RuneScape just celebrated its 10-year anniversary and is bringing back the Wilderness and Free Trade due to an overwhelming response from players. We talked with Mark Ogilvie about these topics and more!

ZAM: The players are clearly in favor of these features. What was your reaction to the overwhelming response?

Ogilvie: Going into the vote, we really weren’t sure about how it was going to go or what was going to happen. We know that the PKing community is one of the most vocal that we have, so sometimes we can get a very one-sided point of view - particularly if you look at our forums. So we really wanted to run a referendum to see what the truth was.

Personally I was hoping that we would get more than a million votes, and we had a sportsmen’s bet in the office to guess what we thought the percentages might be. I’m quite proud to say that my guess was pretty much spot on as I thought it would be about 93%, so I was quite pleased when it came out at 91% in favor.

Although 1.2 million votes is an incredible figure, we weren’t really looking for high numbers of people voting. It was more about the percentage difference between who was saying yes and who was saying no. I just wanted a convincing result. I didn’t mind how many voters we got, I just wanted an overwhelming feeling that one direction was the right way to go and, luckily, that’s what I got.

ZAM:Are you making any changes to these features in their newly released forms?

Ogilvie: With regard to the Wilderness and Trading specifically, we’re taking a lot of the content back to the way it was in 2007. This means that wilderness death will work the way it did back in 2007, in that if you kill a player and you are the person who has done the most damage to that player, you will get their loot. If you choose not to pick up the stuff, then it will become available to those around you. We’re trying to make it as close to what it was when we removed it, considering all the new content which we’ve added in the last three years.

Some of the content will be moved out of the Wilderness and given a new home is a safer area. This includes things like quests and activities. We’re going to have a new cave just north of Falador which will contain Stealing Creation, Clan Wars and a portal to Fist of Guthix

The unique equipment that we added with bounty hunter and will still be available in the game, but you can no longer get them via PVP anymore, you will be able get the via a brand new dungeon that we are adding to the wilderness and filling with Revenants.

ZAM: How will the return of these features affect the game? How do you think new players will react?

Ogilvie: In my opinion, the Wilderness offers one of the most extreme risk vs. reward systems in any MMO, so I hope that new players will find it an enjoyable and compelling experience. Of course that kind of PvP isn’t for everyone, and to those who don’t like that kind of risk, I would suggest staying out of the wilderness.

Obviously opening up free trade again is going to have massive effect on the economy of the game since people are no longer tied to trading items via the Grand Exchange. It’ll be great to be able to start gifting items to friends again or trying to get the best deal on an item I want.

ZAM: Are there any other prior mechanics or changes that Jagex is thinking of bringing back?

Ogilvie: Unfortunately I can’t discuss that at the moment. I guess you will have to sign up and see.

ZAM: Now that you've reached the 10-year milestone, what's next for RuneScape?

Ogilvie: The 15-year milestone! Seriously though, the highlights this year will be the massive clan update we have planned and the finale quest to the Mahjarrat storyline we started writing 10 years ago. We have a lot more planned for RuneScape but we tend to keep our cards close to our chests. If you want to find out more, why not jump in-game and discover for yourself.