Runes of Magic US / AU

yea it's like that on my server as well. with each new chapter after III the population dropped drastically but from what they are saying they are merging servers in the next few months and hopefully we will see some population. sucks because the winter event actually brought in a few players but now with goblin run closed (fewer shells) and drill grounds closed (fewer honor points) and houses closed everyone is gone again.

my assumption is new mmo's that came out, or new expansions. If not that, maybe its cause the price of CS items is way too high. If you spend an average 15$ a month on rom, you will not get the equivalent of 15$ of a sub game. The lack of new players is because there are little to no advertisements for runes of magic.

Quoted from "bleedingblak"

my assumption is new mmo's that came out, or new expansions. If not that, maybe its cause the price of CS items is way too high. If you spend an average 15$ a month on rom, you will not get the equivalent of 15$ of a sub game. The lack of new players is because there are little to no advertisements for runes of magic.

1000% agree. This is one reason I am spending less per month on the game. I still play, but am no where near as gungho on the game as I was.


Even other P2W games don't seem to touch this one. Each item +16, 4 run slots, 6 stats, od/ud, and tier is just too much to do to a piece of gear for the current costs. Worst of all is that it is needed at least to some degree to run current end game content by at least some of the group.


I truly hope that things change and the game lasts for years to come. I hope that server merges, and more changes yet to come will come and we will keep enjoying a good overall game.

You could probably list hundreds of other factors, but IMO, 3 reasons I can think of off the top of my mind is more MMO's, better tech, and cost vs game quality. Every year you get dozens more MMO's competing for player's hard drives. Not only that, but technology improves, and so does MMO's. This game hasn't really been upgraded beyond the original 2008 technology that it was developed in, and there's a pretty big, noticable difference between games in 2007 and games in 2014.

Gearing isn't cheap for sure. Though after looking around, I've noticed that subscription games aren't as cheap as I thought, but still, it is probably still an important factor, though I think I'd rank it as on par with the previous 2, rather than above, in terms of importance. A lot of subscription games include other side costs, like paying $30 for expansions, needing to buy the game initially in addition to subscription, some with CS + sub fee, which does add up to $250+ a year for quite a few big budget games.

If this was a Family Feud question (name a reason why ROM's population continues to decline), the top 5nanswers on the board would be:

1. Lack of advertisement
2. Too expensive to become/maintain end game gear
3. Buggy content/bad memory leak/old game engine
4. Too much work for too little rewards for ingame events (eoj's in particular)
5. Zidlef trolling the forums!

You know, it's threads like this that are the problem, like I keep saying. People still create them and then drive players away. A new player comes to the forums, sees that there's a thread "everything is dead", reads the first title and then cancels the installation of the game. Good job, one less player playing the game.

RoM's lack of advertisement might be a problem, yeah. But the players are as much to blame for starting stupid threads like this. RoM is fine. I still see most servers having more than enough players if people would work together. The server merge will only help that. I wouldn't call the game "dead" as it's not.

Stupid thread is stupid.

Jguy is right about the lack of advertisement or the lack of even trying to do some. As i and others have said many times before, thread like this just make it so people think it's dying, it's not. People have lives, kids, family, loved ones, vacations, school etc, it's not because you log on at a certain time and no one is on , that the game is dead. Less populated maybe, but i see plenty of people on Reni at all hours.

A lot of people also do not talk in world or even know trade chat exists on servers ;-( Some people are just shy and feel they would be left out by the rest of the server, some are just conspiracy theorists and think people are out to get them lol. Talk to your server, make it feel like all belong there and are allowed to have fun. Those odd toons that you only see using world to sell diamonds when there is a diamond sale and then disappear till the next time a diamond sale is on, then everyone wants to be their friends and pay cheap prices for diamonds.

Here is food for thoughts, do you have a grandparent that doesn't have anything to do with their days? feel lonely? would like to meet new people but do not have the means too? invite them to the game, let them have some fun and make themselves feel better ;-) As you grow older, less people or family come to see you, you feel left out and then there could be dire consequences, bring them here, let them have some fun!!!!!

it is all solutions that WE, the players, can try to make happen ;-)

Advertisement would definitely help.
Players need to stop being so negative.
I am just as guilty of this as anyone but I am trying not to be so negative with my posts on the forums.

Try harder, timmy.

Questioning the current state of the game is hardly being negative. Presenting both sides of the equation is equally important. People want to know if a game is worth investing into before they jump in. Presenting both the pros AND cons allows new players to decide for themselves if it's worthwhile to them to invest into this game over another title.

It has become obvious that some posters are simply in denial about the state of this game right now and are not being objective - on both sides of the argument. Is the game dead? No it is not. Is it fine as it is? Again no, there are issues, some of them big enough to be deal breakers for some players. That is why accusing other players of being either too critical or too enthusiastic when posting about the game is just wrong. What is the forum for if not to ask questions, show support or discuss and vent about issues that bother players? Players can hardly talk to the publisher or developer directly and this is one of the few options they have to try and be heard.

Finally there is the advertising debate. This keeps popping up but the question is this: What would they be advertising? What exactly is this game offering over new titles being released? How are they supposed to advertise for a game that’s over 5 years old and talking about merging servers? The timing just might not be “ideal” right now.

Advertizing it, they could :

The game has been here since 2008!!!! we are having our 6th anniversary!!! YEAH!!!!!! We will be giving out free gifts to new players joining the game during the anniversary event!! join in mass!! enjoy the game!!!

Register on Facebook page for the game and get a free item or two!!!! heck even give them 99 free diamonds to be able to purchase a mount!!!

There are ways to do this, i can't believe anyone working on other of their games can't give a hand with this ;-)

Quoted from "zidlef"

Register on Facebook page for the game and get a free item or two!!!! heck even give them 99 free diamonds to be able to purchase a mount!!!

While I too agree the game should be advertised as well as new players be given something free to coax them into trying the game out, the suggestion of them giving away diamonds to people who register will never happen, nor should it ever happen.

Think about how badly that would be abused if every new account got 99 free diamonds.


Why give away 99 diamonds for a mount when they can just give away a mount? This is the much more likely of a scenario they would be willing to offer.


No one could / would abuse the system if they just plain received a bound mount, and everyone gets something free.

Win / Win for everyone.

I don't disagree with most reasons people have given here for a decline, but since Borella mentioned the 1 year time frame, I'll give 1 more reason/hypothesis which corresponds to that time frame. The removal of diamonds from the AH. That removal acted as an economic dampener on those economies which were still functioning fairly well, and on those that were not, maybe less so, or maybe not. While that removal would have affected some not at all, others it impacted more significantly.

I'm sure we'll see the argument that the game operated well when they first removed diamonds from the AH a very long time ago. My rebuttal would be that this game was 'humming' back then. The economies were not near as fragile as they were when this removal took place. The only proof I offer is that my economic activity severely decreased, and if mine did, it's a fair bet that others did as well. This had nothing to do with reselling, which I was always against and never practiced, but an argument could be made that even that helped keep the engine humming.

The last post by lesmceld was excellent. It brought out the point that ever since the diamonds were taken out of the Auction House the games economy has collapsed. Before diamonds were removed there were pages of every piece of gear at every level including end game fully plussed , tiered and stated and lower level gear that was also fully upgraded but the player had leveled and got new gear. Today you are lucky to find a couple of any item mostly low level or bag drops. To find a piece of gear from an instance or that was upgraded at all is rare.
I usually bought new gear at every new level and sold my old gear. I was able to buy diamonds for ABLs for the good gear I got in instances and stat removal stones to keep the process and buy items to plus up Then sell the gear I was using. Today even though my characters are at max level in all classes my gear is 10 or more levels behind and it is unlikely to change.
How anyone can look at what gear is available in the Auction House today and compare it to what gear was available before and not see a total collapse is not seeing what is going on.
The argument that some people took advantage of the system to hike up the price of diamonds and profiteer is credible but the method to solve what was a minor problem by destroying the rest of the game's economy.
Today a piece of gear from every level instance including the highest is far more likely to be stoned out or just sold to a merchant because there is no way to get it into the Auction House and into the games economy.

Diamonds in AH... well lets look at this.

When diamonds were back in the AH and it was flourishing was when diamonds were like 30-40k a piece... because hackers were flooding the AH to drive down the price. The SECOND that was no longer possible diamonds in the AH price shot up to 200K+ per dia. Last Dia sale that I was logged in for, I saw diamonds selling at like 120-130k a piece.

Therefore diamonds in the AH was NOT the best for the economy because without a false flood of diamonds in the AH, the prices skyrocketed and people blatantly abused the system to profit.

Now, I don't care if they ever put Dias back in the AH. I am not for it nor am I against it. I think if they do put them in though they need to remove the resale price gouging. It is just that it is NOT a 1-to-1 direct correlation. It is something that didn't help the game and anything that drives away players is bad.

Just putting Dias back in the AH will NOT fix the game in and of itself. I hardly believe that it will fix anything, but I would be ok with them putting them back in the game so that I can prove it wont fix the game.

The one thing I agree with DK about on that it's quite possible reintroduction won't help some economies now. The disagreement is about that it had no effect when they took them out. it did have an effect. Personally, I was all for preventing reselling, and if the megaphones for gold sellers was an issue, there was an easy way to resolve that.

People tend to judge effects and consequences by their own experiences. The removal affected me and my activity, which thus affected other people and their activity, and so on. it cascades. For some people, no effect at all.

Would be nice if diamonds were back in AH I was here when they first took them out of AH I lost alot of friends then from people quitting now they removed again lost even more friends I understand why they took them out but isn't there a way to make it where if say I buy diamonds with rl money they are not bound however once I put some in AH to sell they become bind on equip so whoever buys the diamonds I put in AH knows once they buy them and they take them from mail box they are now bound can never be resold again that way those who are buying them are actually using them for house energy or mounts or whatever they want to buy.

Well i would be all up for diamonds being the way they would be as per Wolfbabe. The issue we had were duped diamonds and gold, yes there are certain individuals who managed to do that. As per gold sellers took advantage of that situation too, how about players with a lot of gold who sold their gold to the same individuals for real money? The diamonds back in AH back then was fine and dandy for the first week and then people figured how to exploit the crap out of it and the game economy.

It all comes down to individuals not being able to play a game without cheating it. People with no morals who do not want to spend a dime on the game because they found a way how to bypass it.

Having fresh blood in the game would truly be a good thing to help things and move forward, but that is Gameforge decision to make. Really hope they would act on it and put OUR money where there mouth is.

Diamonds were taken out of the AH to help regulate the economy and combat gold sellers, et al who were wreaking havoc. But so what? Diamonds in or out of the AH have little to anything to do with the state of the game right now. Here’s why:

1. Those players to whom not having diamonds in the AH was a deal breaker have long since moved on.

2. There simply is no correlation. If the AH dried up completely and had remained so since diamonds were removed from the AH then I think there might be something there. They did not. The AH recovered and the economies found equilibrium as they always do.

3. Despite diamonds not being in the AH, on both Reni and Govinda just a few weeks back the AH was rather full – lots of crafters putting up their wares, lots of PoM gear and stats showing up, heck there were even quite a few folks on Govinda especially who were doing some spring cleaning on their banks and either selling cheap or giving away a lot of good gear (belated thanks to those players btw).

What HAS affected the economies is the lack of players logging on to do more than mini-games/dailies. Whatever their lack of motivation is, i.e. waiting to see what happens with the server merges, not excited by the current content, w/e…the reality is the communities are not as involved as much outside of running siege as they used to be and it shows.

With the current state of the game a lot of players need to get passed their aversion to running in a pick-up group (Pug) and start running things. THAT is what will help put more items into the AH, not putting diamonds back in.