RuneScape Celebrates 10 Years, Takes Advice from the Community

World of Warcraft may be the dominating force in the MMO space, but not every competitor is so easily silenced. RuneScape, developer Jagex’s free-to-play MMO, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary – and if their currently-running open petition is anything to go by, their community is as lively as ever.

The petition, intended to give the community unprecedented influence on the state of the game, allows fans to vote on two currently contentious aspects of the game. Free trading and a PvP zone known as The Wilderness were removed from the game, but if a majority of players vote for their return the developers have pledged to make it so.

“We have released a host of new content which provides a comparable PvP experience to the old Wilderness and mechanics to allow increased trade limits with long term friends but we are still regularly told by players that they want more,” says Mark Gerhard, Jagex CEO.

Free trading would remove all restrictions from trading, allowing players to gift their entire savings and loot if they pleased. The Wilderness offers, as Jagex claims, “one of the most extreme risk-versus-reward combat systems of any MMO.” Sounds fascinating.

Voter turn out has been impressive, with over 1.4 million votes in favor of bringing the two features back. The tally is climbing at an alarming rate, and is, if nothing else, a reminder to gamers that there’s more than one successful MMO in town.