Just press the button!

MORE SERIOUS TAKE:
I see a lot of comments of people who would have played RS on a Reignited account. It sucks you don't get to play this mode. However, hear me out. The game is still playable! You don't need a reignited account to play it. Sure, a few accounts around you will have benefitted from microtransactions, so what? You can still play and have fun!

I have been playing without interacting with MTX for a decade now, with multiple accounts that have never touched it. And you know what? It doesn't affect me. I enjoy my quests, do my bossing, and grind my skills like I would have if I hadn't seen them. If you would have enjoyed doing this on Reignited, you would will enjoy doing this on RuneScape!

As far as the economy is concerned, yeah it is very inflated, and it isn't great. But luckily for us, inflation works differently from real life. If the RS3 economy is inflated, that means you make more money as well. So your buying power stays the same as if you were reignited! It's not like real life where the 1% (Zamorak Worshippers) have everything and you have to thank them for the chance to slave away. You are a participant in an inflated economy where everybody has the same chances, now that MTX are gone. If you get the skills or combat ability to fight bosses, you too can earn good money and buy the stuff you want for a reasonable price.

Most importantly, the game is very fun, and is getting a lot of content and improvements! Give it a shot. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. But you probably wouldn't have liked it on Reignited either.

Guthix' blessings upon all of you

Had a new found love for rs3 last couple of years going for 120s for the master trim comp Cape.

But no point in spending 1000+ more hours on an account with a sunset timer.

Let me preface this by saying that I fully understand that Jagex is a business and that business is owned by private equity meaning that revenue and growth targets are obviously major pressures.
With MTX being largely removed, it's perfectly reasonable to assume there is now enormous pressure to find other ways of growing Runescape's revenue and playerbase.

I think most of us understand and are even considerate of that.

What I can not accept is the idea that the existing playerbase should have to sacrifice twenty years of account history because Jagex spent years choosing the easiest possible route (MTX) to achieve growth instead of making Runescape a game more people wanted to play.

Jagex added Squeal of Fortune, Treasure hunter, Yak Track, Hero Pass, etc.
We still to this day have stars being sold in the store.
Players didn't design these systems, Jagex did.

I've seen people noting that players purchased these things therefore there's some culpability there.
Of course there are players who purchased them.
If Steam added wallhacks as a buyable feature in CS2, do you think no-one would buy it because of "integrity?"
If you put an advantage into a game, players are going to use it.
The company who design the game control the rules of the environment. It is the company's responsibility to protect the integrity of that environment.

For years, the easier option to meet financial targets was monetizing the extraordinarily loyal existing playerbase instead of doing the difficult work required to make Runescape attractive to new players.
Modernizing the early game, fixing onboarding, improving the UI, making the game graphically consistent, improving accessibility and investing in the game itself. All the things that they have been addressing this year should have been started in the place of the awful MTX "features" that have been plaguing this game.

I think Jagex probably realize this which is how we've now arrived at Reignited.

The existing economy and progression apparently carry too much baggage so the answer is a clean economy and ask everyone who wants to participate to start again.

But you created the baggage.

Why should someone who has played the same Runescape for 5, 10, 15 or 20+ years be expected to abandon their history because Jagex regrets decisions that Jagex made?
Why should someone who joined this year during the Road to Restoration suddenly be told that the exciting new beginning is somewhere else now and they'll not only need to start again but they'll actually need to pay for a separate account to participate in it?

I would argue that the primary draw of Runescape is that your progression feels permanent. That's why the sentiment: "you never quit, you just take a break" has remained so strikingly true for so long. You can disappear for years and come back knowing that the account you built is still your place in Runescape.
By deliberately funneling future players into a separate progression ecosystem that existing accounts cannot enter, you're undermining that sacred promise. For the first time, veteran players are being given a reason to wonder whether coming back to the account they left behind will still mean coming back to the future of Runescape.
I've seen many mentions of the same sentiment over the past week, that players just don't have the will to log in and this is the reason. Their account's future is no longer certain.
I feel exactly the same way.

To those who would argue that the old account aren't being deleted so just continue playing, there are two outcomes for Reignited:

1: Reignited is a success.

In this scenario there is a huge surge of new players into the game as Reignited accounts and some veterans will hop over as well. This leaves the veteran account type in a world even more isolated than they are today. Either join Reignited and leave your history behind or remain in a world where the economy, PvM population and social activity gradually hollows out.
We're already seeing an extraordinary sell off in the RS3 economy with players liquidating their banks, buying bonds and swapping their money into oldschool because they're rightfully frightened about what's coming next.

2: Reignited fails.

If Reignited fails to attract the enormous influx of players required to sustain a completely separate ecosystem then what exactly have you accomplished?
You've fractured an already relatively small playerbase, damaged confidence in the existing economy, burned a huge amount of goodwill with veteran players and created yet another version of Runescape with too few people to sustain itself.
You might think that a fresh economy sounds exciting when you imagine thousands upon thousands of players pouring into it.
But what if they don't?
What if 5k people try it at launch and six months into 2027 only 1k remain?
What happens when someone needs an obscure item and there are barely any sellers?
What happens to the group PvM that you seem so intent on making recently?
You've now created two weaker ecosystems instead of one stronger one.
And that is the part that I cannot understand about Reignited. Both outcomes introduce enormous risk to the existing game.

If it succeeds then Veteran Runescape becomes the legacy version.
If it fails, you've damaged Veteran Runescape for nothing.

We aren't tainted.
We are the record of players who continued to play Runescape through every questionable decision Jagex made along the way.
We aren't a problem to be solved.
We kept the game alive.
Our accounts are Runescape's history, not baggage to be discarded.

I don't have the solution to your problem with onboarding but I could offer a few things that I think would help:

• Keep working on the early experience. I know that you're still in the process of this but it's paramount. Getting someone to try Runescape is easier than making them stay. Make the first few hours so unforgettably enjoyable that new players can't stop thinking about playing again.
• Modernize the early questing experience. Runescape is well known for it's quests. It shouldn't be considered a slog for new players. Revive it and make them love quests as many of us did 20 years ago.
• Give new players clearer long term direction. Runescape's freedom is one of its biggest strengths once you understand the game. Making plans and routes is always a joy but that only comes when you have deep understanding of it's world, items and systems. Without that, the freedom available in Runescape can feel overwhelming and more like aimlessness.
• Plugins. I know this is already currently in Beta but I feel it's worth mentioning anyway. I think plugins are a bigger solve for many of your issues than you realize.
• Fix the default interface. I'm not sure if this has been addressed already this year but it was something I noted some time ago. If it has been fixed, great. If not, it's worth addressing because the Runescape UI is quite complex compared to other games.

This is why I find the overemphasis on high scores and a fresh economy extremely odd. I think you're massively overestimating how much this matters to the average, genuinely new player when compared to the new player experience.
A brand new player to Runescape doesn't care who had 200m xp first in a skill. They don't care about the world first Zamorak 4k. On Reignited accounts, you're going to have the same sweats that play RS3 for the prestige playing Reignited for the same reason.

New players care about simple things:
Is the game fun?
Do I understand what I'm doing?
Does everything look good?
Do I want to log back in tomorrow?

These are genuine onboarding questions. A fresh economy and high score page don't answer any of them.

Make the game something people want to recommend to their friends.
Don't create a clean ecosystem next door and leave the people who endured the consequences of your previous decisions wondering whether their accounts still have a future.

If removing MTX created a hole in your growth model, then build a better Runescape and fill it by making more people want to play it.
Do not fill it by asking the people who survived twenty years of your corner cutting monetization decisions to abandon the accounts they survived them on.

Private equity, shareholders, revenue targets, acquisition, whatever commercial realities exist behind the scenes, those are Jagex's problems to solve.
They should not become ours.

Tl;dr: Veteran players should not be presented with the bill for mistakes they didn't make.

What's the matter with the Ironman mode getting fucked by MTX updates?! I play ironman not to use MTX, be self suficient (work for the stuff instead of buying them from GE) and not trade, and theres this MTX content that actually manages to screw with my gameplay by removing what I used to have and giving me a currency I care 0 for.

• We get oddments for literally everything, seriously jagex, Shove them up where you know
• We get no buffs (I was expecting to get these, apart from the XP)
• We get no satchel (we used to get every item in the satchel from the dialy challenges, it was actually a breath of air, I was expecting to get these from the pass)
• We lost the daily experience
• The challenges take 5 to 10 times more time to do

This is the worst update of the year. This is just your greedy agenda talking louder. You screwed your good half of year with this update and it became one of the worst to me.

You ran out of bank space? Don't worry, you can buy some more, but not with gp.

50 spaces per bank booster for 378 runecoins each with 12 available for a total of 4536 runecoins, but heres the catch we're not gonna actually sell you 4536 runecoins, you'll have to buy either the 5200 runecoin package for €105.99 or 2400 runecoins x2 for €105.98.

That's almost as much as a year of membership just for more bankspace.

You did a perfect Hard-mode Zuk run - Gratz you get the base cape! Oh, you want the Infernal cape? It'll be 522 runecoins.

Oh well, it's only €14.35. Jk actually it isn't because we don't sell 522 runecoins - you'll either have to buy 420+200 for €16.48 or 900 for €21.99.

Well this is annoying and it's getting kinda expensive, but hey you could always just use bonds to get runecoins. And heres the ultimate catch - for the bond to be on the Grand Exchange in the first place - that means someone somewhere on Reignited is paying for gear and supplies with gp they got from swiping their creditcard in this fresh new gamemode with no paid progression.

So in the end we have both a predatory mtx-currency designed to obscure prices instead of direct purchases for the marketplace? And paid in-game progression via bonds in this fresh new "RuneScape As It Was Always Meant To Be"?

I have finally raised a request to delete all my data.

This will effectively make it that I would never be able to log into my account ever again.

Man i started this game from the good old mini clip days, cooks assistant was super fun, I remember making friends by guiding people on how to avoid the al Kharid toll, killing goblins, running from dark wizards and fast forwarding it to 4k Zamorak, 4k telos, 4k glacor, duo aod, master max trim comp, grinding and buying my phat sets, BIS every style, 100bill + bank, nearly completed greaper.

Well took about 3 hours just selling stuff and giving all of this away to my friends who would also probably quit as their membership expires.

So now after 20 years of being in gilenor, It's time to write 1 final post on r/runescape, farm all the Karma i can and ride off into the sunset.

PS - fuck jagex monetization team for what they have done to the game.

PPS - i literally don't have any stuff left and i can't even log into my account anymore to give you stuff.

Ppps ppps- i am just trying to see if there are any cats here.

Just look at these survey questions. If you care at all about the future of MTX in runescape, please fill out the survey.

They've never done this before. It's clear that Jagex is giving this serious consideration.

I’m not here to give any long or over the top rant that you’ve already read one hundred times by now.

My main nearly has the 20 year cape and 120 in every skill and I canceled memberships for that account and all my alts this morning.

Just in case it’s helpful for someone else to see, or it’s the motivation you need to make the same change, I just wanted to share that I’m voting with my wallet.

Don’t let the sunk cost fallacy control you.

Edit: Big shout out to everyone who shared their experience and offered their story. I haven’t been able to respond to everyone, but I’ve read every single comment. There is a lot of maxed, 10, 20, and 20+ year veterans out there taking a stand. I see you. And sincerely thank you for taking the time to respond. It’s made me feel so much less alone in this decision.

Mod Balance's response:

You're right to want a response. We want to respond - and we want to get it right. With that said, there is no point in us putting together some BS statement. You've made it clear that you're not satisfied with a placeholder or something wishy-washy. We agree that it isn't good enough to give you that, either. This is an issue which affects every single level of Jagex. From individual developers, all the way to our board of directors. The statement we make, based on the decisions we reach will impact the game and Jagex for a long time.

For instance, we have a management meeting for 2 days next week where we'll be discussing the long term vision of RuneScape.

A major element of these discussions will be monetisation (especially MTX), and how it features within RuneScape. It is not until after this meeting is concluded, and our decisions are signed off that we can make any meaningful statement. Even then, this is a bigger topic than that - this isn't a decision that one person alone can make. You've made it clear that for a whole lot of you, there is an issue, and we need to look at how we proceed with this information in mind. You should absolutely hold us account - we want to be receptive to feedback. But - let's get this right. Let us have the discussions we need to have, make the decisions we need to make, and give you the statement you deserve.

I think the pricing is absolutely disgusting for something many MMO's get for free, and with OSRS having Runelite, a much more robust community plugin system, it really makes it such an unnappealing buy, to the point that most of the player base recommends not getting it.

But by opting out, you are missing out on some "nice to have" but not necesssry features, that are already developed and there.

I think the most insulting thing about it to me is that Premier membership only offers a "discount" for something that should be included. They could atleast include it with premier but no, they tie one of the premier "perks" to spending more money.

This definitely needs to be one of the things addressed in the roadmap for me.

Dude out of nowhere jagex goes ahead and says “ok we are removing rare item tokens now’ and they barely give us shit in return...

My 59k rare item tokens get converted into 5k oddments? That doesnt even buy me any shit. They’ve straight up scammed me off of ~5 purple prizes and 20+ red prizes, this is the biggest scam i’ve ever seen.

Had they told us a week beforehand i’d have atleast been able to use those tokens and bought every single fkin rare, such a scam fuck me...

Time and time again. You’ve proven to the players of this game. You truly don’t support mental health. Yet support unhealthy buying habits of MTX.

This is such a huge issue to me. I wish I could explain a little better. How this makes me feel. I’m sure a lot of other players know exactly how I’m feeling.

This feels like it’s a crime.

Edit: I legit made this post. Because I am so sick of reading comments saying. You do not have to participate. This view is very closed minded. Addiction is a real thing. The whole post is about how jagex. doesn’t support mental health.

It’s been a ride boys. Like many of you, I’ve been here for 20+ years. I was there for RS classic, RS2, and RS3. I was there pre EOC, pre MTX. Runescape has been a part of my life from pre-teens to mid thirties. I’ve taken breaks, and come back as we all tend to do. I wasn’t thrilled when EOC came, took a break, but I came back, got used to it, and carried on. Didn’t like squeal of fortune or any of its successors, but they were continually pushed down our throats. There was an era we couldn’t even complete quests without receiving keys. Despite the community’s pleas Jagex continued to push monetization, gambling, and pay to win mechanics.

I never bought keys, my first 99 was mining and I did that mostly the old fashioned way, when you would fight for resources and they would deplete, and you’d have to world hop if you wanted more Rune ore. And now, 23 years down the line, they tell me I’ve cheated the game, I’m part of a tainted generation, irredimible by default, and sentenced to be a second class citizen in an apartheid regime in our own game.

Those of us that stuck through the great schism of 2013, that have had uninterrupted account continuity for decades are being cast aside. For some faux puritanical sense of “how it was always meant to be”. We’re going to pretend that every achievement that has ever happened in the history of this game will now be achieved “for real”. New players will get “world’s firsts” for things that have already been done? Get their own servers, but walk in ours, without the reverse being true? Get their own economy as ours get sunsetted and left to slowly wither and die? This is how you treat your oldest and most loyal customers?

I’ve disagreed with moves by Jagex before, but never have I felt personally disrespected as a player as I am now. This disdain is the final straw. They forcefully injected mtx into the veins of this game, poisoning the integrity, and turn around and blame us for surviving their sins. It’s over for me, I’m done. I only wish this announcement had come sooner, before I re-upped my yearly membership. I’ll finish out some personal goals, but I will not be walking around like a ghost among new players I can’t interact with in any meaningful way.

We have their attention now, don't stop. Imagine an p2w MTX free RS3. A community like that of OSRS but with the awesome combat of RS3.

Keep pushing, keep dreaming, keep making noise. Many of us have been grinding for decades, what's yelling for few months? I say it's child's play to us, we've literally been training for this for decades.

See the complaining as a new skill, get some exp gains, first to 120! Death to p2w MTX.

Edit, since most people seem to miss my intention. By MTX free, i mean MTX that influences gameplay. Bonds and Cosmetics, too me, are fine.

even at the lowend of $200 for a year of membership: thats ~$17/mo. if they want to charge $25/mo than they need to exceed the quality of cheaper games like FF14. which they wont, it's runescape.