Runescape - Marketing gone right!

Why am I blogging about Runescape? I really don't know. Some (any grown adult, including myself) would say that it is a waste of time and yet the game itself is quite intriguing when you look at it from a marketing perspective. The way it is set up allows players to play for free with small encounters throughout the free game enticing players to subscribe for only 5 dollars a month in order to participate in the member options. There are two types of worlds you can enter - a non members world and a members world. In the non-members world (even if you are a member) you can't do the members world things - however, Runescape developers have placed member objects, and activities in the non-members world so people will click on them and get the response "You have to be in a members world to receive a quest from ____" or "You need to be on a members server to use this feature". Great marketing plan. Non-members encounter these sort of responses several times a day in their early gaming experiences. However, once you have been playing for awhile you learn which things are not available to a non-member and so you stop clicking on these options. At this point you think you are safe from being drawn into the member fees but you are so wrong.

Runescape is full of quests. After someone has been playing awhile they will eventually use up all of the free quests - there are about 30 free quests for people to do and about 100+ member quests (which is continuously growing). Once a non-member has finished all their quests they start wandering aimlessly about Varrock, Falador, Al Kharid and Lumbridge looking for a purpose in life and then they glance at their "quest list" and wonder what it would be like to save the dwarfs' tree house, attack blue dragons, fight off lvl 110's, or become the conquistador of a skeleton army.

Before you know it, anyone and everyone who has finished all their free quests who is still even slightly interested in the game is paying the $5 a month member fee to stroll through the once forbidden lands and to talk to the once forbidden folk and to climb over once forbidden fences.

Moral of the story - avoid this game unless you have countless hours of time to waste or if you are interested in seeing remarkable marketing work taking place right before your eyes. (That's the only reason I ever log in).