TL;DR: The new Lead CM introduces themselves and wants to hear from you about what we can do to help make the RuneScape community better.
As you read through this, please ask yourself: “what do I want the RuneScape Community to be like?”
Hi everyone, I'm the new Lead Community Manager: Mod Anvil. I joined Jagex in December and have spent my first few weeks observing, listening and generally supporting the teams. I briefly popped up a couple weeks ago, but it's high time I got properly stuck in, so here I am. Hello! :wave:
SO WHO AM I?
Some credentials first - RuneMetrics reliably informed me that I have spent well over 140 of my earth days absorbed in RuneScape.
That translates into a character with a total skill level of around 2380 and two skills that are currently each around 10k off achieving level 99 (is anyone up for a dual 99 party?). A lot of those days were spent during the early 2000's one-click-at-a-time, but I ended my break last year and have returned to the game as much in love with it as before.
While I have a good grasp of a lot of the game, there are still areas where I have much to explore and learn, both from the team but also from the community. Please forgive my occasional ignorance on a particularly complex skilling technique - I may need to ask for a bit of clarification every now and then if it comes up in discussion.
Apart from that, I've still got a few dozen quests to catch up on, and my knowledge of end-game PvMing is something I need to spend a lot of time with to get a good grasp of it. That, and the Invention skill...!
In the more professional world, I've arrived at Jagex after a decade spent community managing at Square Enix. That's a fancy way of saying I've had a lot of opportunities to make a lot of mistakes and hopefully learn from them. If you'd like to meet me in person or grill me on any topics:
- I've made a dedicated reddit thread here about todays topic.
- I'll be on the RuneScape Discord tomorrow (Tuesday) chatting for an hour at 2pm Game Time.
- I'll be in game on World 11 at Fort Forinthry tomorrow (Tuesday) for an hour at 4:30pm Game Time.
Come say hello! (Just in case you can't make it: I'd like to do scheduled direct contact sessions like the above more often)
LETS TALK ABOUT THE RUNESCAPE COMMUNITY
What follows is my own personal view on things, formed both as a player and as a JMod, but I would love to hear your spicy takes on what we should be looking to improve or change.
Overall, I know there already is a tremendous amount of work, discussion and engagement going on, and there is a genuine desire running throughout the Jagex team to involve the community more and more.
However, keeping track of what is happening or being said day to day, let alone week to week or month to month is quite hard and feels inconsistent. Quite often the community is being surprised with feedback requests or updates as they happen. At other times, community members have missed out on key discussions that happened somewhat "off-screen" (e.g. in a Twitch stream or a Discord chat).
That's problematic because:
- It's easy for players to miss out on providing feedback to topics they would otherwise have been interested in.
- It's difficult for players to follow how a topic about RuneScape evolves.
- We only hear for a small minority lucky enough to notice and be part of an ad-hoc discussion.
- It's difficult to understand our process & timelines, how we design things and how player feedback flows into that.
Our new “Month Ahead” format is our team’s first attempt at rectifying that, but I have no doubt that we’ll be refining, improving and adding to that format over time, and it is likely a problem we have to keep reminding ourselves about. Let's see how it goes!
Beyond that, I have so many more THOUGHTS, but I don’t want to make this overly long, so here’s a quick list of things I’m thinking about (in no particular order):
- In-game
- How do we make the game feel more social and friendly - more alive? How do we make sure that the huge amount of players who play the game but aren’t on social media can have their say?
- This Week in RuneScape (TwiR)
- Is the “This Week in RuneScape” blog format still useful? What is important and what can be changed?
- How can we work with the Reddit team to improve the overall subreddit experience? Make Jmod replies more visible and help highlight key comments or replies? Let’s make better use of true Mega-threading to create one-stop discussion destinations for redditors.
- Steam
- Let’s get ourselves back to using Steam Announcements and into the Steam Community Discussions, keeping them updated and effectively moderated.
- Twitter/Bluesky
- Are we using these platforms effectively enough for regular quick-fire community notices like hot-fixes or awareness of key issues?
- Other platforms
- What other platforms do our players use? Where is Jagex not present, even though many of our players are?
Those are just some initial thought starters... Now it’s your turn! Let me know your thoughts on the RuneScape community and let's talk about them! You can do that in this Reddit gather thread.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to catch up with some of you in person in the coming days - and if not, have a lovely week and look forward to Mod Ryan and Breezy sharing the vision for RuneScape's game design in the coming days.