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RuneScape referendum restores content

Historic - hope they had the Cameron.

Dark blue icons of video game controllers on a light blue background
Image credit: Eurogamer

Gigantic old browser MMO RuneScape has witnessed an unprecedented act: a referendum to reinstate Free Trade and Wilderness to the game.

It worked: as of 1st February, both features will return.

A massive 91 per cent of the 1.2 million people taking part voted that both features should return.

"We have the most incredible community of gamers and we wanted to demonstrate how much we value them by handing this game changing decision over to them," Jagex straight-talking leader Mark Gerhard commented.

"I firmly believe that the Wilderness represents the ultimate risk versus reward experience in any MMO and the incredible support for the campaign demonstrates that our players agree. It has been fantastic to watch the community mobilise in support of the update and we can now introduce these features certain in the knowledge that they are what our community want."

RuneScape head Christoph Vietzke observed that the community "have sent us a very clear message".

The Free Trade allows players to gift money and items to friends - an act that can aid the process of gold farming.

The Wilderness is considered the most dangerous area within RuneScape; a place where all items can be looted by other players from your corpse. Sounds like old-school Ultima Online.

Do you wish another MMO would hold a referendum to restore a feature? If so, what would that be?

Me? Reinstate the glorious berserker damage in Dark Age of Camelot. Or keep cleric Smite damage high and the area-of-effect, instant-cast mesmerise spell powerful. Can you tell which classes I played?

RuneScape!

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