Slashdot Mirror
RuneScape Passes 1 Million Subscribers
An anonymous reader writes "The online Java-based fantasy MMOG Runescape has reportedly surpassed 1 Million paying subscribers. Gamasutra has a Q&A article with the Jagex co-founder and lead developer Andrew Gower about the UK-based firm's success. 'Counting roughly 4.6 million who play the free version of the game, RuneScape has more than 5.6 million players, says Constant Tedder, managing director of Jagex. As such, it represents credible competition to the big kahuna, World of Warcraft, which has topped 8 million paying subscribers. Part of the secret, Tedder said in an interview, is that the game doesn't take itself so seriously. In one recent event, players could transform themselves into penguins and infiltrate the penguin army to see what they were up to in the penguin underworld. The game has been growing largely by word of mouth.'"
All I could think of when reading this was "1M Subscribers... and 10M bots/grinders".
Seriously, the number of Chinese people either using bots to grind or doing it manually, then selling the gold they make for real world money, is ridiculous. At times my brother (who's about the right age to play the game) has seen swarms of level 3 players chopping down wood for money. You start at level 3, so basically these people have accounts simply to chop wood, not to train up.
The problem has got to the point where Jagex are banning 8000 people a day.
Here's a release from Jagex, the company behind Runescape, about it: http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=785