I played mmorpg since I was 8 with runescape and world of warcraft being the two biggest i've played. And it's no secret that the MMORPG scene is currently far from what it used to be. Where in 2015 we spend most time of a day doing daily things on our games back in 2008 there were only a few games that had a little amount of daily tasks. In games like Runescape and WoW there is an increasing amount of people that just log in do their dailies and log out, and that shouldn't be how to play a game (and I don't mean because people have no time playing, but people who are too bored to play). And with more dailies the game will ofcourse become easier and easier. The counter to this are the Ironman modes on games like Runescape and World of Warcraft but that's only to a certain point.

And with dailies and for example the ' task ' system to ' help'  newbs you are following a certain direction instead of making your own adventure. And that's something alot of games do. With making the game easier they also make the game go in a certain direction instead of doing your own things.

So are games dying, or do they simply need some updates to revitalise them.

If people only log in to do dailies, they probably wouldn't be logging in at all without them? In that sense, the dailies are good for RS, but unfortunately some of the rewards devalue the grind (TH is far worse IMO though). As far as the sense of adventure with the in-game guide goes, I don't know. I think it would be best to ask what a new player prefers. I personally find the popups with hints, arrows etc annoying and try to get rid of them ASAP.

Is RS dying? It has been for quite some time, but is fairly stable right now:

where did that graph come from?

I have said RS has been dying for a long time and they are trying to get the last few £s from the players, or players parents

They are awaiting something to revitalize them, who knows what.

Funny enough that is why the Old School team don't want to add any daily events frequently.

I never bother with dailies as for me, I play the game to roam about and do random things in my own time.

Here Lilly:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=runescape

Here Lilly:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=runescape

Rs seems popular in finland

I quite like dailies, as they give me an incentive to log in. Although I only do a select few, they only take up about 45 minutes of my day if I do them all. I think they're quite a smart move, business wise

Although I sometimes disagree with Jagex making the game easier, I think they do it so more people can enjoy high levelled content. Why would they want to invest so much time on projects when only a small amount of people will be able to experience it? They just want you to be able to access all of the content the game has to offer sooner. At least that's how I see it

I can understand where you are coming from with this, however, I don't think it's the daily task systems that's 'killing' MMORPG's.

If I was a maxed/comped player, then maybe I'd be struggling for content to do whilst I'm online, or maybe I'm just getting bored of the game as I await for new content. Dailies to me, appear to give those types of players a reason to log in and 'save' themselves from boredom and leaving the game entirely.

On the other hand, it doesn't give the new players much of a choice of freedom, such as we had to back in the day, which made this game enjoyable. By that I mean that we had to find our own paths and make our own choices, not having to follow some arrow to teach you how to play the game.

Dailies are optional. You can choose to do them to not get bored, but if you want to do it the oldschool way you can just ignore all of em and put off the guides. Easy enough to get back to the 'self exploring' part

They definitely make the game easier and have been very helpful for myself in the past, but I don't neccessarily like them. It's like with OSRS, I can go to the Hunting area, find a spot and sit there. Log out for the night and come back still at that area and can start again. For myself this was a huge advantage with focusing on a skill and keeping to it for 99.

You can see why they're there though. People keep logging in for them.

I think they get people logging on which is a positive thing but I think you're on to something when you say it takes something from the gameplay.

As a current Warcraft and Runescape player, I agree. I don't raid in WoW as much, but the incentives to log in, do dailies for certain things, and log out is just too good. That way when I do decide, or if I do, play hardcore again, I'd be caught up on certain things. That's the biggest thing I've hated about wow, was that you limits and weekly caps and dailies. You couldn't grind the game out. (For instance getting full pvp gear. It'd take you a few weeks to get it all, even with high pvp rating)

As for Runescape, I haven't been on the past week since I've gotten my Xbox One. I'm thinking about doing the same. The dailies are too good of experience. Log in every 5 days, do them all, reap benefits. So when I play hardcore, I'll be a few levels closer or experience wise closer to whatever goals. Although I'm trying to be better about fishing while I play now.