On Feburary 17, 2004 Jagex announced new support changes regarding free playing members (f2p) versus pay to play members (p2p).

This decision by Jagex spawned lively discussions on the forums from the Runvevillage users as to whether the five dollar monthly online gaming fee justifies whether pay to play members deserve better customer support versus the free to play members that do not pay but yet, still want the same customer support service as they have been receicveing so far.

The decision also led to the question of frequent updates in the forums as a result regarding the pay to play members servers versus the free to play servers also.

Jagex also released the number of players having active accounts as 660,000 players.

The above changes spawned quite a few topics on the Runevillage Forum. One discussion was stated "Let's settle the f2p and p2p thing...." This was a hotly debated spool regarding whether f2p players should have the same updates and customer support as member servers. Another Runevillager asked this question in the forum also "Is Jagex being partial?" by taking a poll. Still another topic was posed that there should be a rule against f2p/p2p discrimination. His suggestion was there should be no more hostility and or flaming on this topic of who gets what on p2p and who gets what on f2p. He likened it to a sort of discriminatin rule - meaning you are not allowed to flame or tease someone regarding their views on f2p versus p2p.

The decision by Jagex to reduce the customer support side of free to play members services while expanding the customer support side to further enhance the pay to play members services will no doubt be a long and debatable topic for many forums to come in the future. Will Jagex reverse it's decision in the future? Will more free to play members switch over to pay to play servers as a result of this decision? Only time, money and the number of members will foretell the future of Runescape.

6cats ^.^