Jagex and the Fight for Better Public Relations

If you play RuneScape and have tried using the customer support, you know exactly how bad the support is for RuneScape. Jagex is well known among its players that you should avoid support when ever it is possible. When ever you are replied, or if you are at all, it feels like a robot is responding back. That is because the support team is using templates that feel less then personal and usually do not answer your question fully.

Another big snag that for Jagex’s PR is that not many players are too fond of Jagex’s Real World Trading updates. Those players that are newer might not know about them and it really does not apply to them because they do not know what RuneScape used to be like. This is one thing that might repair over time but right now some players are still upset over it.

The reasons might track into the long waits for new content that is supposed to take up for what they took away: free trading and player vs player combat as we know it. Now some updates followed this right away like the Grand Exchange and free to play dueling but that is not enough. Most, if not almost all, of the players that were active in dueling or player verse player hates theses updates for the lack up player verse player updates that made up for this. Even during the publication of this article some updates that were promised still have not been out.

This leads me to my next point and that is the recent continual delay of updates for one reason or another. The year of 2009 has been marked the year of going over RuneScape and fixing all of the small glitches and improving upon the existing content. Well so far in my mind this has partially failed because it has only lead to the continual delay of what Jagex has promised. Furthermore this has also lead to the withdraw of a few updates that were intended to prevent the very loophole that Jagex tried to correct in the first place: real world trading.

I do not mind the crusade against real world trading and I commend Jagex for that. In fact everyone who opposes real world trading sees this as something great and that Jagex should continue to pursue this but it is in the manner that they are doing this that it becomes more of a negative in their PR then a positive.

Other things that have happened over Jagex’s history is the SwiftSwitch riot and the blacklisting of several fansites that have promoted at one point or another real world trading. There are too many others to mention but most are essentially negative or slightly positive.

On another front Jagex has been doing fairly better or maybe not; you can decide. MechScape, Jagex’s upcoming sci-fi MMORPG, is getting close to release. In light of that and also in the light of a recent change in who leads Jagex, Jagex has opened its door to fansites. So far Jagex has not released any content concerning RuneScape but they have MechScape content. All of it is found on MechScape World, one fansite. This is an exceptionally positive thing until you come to my next point.

Other fansites are very jealous of this and they too want a part of this openness to fansites. Jagex has commented that they have contacted other fansites and that it will be fair in who they hand out new information to but we have yet to see this. This is obviously not good for their PR.

Image via Wikipedia

Going onto the last area I would like to discuss is FunOrb. I personally have not had too much experience with the community during the year that is has been out but I do see the appearance of a very positive community. I would say that FunOrb is a huge success too. This would definately be a huge PR boost for Jagex.

No  matter how hard Jagex tries to apperently try to do something that everyone should enjoy there is a number that complain. In reaction to this many times Jagex stops doing what their doing and do something else or just stop alogether. One of the best and more recent examples of this is when Mod MMG was in his clan chat on RuneScape taking questions and answering them. He revealed a lot of new information concerning both RuneScape and MechScape. Now instead of people seeing that part of it they saw that they could not get into the clan channel to complained about that on the RuneScape forums. Guess what, that will not be happening again.

Now what people do not realise that Jagex does listen. They have been trying hard for quite some time now to do what the community would like best and have the most amount of its members regardless if they pay them or not. I would like to ask everyone that reads this article to look at the overal picture and ask your self, would you rather have that or nothing at all? Personally would like Mod MMG to continue doing what he was over nothing at all. Jagex listens, you just have hear their reply instead of ignoring it.