Polls are a feature released by Jagex on the RuneScape website about topics on RuneScape. These polls are conducted by Poll Orks, and the results are announced a week or two after its release. In the past, polls were generally for members-only, aside from one non-members poll. Jagex was pretty excited, but many members complained about it. However, upon Mark Gerhard's promotion to CEO of Jagex, most polls have instead been open to everybody. On 22 April 2010 Jagex announced that from then on, all polls will be open to both members and free-to-play, with a weekly prize draw - one month of RuneScape membership to a lucky participant.
Types of polls
Player-submitted polls
Player-submitted polls are based on questions submitted to Jagex through an email address set up for polls in specific: polls@jagex.com
[1]. Usually, the question is accompanied by the name of player who submitted it.
Player-submitted polls starting appearing circa 2007, and are conducted once every month.
Guaranteed Content polls
Guaranteed Content polls were introduced on 31 May 2007. These polls are conducted to obtain feedback on improvements within the RuneScape game. As the name suggests, the winning answers from the polls are guaranteed to be included into the game.
Other polls
In addition to the two polls mentioned above, there are other polls which do not fall into any category. These polls do not have any impact on the game, and are conducted by Jagex for research purposes.
Polls Removal
With the recent update to the website, the listing of polls and the polls archive have been removed. The only poll that remains is feature poll on the main page. All poll links in past news articles with links to previous polls are now broken. Jagex has yet to comment on whether polls and past results to polls will return.
Power to the Players
Power to the Players is an in-game polling system introduced to RuneScape in mid-January 2014 to give players the ability to choose the content and updates being added into the RuneScape game. All polls are open to members, and some future polls may be available to free players. Seven polls are run every month, with the exception of January 2014 with six polls.[2]