qeltar

World 2 is good for LRC. There are a decent number of people there, but not the lunacy of W84 (which I stayed in for all of 10 seconds before reaching for the big "X").

My calculations currently show a profit for torstols of close to 300k per trip.

We didn't. We said we asked if it would be a problem. It wasn't. Had it have been a problem we wouldn't have done it. Thanks for the clarification. Das, sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying. It happens, glad everyone is on the same page now. Well, we are on that particular subissue anyway. ;)

We didn't. We said we asked if it would be a problem. It wasn't. Had it have been a problem we wouldn't have done it. Thanks for the clarification. Das, sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying.

That's a valid argument. I guess I just have a problem with the principle of what Jagex is demanding here. I've been in this business a long time, and it's really pushy for a company to pull something like this, and it's unfortunate that so many sites are willing to allow Jagex to dictate terms of something that should really be none of their business. Yeah, well, it sounds like Tip.it offered to allow them to do that. Lunar: I don't hate Jagex, and I've been very supportive of them many times over the last year. I argue when I feel strongly about something, and couldn't care less if you like me or not. Go graze somewhere.

As of this morning's prices: torstol, wergali, snapdragon and avantoe, in that order.

It sacrifices nothing except your control over your own site, your independence, and your... integrity. Your words: "We wanted to clarify other things such as the video game forum and wow thread and other content before jumping in head first ignorantly making a mistake." That's content. You're backpeddaling. The article I am referring too was a "Biased banning raises brows" which was 04? 05? and did not cite anything for fact to back up the fact that jagex biasedly banned players I just re-read that article. It made very valid points, including some issues that Jagex has subsequently addressed. Diddn't see anything libelous there at all. Of course, Jagex didn't actually have to do anything, all they had to do was scare you a bit and you caved. And you've been walking on eggshells (not you, the Times) ever since. You already gave Jagex the opportunity to impact content here. It already HAS happened -- they were just nice enough not to take you up on it. That's what selling out means: trading control, integrity and independence for money or prestige. It's the very definition of the term.

Several things at work here. 1. MUCH greater demand for elemental runes, now that infinite shops are gone. 2. General inflation. 3. The price of pure essence is held down by the fact that there are now huge quantities of it entering the game as noted drops rather than through mining, as well as other source, such as GOP I suppose. You can get 4,000 pure essence in a single ice strykewyrms task. In contrast, there's not much regular essence entering the game this way. 4. Because of the dysfunctional GE, whenever things start to go up in price, people stop selling hoping it will be worth more later. Then it crashes and the cycle repeats.

The fact is i'm a player who has disagreed with the way runescape has been ran for half a decade. I'm bitter over trade limits, i'm bitter over PVP - hell i'm probably still bitter over my stats being wiped in classic due to inactivity. I've never been a jagex fanboy, I'm a player moderator and I try to use that to make a difference but with all due respect as a player, i've got more issues with them than you do, which is probably quite a few. I check my bases even if they don't need to be checked. I never called you a fanboy. I implied that you (collectively) had compromised your integrity in your desire to get high status in Jagex's fan site pantheon. So... nice speech, but you didn't answer my question. Why ask Jagex to look at forums and threads if you weren't willing to be influenced by what Jagex said? Why claim you aren't being influenced by Jagex when it comes to content when you are running content by them for approval? I think you mean "Jagex didn't like what we wrote and rattled our cage, so we caved, removed it and apologized". It's been a while but I don't seem to recall anything slanderous in that article -- Jagex just didn't like it, scared you, and the Times never been the same since. Bruce Everiss took a principled stand, and stood up for his rights. You did not. So, rather odd that you'd bring him up here. The states went years and decades without Federal highway money. But now they're hooked on it, so the Federal government can dictate terms to them. You'll see. The conspiracy theory crap -- which you repeated right in this post -- is enough, to be honest. My assessment of your collective intestinal fortitude or lack thereof is based on what you have already written. I don't need to see any confidential documents. Yes it is: you sold out.

You know, Das, you can do whatever you like, but don't try to handwave this away as if it were not a legitimate issue, with silly comments about "evil sinister conspiracies". That's nonsense, and frankly, I find it insulting. There's been no suggestion of a "conspiracy", just of Tip.it being incredibly eager to bend over backwards to accept any conditions that Jagex imposes in exchange for being able to have its name up in lights. The fact that you even felt the need to ASK Jagex about threads or forums on this board illustrates the problem. Because it suggests that if they *did* have a problem with those things, you would have gotten rid of them. Otherwise, why bother even asking? What message do you think you send by implying that the right to discuss other games in these forums was even up for discussion? As for the Times, if Jagex has no influence over it, why was I basically told when I was a member of the team that I would not be allowed to publish anything too negative about Jagex? Not that I tried (I don't believe), but the fact that it was raised at all showed that the Times' journalistic independence is suspect. And you really expect everyone to believe that, now that you guys have agreed to let Jagex dictate the terms of your ads in exchange for a bunch of nice perqs, you won't be even less willing to rock the boat? Once you get used to those nice perqs, they've pretty much got you. Sure, you can change your mind later, but it won't be easy to give up that status, so don't pretend this is something simple you can turn on or off like a light switch. There's also the issue of the *appearance* of impropriety, as opposed to impropriety itself. Even if Tip.it isn't being influenced by Jagex, it *looks* like you are, because you have already let Jagex tell you what ads you can run. The reason that organizations like Consumer Reports don't accept advertising from anyone is not because they feel they lack the ability to be objective, but because they don't want to *appear* like they are being influenced. So, make fun of me and MHL and a couple of others, but if you don't think dozens of people aren't reading this and thinking the exact same thing but just don't want to post it, you're fooling yourself.

I don't know what's most amazing about this statement: 1. That you would non-chalantly make it and apparently not think it's a big deal; 2. That you would say it in the same thread where you said Jagex wouldn't have influence over site content; 3. That 90% of the people here don't care about this, or anything else, as long as Tip.it gets its name on the marquee ("platinum"). Quite depressing.

With all due respect, I don't think it's this simple. First, you guys just entirely removed Google Ads. These are entirely CTR based, so even if it's true now that you aren't paid based on clicks, it's because all of that potential revenue has been foregone. Second, impression-based ad networks are a competitive market: the companies bid to get the right to run ads. The amount they are willing to bid is based largely on CTR. Third, if you block a big chunk of potential advertisers from your site, then you are going to lose at least some proportion of the better paying ads. They will be replaced, but by ads that don't pay as well, or by PSAs. Again, just to be clear: I'm not telling the Tip.it admins what to do -- this is their decision. I'm just having a hard time understanding how this is not having a noticeable financial impact on the site. And if it doesn't have a significant impact, I have to wonder why Jagex is so obsessed with the issue.

Barbarian fishing is the fastest at high levels, but it is only slightly faster than rocktails, while being a lot more tedious and not nearly as lucrative. Rocktail is really the way to go.

I've been using Google ads since they started... I think April 2004 is when I served my first ads. I still use AdSense to serve ads, and AdWords to buy ads to serve on other sites. I simply can't conceive of how Tip.it can block a percentage of the companies that want to advertise here and not have it affect their revenues. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but the number of companies that want to market real products to gaming fans is pretty low to begin with.

Actually, no they weren't blacklisted for that. Hyperbole aside, yeah, they pretty much were.

Not honest, just outspoken. Outspoken *and* honest. A combination that often results in the person doing it getting a lot of flak -- trust me, I know. The decision here is the Tip.it admins' to make. But it is undeniable that they *have* decided to let Jagex tell them what ads to run on their site in order to appease the company and get perks. I started my first web site and ran my first ads in 1997. In 13.5 years, I have never before heard of a company telling a fan site of ANY sort what ads it was allowed to run merely to have its existence acknowledged.

MHL may be brash and not politically correct, but at least she's honest.

But they belong on *Jagex's* sites? Can't really grasp the logic there. What this basically boils down to is this. Jagex, a company that makes millions every year, wants to bully small fan sites with small revenue streams, because Jagex is only willing to give a little bit back to the sites that helped make RuneScape a success if they can be guaranteed that 100% of the benefit provided to those sites does not in any way help a competitor. Never mind that this policy makes your company look like control freaks, and harms the fan sites far more than any of your competition. Sounds pretty selfish and short-sighted to me, but what do I know.

What's interesting is that as the prices have gone up, I've been watching the tables change in my prayer optimization guide. Right now, it is more cost-effective to use big bones than dragon bones even assuming an opportunity cost of over 500k/hr.

I find it amazing that the admins here don't seem to have any problem with having Jagex tell them what ads to run, not for the sake of following Jagex's rules about the game, but strictly to suppress competition. Especially given how awful ad revenues are in general in this market segment to begin with. I guess I'm reading the whole situation wrong. Other than Zybez everyone seems to be willing to go along with Jagex's demands. Practicality trumps principle. So I suppose they do this because they can get away with it.

They are forcing sites to stop advertising competitors in order to gain recognition as RS fansites. If that's not exercising control, I don't know what is. It's not like Guido and Luigi were going to show up and break knees -- that's how it is done in the business world.

Yeah? So where's yours? Site design is not important, as long as the site is usable. Content is important.

What do you think this is really all about to begin with?

Qeltar, have Jagex ever approached you and runescoop (or truthscape)? Especially with truthscape you actually had a fairly large sized site. TS was never very large, in terms of content or readership, compared to a place like Tip.it. And because much of the site was very critical of Jagex, I was not exactly their favorite destinatioon. In fact, near the end I attracted some rather negative attention. The new site doesn't really seem to be on their radar. And I doubt it will ever be formally recognized, because I will not take the steps they demand in order to gain that recognition. Even though the money I make off ads wouldn't pay for your morning coffee, as I said in the other discussion, I believe there's an important principle at stake here, and I'm willing to hurt my own business to stand up for it.

I'm not saying Jagex should ban discontinued items -- if they were going to do that, the time to do it was 6 or 7 years ago. I am just saying they should not let the impact on these items be any sort of consideration in gameplay balance decisions.