This page is an essay created by Glflegolas. In it, I will describe the reasons why I think that War of Legends ultimately was a commercial failure for Jagex. If you have something to add this essay, please add it.
Flawed Microtransaction system
The idea of WoLCash, when it was first introduced to the game, was fairly decent; it was such that a Free-to-play player could get to the top of their server, but that Pay-to-play players would have a few small advantages over F2P. However, with the price of most items being fairly low, frequent sales, and frequent double-top-ups, it was such that for about $10 US you could get 200 WoLCash. This was enough to buy all the Reflections you'd ever need, and, with that amount of virtual cash, you would probably be able to buy some pretty decent armour. And even if you didn't spend a cent, you could still get armour and even reflections if you kept at it for a while.
Unfortunately, when True Legends came around, that changed. Armour became much more expensive, and the need for reflectons pretty much meant the F2P players were at a major disadvantage. This divide increased when Ascended legends came out. The addition of Market trading helped somewhat, but it still was not enough to offset the divide created by very expensive gems, armour, Restore Seeds, and legends. The drops from paradises were also disproportionate; players who didn't pay couldn't get the armour they would need to do Floor 20, and conversely Buzhou Mountain drops were unbalanced, in that the drops from the floor below were too poor to allow the player to do the next floor without paying; there are reports of players spending $1000.- or more in total to Jagex for WoLCash.
Developer vs Publisher Relationship
War of Legends was published by Jagex to a Western, English Language player base. The game was developed by Ultizen, closely based on the original Chinese version.
On the face of it the Jagex/Ultizen partnership had a lot of advantages. Ultizen had an already coded and published a game that simply needed the investment of translation, whilst Jagex offered promotion of the game a new audience and it's huge RuneScape player base. Together the two could take an existing product to a new player base with only a small investment and minimal business risk.
In reality the execution between the two was shambolic and forum posts from moderators suggested a fractured relationship.
In hindsight one of the most critical decisions was to tweak the game for a western audience, so that the English language version was not simply a translation of the Chinese version, but required its own build. That build was never stable, was bugged, laggy and glitchy. The quality of the game to come was somewhat flagged from the start by the terrble job done on the translations.
As a player, it felt like Jagex would not promote the game as it was buggy and unreliable. With the amount of manual labour required to unstick legends and the like Jagex probably did not see the game as scalable. The bigger the player base the more and more staff that would be required to provide support the game, a level of cost that made for an unsustainable business model.
For Ultizen the promised expansion to a massive new audience did not arrive. Faced with focusing development time on the popular Chinese version or fixing the English language version, they stuck with the money they could bank on.
So the game was stuck in limbo, the bugs would not be fixed until the English version was a flourshing commercial succes but Jagex would not promote it and drive that success until the bugs were fixed. The two companies never closed this circle and in doing so consigned the English language version to a tiny player base and it's ultimate doom.
This likely the main reason why War of Legends did not ever become the commercial success it could have.
Too many servers
This is a minor problem, but when Jagex opened so many servers, in anticipation of a large player base, it meant that the player community became really spread out. As a result, many servers had only a handful of active players, and many new players would be reluctant to join because the community appeared to be so small.
Laggy servers
Many servers had a large amount of lag when doing anything. This would not have helped the game remain popular with new players.
There were a couple reasons behind this
- Servers were all N.US based
- Account limited recommended by Ultizen was no more than 10,000 registrations per db, Jagex upped it to 15k
- Databases needed old data cleaned every 30 days to maintain a small enough to run at around 700mb per db. They were not cleaned for the first 4 years hence DB's 5-8x larger than recommended. This actually only took a week or so to resolve once the problem was addressed.
- Redundent accounts would only be deleted if they had less than 1500rp. So thats the first 2 clicks of the game and a dead account would never be removed.... Funny enough all it took was 4 years and someone literally typing some 0s onto the daily boot up script to resolve
^^^ Prod Twig - Miss you all
Inability to attract new players
Because of the way that Jagex ran the game, it meant that almost all the people playing the game joined in 2010, when the game first started. Then, as the playerbase began to dwindle, so did Jagex's profits. New players were likely deterred by the lag, but especially the difficulty of becoming a top player without paying; a player who joined in 2012 would have had to pay a lot if he wanted to be among the top 100 players of the server.
Security Breach
Officially, the reason why the game was closed was due to a security breach on December 22, 2014, and the inability of Utilzen to make a patch. But the security breach was really only the straw that broke the camel's back; for months, the playerbase of WoL was dwindling, due to old players getting bored and new players not joining. Thus, this security breach was a good excuse for Jagex to close the game forever.
Farewell notes
This section of the page is dedicated to farewell notes of former players.
KINGS DESTINY PLAYERS ---- been a long time to say my goodby welcome you all or any players to contact me on skype, make sure you post ur player name so i know who you are.... reconkangas
Goodbye, everyone from Black Dragon, Soaring Eagle, and Kings' Destiny. It was good to know you. I play Illyriad now on occasion. ~Glflegolas
I Miss you all so very much. TGH/Anzac Eventide snake./DrJay555
hi jay, balthazar198 here. there are a few players from ES on a similar game 'alliance warfare' ( server OB1)
DJ Moody / Legacy / Royal Garden
Miss everyone who I played with. @balthazar198 I applied to the alliance. -Azure Wings
I have heard on the grapevine that there's a new version of War of Legends in the works. Anyone know anything?'
Haven't heard anything about it. ~Glf.
Gunnin Boy (MT) here, and if anyone wonders, I am still selling chaos stones and reflections (0.5 wol for 1 ratio)
To all the souls from my alliance.. I miss you.. I am sad to see this game go.. farewell ma, pa, and bro.. -DBear616
If anyone finds a similar game, please do share. Whatever mmorts I try it doens't seem to be the same and have the amount of content that WoL had.
I found a similer game like WOL i would say its far far better , try out Clash Of Clans its a strict mobile game , try it and post your username here so I can help you out there ~ Slowwest / Eventideking / GamblerGrid
Anyone from Raining Blood or Zulu Threat (especially dot if you are reading this) Hi from Starmove.....
Havent found a computer game like it but couple phone games really similar..... btw clash of clans is too much like cartoons but another castle building troop making game called Clash of Kings is more real looking.... also on Empire War of Kings is like War of Legengs. I'M in Kingdom 3 in alliance called "The Medieval Warriors". I am Aragorn and need some good active players. AI miss War of Legends too and these games are as good as I have found so far to it. I've even messaged the Mods and Devs of suggestions to do these games like War of Legends since its so close to it.
Hi everyone, Suaromon from ES here. Ive been playing runescape since the game closed down, anyone playing there feel free to contact me, my PM is always on, my RSN is suaraun.
Hey Mystic Tiger server, miss all the time I spent on this server. Even when I was a little baby at like 12years old the community minus ED were great people, miss the fun and friends I had during my time on here. hmu @samu_chan on Instagram if any of you see this ~samrno
im eclipse from raining blood back in 2011. I miss all my friends so much. Find me on Facebook at cruzjay275@yahoo.com
(Jan 2017) Hey guys, recently found a new mobile game that is extremely similar to WoL, It's called zGirls. Differences being that it's Japanese made (hence anime-ish graphics), and instead of being set in old China it's set in the modern day with zombies. Instead of a city you have a school now, but apart from these design differences the game is very very much the same except for the concepts of WoL's legends being a bit different. zGirls have heroes called enablers instead, and are (at the moment anyway, the game is very new and is updated frequently) few in numbers but have a lot of skills etc. Anyway the game is almost the same as what WoL was, I'm having great fun with it. Check it out. Hoping they don't fuck up the game, for now it looks good.
(Jan 2017) miss this game
Mystic Tiger server was the best, and I really miss the people from my alliance, and messing around. I wish it didn't end, but I miss everyone, the gameplay, and most importantly I miss having the escape. -Freakinawes
(FEB 2017)
MT bros .. i really miss u all , Apocalypse The Wild Geese :) i remember all of you - Jr. Help
Vinmaker/ Legacy/ Royal Garden. Hello my friends. I miss you all. I am currently playing Dominations on Mobile. Very good game.
(FEB 2017) Prod Twig - Loved working on this game despite its well known issues, alas due to lack of support I packed my balls and moved on with my life. Hope your all doing well. And yes there was a sequel being made, it was cancelled with little more than a weeks worth of work left to release :-( I was not a happy bunny. I dont know what its been renamed but I am aware another company had released it some time ago. If I find the url/game name ill let you guys know
(Feb 2017)
I still think about this game sometimes. I was like 13 when I played it, all of you on Kings Destiny were very kind to me. Hope all of you are doing well. Shoutouts to everyone from Golden Horde and Defiance! - Wzs/Rerange
(March 2017)
To all of my friends that played on MT. I didn't realize how honoured I truly was to have you all in my life until you were gone :(( You're all amazing people and I miss you heaps <33 - Wishy
Hey everyone! I made a great many friends playing WoL and I miss all of you so much! The superserver events were great and I hope you are all doing well! Love you all and I hope we can meet again!
- Joeygoku/Evil Inc/Emerald Paradise
(April 2017)
Hey people. I was a kid when I played, and this game was real awesome. Been searching for a game that's similar to it, but can't find anything that hooks me like WoL did. Hope everyone is well.
- Runeyewnited / Emerald Paradise
Miss everyone and the game <3 contact me if you knew me, leevictor293@hotmail.com
-pamreder (White Lotus, Eventide snake) 6/8/20172017
Shoutout to all my peeps in Zulu Threat from Big Roscoe