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The most interesting thing no one seemed to mention yet: When you now sign up for RuneScape and declare your age as 13 or below, you will be allowed to register, but ONLY play on those quick-chat worlds. Does this drive all young AND rule-breakers into the same place?

I believe MANY of the people who sold items for real money were/are actually dedicated players that do have a decent character. Merchants/Former Stakers/Long Time players all fall into a category that might RWT. It basically means that you are replacing your standard lvl 3 bot by actual people that stay on the same character for long times, but it doesn't eliminate all RWT as jagex tries to accomplish.

You might think you're very clever, but think again. Allowing trades within a 5% range would allow for the following to happen: Player A trades Player B a blue partyhat at lowest price. Player B trades Player A the same hat back at the highest price. (15 minutes or 1 hour later makes no difference). Immediately you allow RWT'ers to transfer millions of coins within just two trades. The reason why they don't allow % based trades should be pretty clear.

when RS was opened to the public, we had good & evil magic/prayer. players could also decide if they wanted PvP on or off (you could only switch it up to 3 times a week or so later). They got rid of all this early on...

Those numbers are correct? So you can trade 1 Obsidian Cape for 16 dragonstones?

Well hello long time no see...I just started to play again a few months ago after taking a couple years break too (after RS2 came out). The main reason being what you mentioned, all those silly hats we saved up are worth a lot. Let's just say you could buy all skills you ever wanted :xD I never deleted you so drop me a message if you ever log on. Peace.

Took a bit over 1000 sharks and 200 King Black Dragons to get them.

Probably around 90k Mahogany Planks. (As do the the others that have 99 at the time of the writing). That's roughly 135 million drained right there. Plus, I have spent probably upwards of another 100 million on materials such as Marble, Magic Stones, and building NPC's in dungeon. On the issue of if Marble etc really makes a big impact -- I think personally that it is just as big of a drainer as making planks is...well almost. If you don't think many people buy it, go worldhop in Keldagrim and look at the store's stock. Rarely do you find a world where all materials are fully stocked.

Yes I know - but how many people really use them? Most people seem to level using oak, which only drains 5.8gp / exp (that is including the most expensive servant already) and is still significantly lower then the 8gp / exp rate I actually used in my calculations. I know there are people using mahogany and even spending cash on the Gold Leafs, Marble and Magic stones - but would they really be putting the average gp spend / exp gained up by more then the 2.2gp I took to compensate that? I do believe that they do -- just take the Altar for example. Let's assume everyone 72 construction and up has build one for levelling. (Of course some don't, but many more then don't, do build a lot of other expensive items as well to make up for it). An altar (with the burners) drains a little over 2 million GP from the economy. Over 1000 people have that level so far, resulting in a 2 billion GP drain. Definitly significant if you ask me. And yes, I do believe it is not made up for by the average beeing a little higher -- since I personally know a lot of people levelling on Mahogany compared to Oak. Just my point of view -- I think materials such as Gold Leafs, Marble Blocks and Magic Stones are a greater drain than you seem to assume in your article.

You forgot to include the cost of Gold Leafs, Marble and Magic stones in your calculation.

Everyone is welcome to come when I am online (private chat on), World 42 Relekka. But I'm not online right now -- in a little bit. And no, unfortunatly monsters do not drop items (they give xp though!). You can attack them and other players (in PvP mode).

Maybe somebody that has connections to Jagex would kindly re-submit my idea to implement RSS or text-only highscores. Seeing as how many fansites use the RS hiscores for various reasons (signatures, calculators, custom highscores, etc), it would benefit Jagex as well as the other parties. Clearly, it would use a lot less bandwidth (and processing power for third parties) for Jagex and all fansites. I really don't see a disadvantage for Jagex to provide a text-only version of the highscores, or XML/RSS version. I think it would be kind of neat, and enable people to do new things, like this tip.it highscore idea.