quitthegame

When prices settle down and the GE arrives at the new equilibrium prices, will you post apologies as vigorously as you're currently posting complaints? Just curious.

The federal reserve is a banking system. It has nothing to do with setting prices of goods and services. Are you a total incompetent? The Federal Reserve's main goal is limiting inflation. Does that ring a bell? Prices of goods and services? Did you even read my post? "government attempts to moderate change to take place more slowly to avoid deleterious side effects" That's not price controls, you most unsly wizard, that's exactly what I gave examples of! Seriously, where do you people come from? I guess I didn't provide enough links to wikipedia, I needed about 10 more to educate you about basic facts like this. Thank you for two completely irrelevant sentences. What does what you said above have to do with how governments use subsidies to avoid the deleterious side effects of sudden change? That's right, not a godforsaken thing. I guess in an indirect way, since you quoted the inefficiencies inherent in subsidization yet admitted it does exist, you did imply that the benefits and rationale I'd pointed to must be valid or they wouldn't exist, but that's not really enough to justify saying anything, since just saying nothing would have also implied you agreed with me. Yes, indeed, what about the insurance industry? Do you know what it is? Is that why you put that question in its own paragraph? Do you know anything about economics at all? All good questions, but I find them quite boring. So I'll wait until you display evidence of rational thought about the insurance industry to educate you further. Sadly, for you that is, price supports working WASN'T one of my points, so I'm going to have to disregard you saying my points fail until you show some evidence of actually knowing what they are. You sound like some 14 year old who's fallen for some conservative propaganda. Newsflash: the real world doesn't work that way. Economics is one of the most backwards areas of study, and there's a reason for that, which you are too dense to see. Even if I were to grant your simplistic and puerile suppositions about free trade in the real world, it's so obvious that the benefits of free trade do NOT transfer by analogy to runescape, that I laugh at the fact that you dare to make it without even considering the possibility that they don't. (I'll give you a hint: the main benefit of free trade is maximizing production through comparative advantage -- this is TOTALLY irrelevant in RS as production rate is not determined solely by physical limitations and human strategies to deal with them but mainly by decisions Jagex makes about their game world) It seems that in most cases it's a price floor, not a ceiling, but the term isn't exactly accurate in any case. It would be more accurate to call it a "temporary transactional limitation that happens to function as an extremely short term price floor", but perhaps that's more words than you can keep in your mind at once. Yea, that's what I said, except you used 5x as many words and threw in some incorrect observations in the middle. The actual reason for the decline in the price is not loss minimization, but is a natural occurrence of the fact that the decrease in the unitary transactional time cost has been massively decreased by the GE, which has increased the number of sellers and therefore prices. No, the massive decrease in transactional cost means that the GE will see an increase in usage over time as the prices settle down, although of course whenever items change in price more rapidly than the GE allows they will be traded mainly off the GE. This is something that will mostly happen when game updates change the demand or supply for items drastically though, so it should not be very common.

Can you people PLEASE stop whining because the laws of supply and demand are expressed in the GE through a system that limits change to a maximum rate? Guess what. The NYSE has in place a system to limit change to a maximum amount per day too, I suppose you will rail against Wall Street's communism too now, right? [hide=Details on NYSE limitations from wikipedia]On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 508 points, a 22.6% loss in a single day, the biggest one-day drop the exchange had yet experienced, prompting officials at the exchange to invoke for the first time the "circuit breaker" rule to halt all trading. This was a very controversial move and led to a quick change in the rule; trading now halts for an hour, two hours, or the rest of the day when the DJIA drops 10, 20, or 30 percent, respectively. In the afternoon, the 10% and 20% drops will halt trading for a shorter period of time, but a 30% drop will always close the exchange for the day. The rationale behind the trading halt was to give investors a chance to cool off and reevaluate their positions. Black Monday was followed by Terrible Tuesday, a day in which the Exchange's systems did not perform well and some people had difficulty completing their trades. [/hide] Information-limited auctions are extremely common in the real world as well, ever heard of sealed auctions? That's only one of 25 different information-limited auction types happening every single day! All this overheated whining about communism, when your only complaint boils down to you want the prices to change by 5% every 15 minutes rather than every 24 hours. Well, I would rather that were true as well, but I'm still objective enough to see that your supposed moral concerns boil down to IMPATIENCE! The amount of spoiled whining done by people who won't even admit their true motivation in these forums is truly unbelievable and I for one am sick of it. Do I need to list other examples in the real world where the government attempts to moderate change to take place more slowly to avoid deleterious side effects? Ever heard of the federal reserve? Subsidies for industries hit by technological change? What about the insurance industry? Do you really expect Jagex to copy the free market in the real world exactly? What's the point of that, if you want the real world, open your flipping front door! Runescape is a simpler model of the real world, and the moderating influence of millions of people implementing incredibly complicated balancing mechanisms in the real world economy is replaced with a 5% limitation per day. Don't like it? Calmly argue that the limitation should be raised or repealed, or make your own better game and beat RS in the free market that you revere so much. Just don't act you just got dumped at the altar over an optional feature in an MMORPG, that's all I ask.

No surprise, you're wrong. The market price isn't determined by some strange game of price-lowering chicken between evil rwt's and hapless Joes, the price is determined by the interaction of supply and demand. If the gold farmers sell for for less than the supply/demand determined price, then there will still be surplus buyers left to buy Joe's at price for MORE than the gold farmers got paid. If they sell for more than the determined price, then they won't sell anything, or if they only slightly overprice they will eventually find some impatient buyers. If Joe decides he'd be better off making money some other way, then he probably will do that, but that's not what the original discussion was about, the original discussion between us was whether Joe was able to lower his asking price to whatever he chose, or not. Changing what the discussion was about to avoid the fact that you were wrong in that discussion only works when you're debating with people that can't remember anything, which apparently is your specialty. This doesn't make any sense. "as much gold as possible in the shortest amount of time"? The shortest amount of time is zero time, the amount of gold it's possible to gather in zero time is zero. Try again to come up with a sentence that parses into a meaningful assertion. Let's assume for sake of argument that you'd said something that actually makes sense, like "goldfarmers want to make as much gold as possible per day" This actually means something, although it's still wrong. Some gold farmers want to make as much gold as is possible per 12 hour shift. Some want to make as much gold as possible over longer periods of time, valuing current gold over future gold in a typical exponential decay expression, with the normal emotional variances from the market-derived rational exponential graph. You see how pointless it is to argue this with you, you're unable to clearly state your thoughts, and they barely pass for thoughts in the first place. Which leads us to the next section of your post-- I'd advise you to stick to meaningless quotations of children's movies such as the above, it's much more up your alley than attempting to think is.

Qeltar, I mainly agree with you, but your arguments are presented in such a mixed-up fashion, and repeated so often, that it's quite confusing. There are 3 different issues here, which you aren't really keeping as distinct as they need to be for clear presentation. #1 Jagex is attempting to prevent RWT through the GE. This is why they don't allow browsing through offers as WoW's AH does. This is actually a good idea, both in practice and in theory. Because the second offerer gains the benefit of the price difference, knowing the existing prices wouldn't make the market any freer, it would only make collusion easier. I would guess that the reason Jagex wants RWT to be impossible through the GE is that they don't want to have to manually police the transactions through the GE. If the GE becomes the main method for item transfer, than it will be much easier for Jagex to police the 20% of trades that don't take place through the GE, just because the volume will be so much less. I wouldn't be surprised if additional restrictions are added to non-GE trades though. #2 The second issue is that Jagex is attempting to prevent the GE for being used in price manipulation. This is why the automatic price adjustments are done so slowly. I agree with you that this is unnecessary and removes some fun from the game, but to call it socialism is totally wrong! Cartels and price manipulation is not a feature of a free market, intervention to prevent cartels and monopolies are the one thing governments DO in a laissez-faire model. In practice they usually don't prevent them, but that's because cartels know how to lobby--but sometimes they do. Also, realistically once the prices have become a bit more stable, 5% a day is enough for most non-manipulatory cases. Sure, if some update affects the supply or demand of an item and the prices double or halve, it will take 2 weeks for the GE to be useful again for that item, but there are (at least currently) many other venues to pick up the slack on that ONE item until the GE adjusts. While I think it would be more fun if Jagex hadn't attempted to control price manipulation in this fashion, it will at least be interesting to see how well it works, and how people will attempt to get around the restrictions. #3 The third issue is that many of the initial prices are totally nuts. This is really rather irrelevant, a small fact to be noted and not debated, and by repeating it so often you are weakening the logical structure of your arguments. In summation, I agree with you that the market should update way faster, but I believe that some of the anti-RWT features of the GE make sense and I ask you to consider both sides of the argument--i.e. give us an example of how to control RWT without requiring human supervision in a GE that doesn't have temporary price boundaries and allows browsing and choice of offers.

You can keep saying that "Joe" offers for a higher price over and over, but that doesn't make it true. Joe is just as free to offer as a lower price as the goldfarming firm is. The logical structure of the argument above boils down to "Joe offers at a higher price, because the goldfarming company offers more cheaply, because Joe has to offer at a higher price." Pssst, you may not have realized this, but that's circular logic. That means it's wrong. Not to mention, your paragraph above has nothing whatsoever to do with the Grand Exchange, if it were true it would have applied since the invention of runescape. Actually you did call me an [wagon]. More accurately, you created a logical statement of the form "If X, than go ahead make an [wagon] out of yourself", where X was obviously something you were claiming was true. Anyways, someone calling me an [wagon] just because I point out a logical insufficiency in their argument isn't something I consider a game, and I couldn't care less about you quoting Willy Wonka.

If you're going to interpret what I say literally, by all means go ahead; make an [wagon] of yourself. I'm pretty sure calling people [wagon] is much more assish than interpreting what you say literally. Especially because I'm right, and you are not. This is absolute nonsense. Anyone can undercut anyone else's prices. Wanna know how? It's a nice little trick I call "lowering your price". Just because the goldfarming firm has more goods coming in than one trader, doesn't mean that they can charge less per log. I can charge .0001 per log. If you're talking about what we're willing to sell at, well we both want to get as much as possible for each log, no matter how many we have coming in. Your point is so incoherent that it doesn't deserve to be called a point, which is why you spray out insults much faster than you summon up ideas.

Huh? Why can't the average Joe "afford" to sell it as cheap? Have they started charging rent in this game or something?

That's certainly an interesting fact, and I'm not doubting it, but queries to Jagex are notorious for getting wrong answers. I personally have seen many queries to Jagex about DK luring, most of them said luring is illegal and then referenced rule 2, which specifically mentions "luring players into the wilderness". The obvious implication is that customer support workers getting paid 5 quid an hour don't know that DK's aren't in the wilderness. *shrugs* The fact of the matter is that the rules don't prohibit DK luring explicitly, and I've never seen a respected Jmod post in the forum about it being illegal, so I'm going to continue believing it is legal until I get better evidence than some minimum-wage flunkies' attempt to obscure the obvious. I've certainly never heard of anyone ever getting a blackmark for it, not that people don't get spurious blackmarks but that's at least relevant information to know.

It certainly sounds as if we both agree that the DK fight is flawed, although you think that the biggest flaw is the ability to solo mage them. You hear a lot of people talk about luring whole teams of DKers on the forums, although I certainly see why it's much harder than luring a solo mage. I've done a large amount of luring in WoW on outdoor bosses, when some other guild would lure mobs into us on our attempt then we would retaliate-- and that was quite often. But that was generally pretty fun, because WoW's death penalty is so minor, it was a pretty social thing. RS's more painful death penalty, has a lot of good effects in terms of making decisions more meaningful and important, and rewarding planning over persistence, has the negative effect of making attempts to take advantage holes in encounter design feel more like exploits and less like harmless fun. If RS had less of a death penalty, then perhaps teams would lure each other as part of a fight for the spot, instead of luring being a vicious attempt to steal items from others. I'm not saying RS's death penalty should be lessened, just that I think the harsh death penalty mandates encounters be carefully designed to prevent such unrealistic and annoying behavior--and if the DK's encounter can't be changed to prevent luring, I would wish that it be made into a minigame to prevent such interference.

First, let's make clear that DK luring is not against RS rules, the only luring the RS rules prohibit is "luring players into the wilderness under false pretences" Second, this thread is not about the morality of DK luring. That's not a useful debate because the morality of DK luring depends on the choice of moral system used as a yardstick, and in practice such a debate always turns into a display of emotion rather than reason. I personally loathe DK luring, but anyone who admits to doing so on forums clearly wants to be spited, so it's a bit useless to do so and isn't a debate. Ok, now to business. Let's start by examining the usual targets of blame. Target #1: The "evil" DK lurer. There have been a plethora of reasons for blaming the DK lurer over the years. Sadly, they all fall under falsely accusing them of breaking RS rules, or emotional arguments about morality, so they don't get us anywhere. If the DK lurer makes money and finds it personally morally acceptable, he will do it unless he has a better alternative. In a certain sense you can't blame someone for that, in another sense you can. Target #2: The "noob" DK'er. Traditionally, DK lurers blame their victims, saying they could have avoided the death if they were more skilled. This latter statement may be true, but the argument as a whole is an equivocation of responsibility with blame. The DKer who could have avoided the death is responsible for his actions, but that doesn't mean that we "blame" him for dying. Blame implies not just responsibility, but responsibility for an act which is wrong. Well, there's the problem in a nutshell. If blame requires an act which is wrong, and DK luring isn't against the rules and we don't want to debate morals with DK lurers who don't share our moral system, than why do we want to blame someone for DK luring? The answer is simple-- DK luring is bad gameplay. It's unrealistic, it decreases the total enjoyment derived from the game, and it shouldn't be possible to do at all. The lack of realism is definitely the main reason DK luring is so offensive, though. Consider how it starts, by attracting a lvl 303 monster to attack you. In any reasonable analogy to the real world, as long as no on else attacks that monster, it should keep attacking you until one of you dies. Because DK'ing is a poorly designed activity, it's possible to get it to attack other players who do nothing to it, without teleporting out yourself. Imagine if you could go into barrows, find someone safespotting dharok in the tunnels, and go just give him a push to the side to get him out of the safespot so that he would kill the unsuspecting player he was fighting. Would people bemoan the evil and immoral "dharok-pushers", or would they rightfully blame jagex for this unwanted update? This example is notable in that pushing dharok to the side actually makes sense in terms of realism, although it would negatively impact gameplay. DK luring is a much worse aspect of RS than dharok pushing would be, as it's both unrealistic and bad for gameplay. My challenge for those who believe DK luring is a good aspect of RS: what other encounters would benefit from being make "lurable", and why? My challenge for those who agree with me: How should the mechanics of the DK fight be changed to make DK luring impossible? Do you think other lurable monsters will be released in the future or do you think jagex has learned their lesson about encounter design?

I wasn't trying to flame you scorpion, I have a lot of respect for your merchanting ability and your well-reasoned posts. But, I still disagree with you sometimes :P Like on the function of rares ;) Extreme price has little to do with being the backbone of the economy. Extreme price is baseball cards. Backbone = function. The only functions price alone gives an object are investment/hedge potential and use as currency. I don't believe phats are used as currency, so that only leaves the first usage. It's a little ridiculous to me that something that's fairly ugly, and with no game mechanic use, is used as an investment/hedge, but since it's the only item in truly limited supply it makes sense mathematically. Still, that's not even close to backbone status.

No, the only logical outcome is that the prices go to what the balance of supply and demand dictates. For something like yew logs, the market is already working fairly fluidly, it's already easy to find buyers and sellers for yews. For something like TT items, it can take a long time to find a buyer, which is why you hear a lot of ppl say they're going to put theirTT items up when the Grand Exchange hits. Lowering the transactional cost will have an effect on items that had a relatively high transactional cost before, but your analysis treats the issue like the marketplace for all categories of items was basically nonfunctional, which is pretty naive. How is the rare market the backbone of the economy? If every discontinued item were made nontradeable tomorrow, it would have zero effect on how I play the game. Of course the forums would be filled with people saying that the RS economy was dead, but that happens with every other update already. Jagex leaves rares in the game because some people enjoy trading them or having them as a goal, and they don't want to anger subscribers if it's not necessary. That doesn't make rares the backbone of anything, or important. (don't even go to the rares prevent inflation argument, a 2nd grader can see that's absurd) I'll provide an analogy. Rares are collectible, in limited supply, and valuable. Kinda like... 1987 Fleer edition baseball cards are in the real world. Does that make baseball cards the backbone of the economy? Backbone implies structural function, do you know what part of the body is collectible, limited supply, and valuable? It's not the backbone, it's artificially overpriced diamond earrings. Not a perfect analogy though, diamonds have practical uses and are much prettier than RS rares. I'm not trying to flame you, I think merchanting is the most interesting (theoretically speaking) part of RS, although I don't do it very much in practice, and I respect your merchanting ability. But why claim rares are the backbone of the economy, without even offering a reason? Your point about monopolies using the Grand Exchange is true, but it was already possible and there are drawbacks to the GE for monopolists also. Transactional cost being lower means it's easier for the monopolists to do more trades and impact the market more, but the GE will likely have many more participants than the RSOF which means it won't save the monopolists any more time and could dilute their impact.

Merchanting is indeed a word, and you know very well what it means. I would wager that merchanting is used more often than merchandising. The fact that only the latter is found in dictionaries means that it is older, which people like you confuse with better. To illustrate the hypocrisy of your grammar-nazi outburst, let's examine your sentence to your own standards. "One[incorrect, you want the ordinal number not the cardinal number, should be 'first'], merchanting is not a word; You[incorrect pronoun, should be 'one' , the indefinite pronoun in english] either say[says] merchandising or simply[incorrect parellelism to have an adverb in only the second branch, also awkward and confusing to have the adverb following the verb in this case] active trading." To clarify the 3rd point above, does "one says simply active trading" mean "In a simple fashion, one says 'active trading'" or "One says 'simply active trading" . Your irregular verb/adverb order is to blame.

Scalping tickets lands you in court because the tickets are marked not for resale. That makes your analogy false, and deceptively so. This sentence mixes the future and the past tense, contains an oxymoron, and uses pronouns with no clear antecedent. The problem I have with that is that it obscures what you are trying to say, namely, that you and many other players are ok with merchanters who make money from offering convenience, but not ok with merchanters who make money from knowing more than their clients. But, imagine a world where no one liked to "be a merchant". Still, in the marketplace some people would have more knowledge than others and would profit from that knowledge. Therefore, the absence of merchants wouldn't actually put an end to the practice of people making money from knowledge, it would merely mean that these profits were distributed differently. Whoever used/created a lot of certain products would be the de facto merchants in those categories. This is nonsensical. What does it mean to be screwed by the middle man in a law of supply and demand? You convert yourself into letters of the alphabet, insert yourself into a law, and then get screwed by a phat merchant? Great... Stranger things have happened. Rarely.

Which rules of the game? It's mentioned in the code of conduct for the RSOF. It's not specifically discussed in the game rules. If you actually read said code of conduct, you would see that a cartel could easily manipulate the price of items, using the RSOF, without violating the code of conduct, an occurrence which happens every single day. The problem here is an equivocation, everyone interprets the word manipulation to be synonymous with the word change, but the actual RSOF CoC carefully defines manipulation to be "change via this list of banned practices", and then it says exactly which ways you are allowed to change the price. The problem is that the legal ways to change the price via the RSOF fall more naturally into the word manipulation than into the word change, so everyone just uses that word in their own discussions. All of this confusion is caused by this overloading of meanings onto the term manipulation--however when someone challenges you to source the rule, at that point perhaps you should actually read the rules which clearly state how they redefine the terms, eh?

I.e., you don't know which rules and can't provide a source, but you heard from some guy that it's against "the rules". That's simply not good enough, please stop spreading misinformation. edit: i'll provide a hint for you to speed this discussion up...price manipulation by means of forum posts that are not of the form of valid and legitimate 'buy (or sell) item x for price y' threads is against the RSOF rules, however since in this thread you referenced price manipulation without mentioning the RSOF, this fact is irrelevant. It is important to note that with the definition of "price manipulation" given by the RSOF rules, one can manipulate the price of items quite easily without committing the specific violation "price manipulation"--just by making only actual trade threads. It's not rocket science.

Which rules of the game?

I already answered this argument before you made it, but I'll repeat myself since you seem to need it. Price manipulation, were it allowed on the official forums, would result in a lot of spammy posts, huge amounts of them. This is the most plausible reason for it being disallowed on the forums. If price manipulation were considered item scamming, as you claim, then it would be listed under the item scamming rule for the actual game. But, it's not. Try harder next time, and don't try to claim that rules for the forum are rules for the game. Clearly you haven't read my earlier posts, which already answered your point number 1. (About 20 posts ago in this thread) As to your point 2, yes, a small subset of price manipulation tactics have been made illegal, which was ALSO acknowledged in my earlier posts in this thread, 10 hours ago. However, illegal doesn't = wrong or immoral, it just means illegal. Currently abortion is legal in the US, but still 60% of people think it's morally ok, and 40% think it's not. If Bush appoints a new justice and the Supremes strike down Roe vs. Wade, then abortion will be illegal, and still 60% of people will think it's morally ok and 40% will think it's not. In any event, if you will read my earlier posts, you will find my explanation as to how nearly every price you pay has been legally manipulated, in the real world. Your 3rd point that you added as an edit as I was replying, is both incoherent and irrelevant to any point I was actually making. A word of advice: when your longest paragraph is a debate about the semantics of a concept used as an example to illustrate a side point... you're missing the point.

scamming, luring, keylogging, are against the rules of the game. Price manipulation isn't. The point "it's a game", is in relation to his argument that price manipulation is wrong in real life, but it's ok in the game. Kinda like how killing someone to take their items is wrong in real life, but ok in RS. It was a good argument, except for the fact that price manipulation is so obviously NOT wrong in real life, rendering his point moot.

It's likely that he meant "do well", not "do good". which rule did he break? They made a choice. The result of that choice was to go along with the price manipulation. The fact that they didn't realize what the result of their choice would be doesn't negate they fact that they made a choice. No one ever has perfect knowledge before making a choice, that's life. Here's an example. Let's say I'm selling you a sandwich, and I know you're allergic to ham. Sadly, my sandwich is ham. If I trick you into believing the sandwich isn't ham, then I have manipulated you into believing a falsehood. To be perfectly clear, remember that it's possible for me to manipulate you into believing that without ever making that exact claim, which would be straight out lying. Now let's examine the manipulation of someone to believe that the sky is red, not blue. Now, upon first examination, this sounds exactly the same as the first example. But the sky is basically the best example of blue out there, if I convince you that the sky is red while you are looking right at the sky, have I manipulated you into believing a falsehood about the color of the sky, or have I manipulated you into switching the names for the colors red and blue? Our final example, manipulating everyone to believe that the price of half wines is 30m instead of 9m. What exactly is the difference between the price of half wines, and what everyone thinks the price of half wines is? Personally, I see no difference at all. Therefore, it is impossible to convince everyone of a falsehood about the price of half wines, as their beliefs are tautologically the same as the price, such a falsehood is an obvious contradiction. So, we've established four categories of manipulation of another's ideas, a direct lie, a manipulation to believe a objectively falsifiable statement without lying, a manipulation to believe a nonfalsifiable statement of negative social utility due to inconsistency with current social standards, and a manipulation to achieve a nonfalsifiable statement that changes current social standards. Or more simply, 1-lying, 2-lying without actually lying, 3-something that sounds and acts like a lie despite not really being a lie, and 4-convincing everyone to believe the same new lie instead of the same old lie. Manipulating someone else's ideas is certainly similar to lying, but it's not exactly the same, and you haven't even made a coherent moral argument as to why lying is wrong. Many moral systems not only allow, but strictly require lying, and most people lie, so this is a grievous omission on your part. Didn't he say he was banned for RWT, not manipulations? He said he didn't want to discuss it any further, and it's not relevant, so drop it.

I'm a little shocked at all the people proclaiming that price manipulation is obviously illegal and immoral in real life. There are many different methods of price manipulation in real life, the one thing that they all have in common is that they are widely practiced. Some are illegal and widespread, some are legal and widespread, some are not regulated by law and widespread. The computer that you are reading this on is probably using MS windows, a product whose price has been manipulated via exercise of monopolistic power. The computers were on average built in China, which artificially manipulates the value of its currency relative to the US dollar to prop up its exports. The oil used to bring the computer to your door was mostly from middle eastern countries, which formed the cartel OPEC to manipulate the price of oil. The internet connection to serve you this page is supplied by a small number of providers which engage in collusive practices to charge you as much money as possible by artificially restricting the bandwidth they construct. The frozen treat you are consuming while reading this post was made from corn syrup, because the price of corn is kept artificially low through the Nixon farm subsidy reforms. Are you getting the point yet? Real world = price manipulation, end of story. (if you're reading this in a country other than the US, the examples are mostly US based but the general principles are found in every country) I will submit as an addendum that the rule against price manipulation on the official forums seems to me a good rule, but only because the absence of that rule would serve to generate tons of useless spam on the forums, even more than already exist there. It seems quite likely to me that this reason is also Jagex's reason for posting such a rule, and so the extrapolation of the immorality of price manipulation from this forum rule is a flawed inference. Perhaps Jagex has other rules against price manipulation, and i'm just not recalling them at this moment, but I doubt it.

That's not how the quote goes, although it is the way it is often misquoted. Emerson quite clearly is championing a deeper consistency to replace a particular, shallow kind of consistency which he refers to as foolish. I find it quite amusing that you imply some kind of false dichotomy of pedantic academic structure and stream-of-consciousness writing. That's not your run of the mill false dichotomy, those are the extreme tails of the bell curve being presented as the entire distribution. That's not what I said either, although I suppose I should be flattered that you are placing me in Emerson's company by misquoting us both. I would say that Locke's theories are true in RS and false in RL, due to the relative inexhaustability of natural resources in RS making the statement that all have access to natural materials actually true there. To answer your question, it has nothing to do with codes of honor in the wilderness, which is why I didn't mention any of those outdated theories in my article. Since the majority of my reply is just corrections of misquotations, I would suggest that we continue this discussion via pm's.

I'm quite well versed in strictly supporting a thesis statement punitive_d, but as you may have noticed yourself in the schools where that was drilled into you... it produces boring and soulless writing. Go read the essays of Emerson and Montaigne to lift the wool from over your eyes in that respect. What you propose as an addition to the honor code is already in some versions of it-- but, if you are off doing treasure trails you aren't in the right area for that honor code anyways, so you may be mistaken if you think this discussion is pertinent to that situation.

I would never claim that Runescape is exactly like real life, however I would submit that every game draws some kind of inspiration from real life, as the creators of the game have nothing else to draw inspiration from. Runescape, as an mmorpg, is much better as a sociological simulation than a game like solitaire. It's true what you, and many other in this thread, have said... death in real life is a much more sobering danger than it is in RS. However, let's take a closer look at how this impacts the code of honor. It is very commonly regarded as a good thing to be honorable in real life, even though it may increase one's personal danger. Not kicking opponents when they're down, not hitting someone with their back turned, standing up for what's right instead of running away... these are all positions with substantial backing in the real world. Even more elaborate and risky codes of honor have existed in the past, again, reference duelling on wikipedia for some fascinating reading. To make the claim that codes of honor are a good thing in real life, but not ok in RS because of the differing hazard levels, is like saying that you would risk your life in the real world to be honorable, but you just can't risk that set of full rune to be honorable in RS, that's just going way too far. If you're not making that claim, then the difference in hazard levels between RL and RS just isn't relevant... well it could be relevant to certain other claims, but I don't think I've seen one of those other claims in this thread, and they would complement not contradict my point in any event. I don't want to be misconstrued, those who take the chance to kill without retribution and behave solely for one's own benefit in RS are also contributing to the emergent gameplay and adding to the richness of the game. I don't want to convince every single person to follow a code of honor, I just want to encourage a vital and entertaining variety of behaviors ingame.