The hugely successful but relatively unknown UK made MMOG ‘Runescape’ is getting a makeover.
Jagex’s new project, ‘Runescape High Detail’ will be shown for the first time at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, and will feature much improved graphics. Now, if you’re thinking that you’ve never heard of the game, or no one you know plays it, so surely this isn’t a big deal then take a look at the figures; more people play Runescape than WoW in the English speaking world with 6 million active monthly users, compared to WoW’s 4 million.
Below is a graph showing the number of Google searches for the terms “Runescape”, “World of Warcraft” and “Age of Conan”, which displays the game’s trend:
Runescape’s popularity is undisputed, but it’s free to play, right? That’s partly true. You can play for free, but you can only explore 40% of the world unless you pay up, which costs you the princely sum of $5 a month. Currently 1 million people subscribe, which isn’t to be sniffed at.
Runescape is java based, and is played through your internet browser, so no installation is necessary. The new graphics that we will see in ‘Runescape High Detail’ aren’t ground breaking and won’t amaze anyone who’s played a computer game in the last 5 years, but they are a significant improvement from the previous display.
Here are some facts about Jagex and Runescape that you may not have known, quoted from gigaom.com’s article:
- New content (questions, items, etc.) added to RuneScape every two weeks
- 1.2 megabyte Java app
- Peak concurrency: 250,000
- Average player time: 12.5 hours/week
- RuneScape is a sharded MMORPG (i.e. copies of the world run on separate servers)
- 250 RuneScape shards for up to 2,000 players each. Unlike many MMORPGs, player characters are not bound to a single shard.
- 200 servers total
- Main player demographics: 60 percent are from the U.S., 25 percent from the EU, smaller percentages from Australia/New Zealand and Canada. Player age typically 8-20, approximately 80 percent between 10-16.
So, it only has 1 million subscribers total. So, really, it’s not even close at all. Apples to Oranges otherwise, but I do know several people who play it.
It’s a good thing they are updating the graphics, even if they are not state of the art, they can still be enjoyable. Heck, I look at Half-Life 2 and then something like Crysis and I don’t see enough difference to justify the huge increase in hardware requirements.
Having AoC might wow some people, but games with lower requirements (WoW, Runescape, HL2, Spore) is where the greatest penetration will occur.