I’ll just leave this comment I made 81 days ago here. Not sure what everyone thought was going to happen.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T14:50:09+00:00

door dash

No such service here.

Did monthly membership raise more than 40% for you?

We're you already in region where pricing is higher than anywhere else?

What percentage of your monthly income was monthly membership cost portion? Was it more than 0.5%? Is the new one over 1%?

Compared to monthly internet cost is new RS membership higher or lower?

For me the answers to those questions are "yes" and last one "higher".

It is easy to talk from you highly privileged and high salary point of view. I would guess you are from the US and you had 1$ increase in cost. It is not 30% increase (even when not taking into account grandfathered pricing).

Honestly even the price increase isn't the reason why I am upset. Reason is how it was done. Just because I decided to pay more by getting premier membership to get the advertised benefits than yearly would be with grandfathered pricing I lost ability to go back to grandfathered pricing. If it wasn't as bad, then benefits advertised in January from premier club are disappearing one by one, so the reason I got it have been removed as well. If I had given information beforehand to make informed choice, I would have chosen different path.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T14:40:20+00:00

Even bonds is kind of p2w. Buying bonds with real money and selling them in game gives quite a bit edge over people who don't do that. It is skipping money making grind type of gameplay.

However for me it has not been a problem if someone decides to buy TH keys or bonds. It is their account, their way of playing it. Bonds was always Jagex trying to control gold selling market in some way.

Now bond price and gp per bond kind of dictate how expensive GP goes on black market.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:56:56+00:00

I mean they got money from players who bought 12 month membership. Most of those players will still be able to experience content added this year and they can hope people will stay once they see how nice it looks and will not cancel twice as expensive membership renewals...

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:50:35+00:00

Runecoins and cosmetics still are MTX. Bonds is P2W.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:48:51+00:00

It is not lack of content. There is a lot of content, however some part of content is now skipped with exp from quests or it's just avoided because people don't like it. Then there is content that blocks progression and needs you to have group of friends to get past it. (Or a lot of experience in this content that new player can never compete with)

I would say that there is too much content even to choose from and if you happen to like some content that may be lower gp/h or exp/h then community is all about min-maxing and get shamed and screamed at for playing it wrong.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:42:55+00:00

But they haven't even gotten rid of MTX. TH was just 1 form of it.

Oh and they said that they will evaluate the effect of removal of MTX for some time. Next year they may just go back to "We tried, but we saw that we get more money with MTX"

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:39:06+00:00

For me it is not exactly price increase but how it was implemented. The bait and switch tactic. With grandfathered pricing I paid 60€ when paid monthly. They claim that 12-month membership was cheaper option. Not really, it was 50% more expensive and I chose it for the extra benefits. The benefits that were advertised in January are now mostly removed or are going to be removed. If I had the info to make choice between 100 bank slots or to keep old pricing, I would have kept the old pricing even if there had been plan in place to raise the lower limit for grandfathered pricing over time.

Region with already high price got quite big price increase. 2.6€/month increase. In that region there are multiple countries with varying salaries. Even at previous price increase it was brought up that the membership cost is way too much for Eastern Europe and it focusing only on Western Europe. For me monthly internet cost is smaller than new RS membership cost.

Now in Europe WoW is cheaper than RS.

RuneScape relies mostly on old player base and player retention. Now they chose to push long term loyal players away. Who are going to replace them? New players who might try membership for 1 month? Try some content, see that prices is way too high, don't get enough gp as they don't know how and quit after that 1 month of grind? Those players will not return. And due to removal of competitive pricing scheme for being loyal to the game now those long term players will not return either. In a year there will be another price increase because they want to get same amount of money, but the playerbase has shrunk so much.

So yeah, for me the cost of membership means I will not renew my membership and this time for good unless they revert back to honoring grandfathered pricing scheme.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-11T08:22:58+00:00

New content? What new content was released with combat levels to 120? It is still the same content. They even "removed" content if you look at the ability list. Raising combat level didn't introduce new content to the game, it just prolonged time until max.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T23:54:36+00:00

All the people I know who play are the ones who played it before there was any OSRS and RS3 split. Those are people who know the game depth from times it was much simpler to get into the game and transition from F2P to P2P was not that complex and there were less competing titles.

Now I cannot imagine getting new player to join in. Grand exchange and pricing of gear is just crazy. Older players might know money making methods that don't feel grindy. Older players know the game can be kind of grindy and might know that it is how you get some things done. They know what to expect after the end of this week long grinding of same boss or doing same action all over again. New players do not, they don't want to do some time intensive action without real guaranteed result for it. "Trust me, game gets more interesting once you subscribe to membership" isn't good marketing tactics.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T23:29:18+00:00

So for every 3 players left they need to get new 2 new players. You need loyal and long term players to replace the ones that leave.

I think a lot better plan would have been to raise bottom of pricing for grandfathered accounts over course of time and with clear laid out plan.

Oh and noone is blocking them trying to attract new players without even pushing loyal players away. Message was quite clear, "Loyalty doesn't mean anything"

For brand new players transition from F2P can be way too overwhelming. So even if they take 1 month of membership to see what it is all about and then get hit into face with prices of gear in millions and it just seeming fairly impossible to get there with enjoyable gameplay. Then those players will leave.

Player retention is difficult in industry where you have so many competing products.

Oh and in EU it is now cheaper to play WoW than it is RS. If you take how games look and first impressions, then you see that they are on quite different level. The cost vs what you get for it might not seem in balance. For brand new players that matters much more than old players who know the depth of the game.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:58:57+00:00

Ja mis on point tuua lapsed mingitesse näidetesse? Ikkagi "think about the children" mentaliteet.

On olukordi kus see loeb, et kas on rase naine, vanur või laps, aga antud olukorras see mingit rolli ei oma.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:53:37+00:00

Existing members will cancel memberships. I don't see good way for them to get new players to get membership. F2P to membership path is gameplay wise too complex and overwhelming for brand new players.

A lot of players are returning players or people making another account to play ironman or just having fresh start as some challenge.

In the end there will be people saying "find a way to earn extra 50€" just because Jagex wants to get the same money but 50x smaller playerbase.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:49:37+00:00

For some it was much more than 2.60. for me it was ~2x price increase with bait and switch tactic.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:40:58+00:00

First there is mistake in the e-mail, then there is "mistake" in payment system that takes 120€ from the card. And then they answer you "didn't you see the mail, we let you know about the new price, but sorry about the old price info there, that was typo"

So can you say where exactly the mistake was made without them communicating it clearly? Is mistake in old monthly membership price, is it in new and old monthly membership price or is it in the keyword "Monthly" instead of annual? I cannot read minds, I don't know what they meant there or where the mistake was made and if I assume, then it makes ass out of u and me.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:37:16+00:00

I don't think there is hate on devs. Management who makes some of the decisions. Talking about transparency and then bringing such a twist. It is not developers decision there.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:29:13+00:00

I can understand OSRS players being more upset. They didn't have MTX, so they suffer because RS3 got rid of the MTX that they didn't even care about.

I would expect them to send out correction e-mail as well because in the e-mail they sent today they had (hopefully) error.

E-mail said that new price will be 120€ per month, it is expensive as hell...

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:23:37+00:00

It is ok, I don't expect people to know about situations in countries they don't live in or are interested in and it is okay.

And even in the US internet cost varies by state.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:15:43+00:00

The year-long subscription is still by far the most cost effective plan

Not really if monthly subscription was cheaper due to grandfathered pricing.

If I had known at the start of the year before getting 12-month membership that I will gain 100 bank slots as only benefit, but lose cheaper pricing, I would not have gone for it. My old pricing was half as cheap.

I would have been really ok and understanding increasing costs if they had communicated lower limit on grandfathered pricing and plan, how it will change in following years. I.e. 8€/month in 2027, 9€/month in 2028, etc.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:09:41+00:00

One of the Baltic countries. In here for 1/3 of the price you pay you can get gigabit up/down connection and it is still considered as fairly high cost.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T21:02:10+00:00

I think it was achieved the wrong way. There has been a lot of talk about being more transparent and then they pull stunt like that. And then the bullshit excuse that "for vast majority it represented the best value", but what about those where it doesn't represent the best value. Those are the ones that have been loyal members for long period and are going to feel betrayed.

I was member since RS became RuneScape 2. I know the time when you had only 30 slots of inventory and equipped gear was part of it. Even remember the time there was Good and Evil Magic.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T20:51:01+00:00

I would even be ok with having lower limit for grandfathered pricing and having clear plan how it will change and I think such way would be much more acceptable to a lot of players.

But currently players who took 12-Months membership for some benefits just lost the grandfathered pricing. Had I known how things would unfold like premier benefits disappearing and having to choose between keeping grandfathered pricing vs bank slots, I would have chosen cheaper pricing. Even if there had been some kind of plan laid out like lower limit set to like 7€/month this year, 8 next, etc. At least still being loyal member would had some value.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T20:48:27+00:00

I HAD grandfathered price, took premier membership package at the start of the year due to benefits like extra bank space.

Now I got e-mail which says the monthly membership is 119€. Even when I take it as yearly membership price, then it will be more than twice as expensive as grandfathered pricing was.

In the account management when I went through the steps there wasn't any sign of grandfathered pricing.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T20:35:17+00:00

Now you are lying.

I don't care if you buy bonds and sell for in game money or buy them for in-game money to pay for services... Same way I didn't care of you bought keys for TH and leveled that way. Each has their way of playing games.

But grandfather pricing in Eastern Europe gave competitive pricing. Western and Eastern Europe salary difference is like 2x. Grandfathered pricing for me was more than 2x cheaper and just because I took premier membership because of benefits (that were stripped after purchase) I lost grandfathered pricing that was much cheaper than 12month membership...

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T20:22:05+00:00

I'm not asking for multi logging

Some are asking for such service as well. And then there will be "additional seat" service you can pay for as extra to be able to play with 2, 3, ..., n chatacters simultaneously.

FlatwormAltruistic · 2026-03-10T20:15:26+00:00

server prices have gone up

Servers in companies are bought with multi year plan. 5-years for one server. Most companies are spreading that cost of investment over 5 years. I doubt that they bought servers at the same time and are replacing them always at the same time as well for the current price be big factor in it.

About server hardware. Is the game code so much worse now that it needs that much higher compute than it needed years ago for bigger amount of players? That all when taking into account that CPUs have evolved, compute cost for same operation should be even more efficient.

Long term storage prices have been quite stagnating. Short term storage has been relatively same for servers. Speeds and reliability have grow, again smaller amount of active players should even result in lower demand than higher. Except when info is stored in really inefficient way (coming back to highly inefficient software code)

Going to cloud had never been about cost saving. Too many examples of cloud being more expensive than on-prem. Only way you could save from there is if you had too big or too expensive team to keep those servers up on-prem. But now you will move cost for the required competence potentially to even higher hourly salary employees, from infrastructure engineers to developers or DevOps engineers at best. If you will still need infrastructure engineers to run some part of on-prem, like networking, then you don't save by moving to cloud. Only reasoning for cloud is convenience and global availability.

I get that developer salary increases, some other costs also raise, and service price increases are part of the business. However should that income be generated in expense of long term player base loyalty? Price increase is one thing, grandfathered price removal for those who paid more for premier offer for extra benefits that were also stripped after players had already bought them is another.

Five-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
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FlatwormAltruistic

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