between too easy & too hard... & that's really all on us.

I remember the first grumblings that the game was getting boring because mages could burn everything and priests could GH everything. So RW put in the idiotic %-mana skills. Drove a lot of players away and eventually semi-reversed the decision. After that, though, the decision was made to make future Staves weaker and weaker to limit magic using classes. Then they unintentionally buffed up the DPS skills with %-speed & %-dmg pots/food leading to the Chapter we all call "Scouts of Magic.' So RW introduced the Global Cooldown.. GCD and nerfed the Scouts. Then "we" complained that instances were getting boring because you could just burn them. So RW made instances that weren't burnable. Grumbling appears because there are instances where you can't get enough people to do the mechanics. etc... etc.. ad nauseum

Just sayin' that most of the grumbling came from WE the players asking for changes. The current version of RoM is based on RW's decision to mollify our complaints.

Well, 2 years ago, people said this game wouldn't last a year. During GF Berlin days a year ago, people said RoM wouldn't be open by the end of the year because of this game or that game being released. Which was somewhat ironic when I went to the forums of those games that were supposed to kill RoM and found the exact same doomsday threads there lol.

I'm not sure about in game, but on the forums at least, I'm seeing a lot more new player question threads compared to before. And you could argue Indigo is in much better condition now than it was before.

Well great job on scaring players away, new and old, great job on this.

It's not because your server is dead that others are not thriving.


Can we have a GM delete this entire posts as the purpose of it, is to scare people away.

Wow, you know what scares players away? Constant pointless argument between people on a games community, not going to point fingers however some people only reply for the sake of argument and THAT is what ruins forums. If anyone didn't want this thread out there then don't post and it will fade away in time.

On point: I don't think this thread was made to scare anyone away. And you don't see all these complaints on other threads that are 99% negative because this thread doesn't effect your respective servers I guess. I think Dpack brings up a very valid point, as I play on indigo myself and have noticed a very large absence of players recently, leaving us unable to do many runs at all now a days. This is the reality, and new players should not be lied to whom come to read the forums. My guess for Indigo Dpack, would be a continued fading trend over the summer months, with hopefully yet another up rise in population through the fall/winter... as for long term, lets just see how this year goes first.

One thing to keep in mind about supposed "low population" on the servers is that its finals time.

Time and time again it never fails that NO MATTER WHAT in a game's forums, someone posts "the game is dying because there's 30 less players on the server OH GOD WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!". Then the population fills back in when people are done with school/university.

Year after year, EVERY forum of EVERY game I play has the exact same thread at almost the exact same time.

Come on people. >.<

Ok first off, this game was created to go up to level 200, gear as of now is stopped at level 100 in database. There is still plenty of places to go with it. So if we are getting 10 levels a year, it could be here for more than 10 years, it all depends of how they do stuff till then.

Gameforge is trying to get stuff done with Runewaker i am sure of it. The problem is on Runewaker shoulders and theirs alone. Stuff broken etc is Runewaker. Yes Gameforge should advertize more on the web, magazines etc, that is one thing that would make the population go up.

But also pointed out by Jguy, people will finish school, university soon and summer vacations and the population will grow for about 2 months, then go back donw for a while and then go back up when school will begin again.

Its also that when new content is released, people farm it, get gear, sell a bit of gear, then wear themselves out and quit, even though the server at large still needs people farming and selling. Sometimes the people on those farm runs still need gear when the farming stops. Its a bit sucky.

Quoted from "zidlef"

Ok first off, this game was created to go up to level 200, gear as of now is stopped at level 100 in database. There is still plenty of places to go with it. So if we are getting 10 levels a year, it could be here for more than 10 years, it all depends of how they do stuff till then.

Gameforge is trying to get stuff done with Runewaker i am sure of it. The problem is on Runewaker shoulders and theirs alone. Stuff broken etc is Runewaker. Yes Gameforge should advertize more on the web, magazines etc, that is one thing that would make the population go up.

But also pointed out by Jguy, people will finish school, university soon and summer vacations and the population will grow for about 2 months, then go back donw for a while and then go back up when school will begin again.

C'mon Zid, do you really think this game has 10 years of life left in it? Rom will be lucky to make it another year or two. The main factors driving people away, either perm or temp, is the increased $$ price in gearing, the large amount of broken or not working correctly content and of course the flood of newer game titles. The newer game titles offer something fresh and fun, even if it's no better or worse than rom.

I quit rom over a month ago and now playing a game where the devs are actually listening and taking suggestions (that get implemented) from the players. Sure there are issues with it, but those same issues on average don't last nearly as long as a simple issue in rom does.

I've heard from a handful of sources that GF is recoding the game from scratch. I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, then it might breathe new life into rom. I have also heard from those same sources, that this recoding will take at least another year or two. There are rumors going around that the servers will be taken offline this summer for some kind of long term maintenance. If that is indeed the case, then an extended downtime would do nothing but severely hurt rom's chances of gaining new blood. *** Nothing in the above paragraph I can prove, it's speculation and rumor I've heard from players (and players who claim to be speaking with GM's). Take EVERYTHING in the above paragraph with a grain of salt. ***

Well more than a grain of salt, Gameforge is not coding the game as far as i know, it's Runewaker, if they are i hope we get to keep our stuff and keep on playing it for years to come.

If they do take it down for a long maintenance and it does get recoded and fixed, more players will come back to play, it is a great game, great GM team. I always said if they put the effort in it and make it better, this will be an awesome game to play.

some sincere official statements on RoM's futureplans would outweigh all peoples scary posts...
unfortunatelly gf rather got people spamming forums like in this thread than providing positive info for players.
im sure rom will be up for some more chapters, hopefully gf will encourage people to stay and new people to join us.

Quoted from "zidlef"

Well more than a grain of salt, Gameforge is not coding the game as far as i know, it's Runewaker, if they are i hope we get to keep our stuff and keep on playing it for years to come.

If they do take it down for a long maintenance and it does get recoded and fixed, more players will come back to play, it is a great game, great GM team. I always said if they put the effort in it and make it better, this will be an awesome game to play.

Sorry Zid, I have to disagree with you. When players are active in a game, then forced to find something else to play for a long period of time (weeks or longer), it's pretty well known that players don't return once they are ingrained into another game. You're right, it is RW coding now, the rumors and such I've heard are saying that GF would in fact be the ones doing the recoding, that's why I said it the way I did.

@Aussiecheck It would be amazing if GF would show the players what's planned for the next patch or next few patches. It might keep players interested if they had something to look forward to. The history of Rom has it more like a secret society than a social mmo, meaning that most content updates are kept relatively quiet until just before release (no promotion of them before release), plans for the game aren't being shared, no notice to players on when events are planned. Players don't find out until patch day or maybe a day before. Why all the secrecy?

Why would players be forced to find something else to play? you have plenty you can do in the game as of now. Instances, crafting, questing, farming cards, mats and XP/TP, helping others with the knowledge you might have, helping them run instances unatainable to regular people, getiing setskills etc, plenty to do hile in wait of the next level cap.

Ya i know to some helping others once they are endgame, would be pointless because they have nothing to gain from it, therefore why would they, well because someone else helped them get that point. Self centered individuals that just go for what THEY NEED, THEY WANT. Where would it be wrong for those players to give a hand to others running the harder mode instances? Finishing their quests, item set skills etc, heaven forbid that they would, because then other people might become as good as they are and remember how badly they treated other people by stepping on their heads all the time.

BTW a bunch of people left for GW2, D3, TESO, WoW, LoL etc, guess what? they all came back LMAO, there is no other game like ROM, if Gameforge does recoded it and it works, well kudos to them.