I was thinking a bit today and I came up with something that might get Jagex more revenue towards members. I recently got an account with five days of members left (thanks a ton to the person who let me use it!) and I wandered around a bit in members (the whole time having a page to the world map open so that I wouldn’t get lost in seconds). I started a few skills, agility/thieving/farming specifically, and I played a bit of Pest Control. The account didn’t have too good stats so I couldn’t do much else, but I did start a few quests as well.
My wanting for members has slightly died down over the last several months after I realized I had quite enough to do in F2P. However, now after my first taste of members I’m left wanting more. There’s not only so much more to do, the atmosphere is so much different. There’s nobody following you around asking for free stuff, there’s no noobs, and there’s level 100+’s running rampant.
Here’s my idea. For just a week of each year, Jagex should open up F2P worlds to the P2P areas and let them get a little taste of membership. They will still not be allowed on members worlds (so that members don’t end up complaining that their worlds are getting taken over), but everything P2P-based (the quests, the skills, the items) will be allowed on F2P worlds. This will hopefully offer some incentive for people to get members after they get a feel for what it’s like and how much more members is. After that week is over, all P2P items that the F2P player has will get deleted, they will start back in Lumbridge, and life will continue. It would be pretty easy to do in my opinion, and it would most likely get more people to subscribe to members.
Thoughts?
October 27, 2007 at 2:13 pm |
Sounds like a great idea to me
October 28, 2007 at 12:10 am |
It sounds like a good idea. Instead, how about a week a month though?
October 28, 2007 at 2:58 pm |
A few problems… Many people would spend their money on such items as dragon items, then lose the money they spent when they go back to freeplay. This would also ruin the point of people who want to be freeplay pures, then they have to have member access for a week, making training extremely easy, ruining the top 200 f2p list also. It sounds like a good idea to me though. I agree that it is hard to go from members back to freeplay, unless you have a plan, such as burn all these logs and get woodcutting to 75.
October 28, 2007 at 8:27 pm |
I like the general idea of giving Frees a taste of Membership, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it. You would still have noobs wandering around asking for free stuff etc, — just in a bigger world. This might also put too much of a load on the servers.
It would be nice if Jagex offered e-cupons which allowed Frees to have one week of free membership. Players wouldn’t have to redeem the coupon if they didn’t want to. Jagex could randomly give away as many, or as few, of these coupons as they wanted. Chances to win a coupon might be based on how many hours an account has been played – longtime players obviously like the game, so they are more likely to be tempted into becoming a Member.
October 28, 2007 at 8:47 pm |
Hawk: Good point about the pures…I didn’t think about that. However I’m wondering if people really will spend their money on full dragon if they know they’ll lose it in a week (or if f2p players even have that much money).
Knifestorm: I don’t see how it would load the servers; the same average number of people would still go on, just the members places would be open. I like the coupon idea though – however I see a flaw in this. People who’ve been playing for a few years might have had times when they didn’t play for some reason (say maybe a few months-a year), so it would be a bit unfair for them.