The life cycle of a successful massively multiplayer online game, like any breakout offline or single-player game, always follows the same trajectory: It grabs some headlines, gets oversaturated, maybe gets parodied by South Park, and then eventually fades from the mainstream's point of view. Unlike offline or single-player games, online and MMO titles have a built-in shelf life. Sooner or later, they're getting ink in gaming mags or blogs again -- but this time, it's because their servers are getting switched off. And with that, an entire world vanishes for all eternity, when it was there just a moment before. In Abandoned Ware, one gamer becomes a field reporter for these once-huge MMOs, before the inevitable eradicates them forever.
World of Warcraft for Cheapskates
Wikipedia says RuneScape has "approximately 10 million active accounts per month, over 156 million registered accounts, and is recognised [sic] by the Guinness World Records as the world's most popular free MMORPG." So why the hell hadn't I ever heard of it until last month? Well, a bunch of reasons -- but chief among them is the simple fact that MMOs have rarely (if ever) fail to ignite excitement in me.
I remember when World of Warcraft caught on; the notion of shelling out a monthly fee after already buying the game seemed ludicrous and greedy. I mean, I understand server maintenance costs, and Blizzard works hard for the extra cash they're kicked on a steady basis, but I've always been more of the mind that once I've paid for a game, those companies that worked so hard for my entertainment dollars should get their sticky fingers out of my wallet. Of course, this was long before the gaming industry went firmly down the path of downloadable content and online distribution channels. Unlike Nintendo and the 3DS, I had an excuse to be ignorant and behind on the times. Suspect as anything in Wikipedia might be, Google Trends and RuneScape's recent 10-year anniversary definitely show that the Java-based browser game is enduringly popular.
Why it's popular is harder to answer, other than it being free. Still, for a free game, RuneScape has a lot of strikes against it. It's achingly generic and repetitive, with no ending to speak of. Many times, the audio completely crapped out on me, or my mouse cursor's commands wouldn't respond as I expected them to. The game is literally pointless: You run around looking for quests, explore areas in any fashion or order you please, and -- above all -- worship at the altar of the almighty level-grind. One of the hardest things for me to wrap my mind around, in terms of how people put up with RuneScape, is that very few of my sessions ended of my own volition. Instead, my character would suddenly start running around wildly before my screen refreshed and gave me a friendly game-crashing notification.
But what do you expect? It's free, right? Well, history is littered with stories of unexpected success stories. It's a bit moot today, but VHS eventually overtook the visually superior Betamax format solely because its tapes had longer running times. Your guess is as good as mine about why things are popular. In an age where MMOs like DC Universe Online take an entire day to install (disingenuously sinking one of its included 30 free days) and then politely let you know the game is automatically enabling itself to re-charge your credit card $14.99 each month until you decide to opt out, it makes sense that people would want to just play something simple, predictable, cheap, and reliable. But what's the limit to the drawbacks that people will put up with? I can understand people not having the energy to keep buying the latest RPG or what-have-you, learning an entirely new system of leveling, grinding, spells, alchemy, or whatever year after year. I think RuneScape is for stubborn people who picked their horse in the race long ago, and are backing said horse until the bitter end. The abundance of level 126 characters I saw lurking around supports this theory.
To this day, I'm not really sure what level I wound up attaining. RuneScape has 25 different skills you can hone, and I don't know if the "level 126" before someone's name is an aggregate of a variety of skills, or a different unit of measurement altogether. I can tell you this, though: My woodcutting skills are amazing. As is the case with open-ended games like Grand Theft Auto, where you're granted so much freedom you usually wind up doing either nothing or the same task over and over, my version of running over pedestrians and picking up hookers was dabbling in deforestation. Why? Well, I liked the ticking sound effect the game makes of your ax hitting the tree. Also, combat in RuneScape is a tad dull: You click on an enemy, they fight, and that's it. The game strips away the button-mashing prevalent in many other games, and as one friend put it, "It's a Facebook game that predates Facebook." Indeed. Eventually, RuneScape became part of my multitasking ritual. Click on a tree, then flip over to e-mail, queue up another podcast, skim through my news feeds, and then move onto the next tree.
So maybe I wasn't taking full advantage of what the game has to offer, but many times, I'd bump into RuneScape's glass ceiling. Reminders cropped up often that as a non-paying member, I was a second-class citizen; I was being discriminated against all the time. As I ventured out into the world, I noted gates I wasn't allowed to pass through, exhibits at the museums I was forbidden to see, and even characters I couldn't talk to unless I coughed up some dough. Those 25 skills I mentioned earlier? Some of them are only available if you're a paying customer.
With so many doors slamming shut, you're forced to rely on the kindness of strangers to figure out what the heck you're supposed to be doing. Since RuneScape features no real end goal, you really must prod at everyone you find either for a quest, or (if they're another user) to give you a few pointers. Connections with warm bodies and in-game help are both hard to come by. That'll likely change soon, when developer Jagex instates Free Trade (which lets players gift money and other items, and potentially could encourage gold farming) and Wilderness (which introduces an area condoning player-killing) to the game.
But, as was the case in Diablo II, RuneScape is infested with bots. Sure, I met lots of friendly players during my time with the game, but as six-year veteran user Zeldafan30 told me in an e-mail exchange later, one of the biggest tangible evolutions in RuneScape has been a loss of the sense of community. "When I first started playing, everyone talked to everyone else, and there were many people who offered advice on how to achieve a certain skill or the like," he writes. "It seems that many of the new players are more reserved; the chat box is rarely used, and people play by themselves, which, to me, seems like no fun."
I'd be inclined to agree. It takes a different breed of gamer to love an MMO, since in most games, each player is the sole hero in the universe. But online, it's different. As in real life, we're all thrown into the world together, and forced to navigate and make sense of things as we go. Most people are intent to go their own way, ignoring the millions of strangers around them. I could have this same experience by leaving my apartment and heading out into the city streets -- so why on Earth would I want to experience that same marginalization online? Well, because it's free, and it involves not leaving the house.
David Wolinsky is a writer for Adult Swim and a reviewer for many fine gaming sites. He's also the 1995 Blockbuster store champion at Donkey Kong Country, but you don't hear him bragging about it.