While the transfer to cellular could open RuneScape to a new generation of gamers, Jagex is targeting its current user base and those gamers that RS gold have since churned out the game.Speaking to PocketGamer.biz, Jagex Senior Product Director Neil McClarty says even though its consumer base is passionate and highly invested in the game, many gamers are getting old. With this, he explains, comes time stresses on sport time due to other commitments such as work and loved ones.
Hence the studio set about searching for ways to allow users play the game on the move, and cellular was the ideal fit. "For us it was actually born out of that, and therefore the cross platform element was crucial," says McClarty. "We did not want this to be a brand-new game since it's about looking after our present players, allowing them to be able to play the sport that they're playing, together with the characters they have spent .
"The secondary component is that we expect that there'll potentially be some ex-players that have left because they haven't been able to play on PC, and maybe now if it's available to play on mobile, they will have 10 minutes while they are on the bus to work."
McClarty says Jagex has been laying the foundations for RuneScape on mobile for a long time, together with work on the technology side throughout the last two decades also underpinning the new mobile variations and making them workable options.
"I would really like to believe [Jagex founders] Andrew and Paul Gower might see in the future and saw that at 16 years' time cellular would be what it is now and that they picked click and point mechanic because it could lend itself well to phones," says McClarty. "Happily those 2 things have aligned and really the traditional point and click on that we've needed on PC does immediately lend itself to click and point on your finger, which is fantastic.
"The match itself will probably have all the content which you may play on PC. So it really is the complete game, it is not a stripped down pocket version or anything like this. The biggest change is it's just a really high degree UX and UI in terms of the menu, simply to fit that size of display. But the goal is to get an almost absolute comparable version of everything you can do on PC." RuneScape's mobile launch follows in the footsteps of several of the greatest MMORPGs in Asia that have made comparable jumps from PC to mobile.
Netmarble's Lineage 2: Revolution managed to successful reimagine the hugely successful Lineage PC name into a cell blockbuster -- but maybe more applicable is NCSoft's own Lineage M, a direct port of a few of the most successful games in the region.It's worked well buy RuneScape gold for NCSoft -- because its mobile release Lineage M has become the number one top grosser in South Korea.