qeltar

For many items it is easier to sell on the forums or in W2 Fally than on the GE. Opportunity cost alone doesn't explain the price drops. Again, because of its crippled nature and lousy interfaces, the GE is actually more work for sellers of popular items than the forums or in-game trading. Opportunity cost can explain drops in the prices of unpopular items that were overpriced because of market inefficiency, but not the massive drops in items that have always been easy to buy and sell very quickly. Three weeks ago if you posted sara brews for sale at 1.5k they were gone instantly. They are now well below that. Same with many other types of potions. Snapdragon seeds were bought in huge numbers by power farmers for 35k each. Now they are under 25k. A few weeks posting raw sharks for 850 a piece meant you would sell out immediately even if you had tens of thousands. They are under 700. Flax was an instant buy at levels 40% above where it is now. There are countless other examples. False. Items that have always been easy to buy and sell very quickly in huge quantities -- herbs, potions, food, coal, ores, bars, bowstrings, etc. -- have dropped by large percentages. A crash is a large, quick drop in the prices of goods. The reason for it doesn't determine if it is a crash or not. I said right at the start of the article that people can disagree over that term, but my use of it is quite standard.

Some? Sure. All? Strongly disagree. Bear in mind that most of the price drops are across the entire market, not just the GE. Also, they have affected items that were never hard to buy or sell before the GE. So clearly opportunity cost was never an issue there. A certain level of price drops was expected, but what we are seeing now, IMO, far outstrips anything that can be explained simply by this aspect. It's not just "some items", Solidus.. it is a very large number of items, across virtually all market segments, many with drops in price of over 50% in a couple of weeks. That's a crash. Has nothing to do with whether it is a crash or not.

Very little of what I wrote blames Jagex for anything, which you would know if you bothered to actually read it with a reasonable ability to comprehend simple English. But hey, FooK-a-ji wrote that post, so why am I not surprised?

Barbarian potions are excellent for specific uses. They are not a general replacement for other potions, though. They are especially valuable for high-level monsters where you make short trips and don't need 4 doses of many potions. For example, I use them extensively when fighting miths. If you are fishing just for the caviar, it can seem slow. If you enjoy barb fishing anyway, then it's pretty easy to stockpile a bunch of them; I've got 800 in my bank right now. :) EDIT: Don't forget that there's a deposit box in the BA anteroom.

IMO, it's kind of a fitting commentary on the state of RuneScape's community that even something fun like this couldn't happen without a lot of people ruining it.

Yes, but they ARE predictable in that they do first and foremost what is necessary to increase their bottom line. And that sure wouldn't be this. They could solve a lot of problems also by creating a custom client rather than working through browsers.. but they don't, and for much the same reason.

I replied earlier actually.. made me think of this thread. Remember that there are a LOT of rune items dropped by monsters in the game. It used to be rune scimmies and chains were worth selling for some people, but I doubt they are anymore. We'll see if / how much prices recover.

I don't think it's consistent. I can recall being able to buy something and then resell it immediately after. I've even been able to sell items to myself. :D

I thought about this some more.. and I think I agree that we will see more gold coming into the game, but not from stores -- from alching. The reason is simple. Before, many people left items to rot in their banks, because they were worth far more than alch value but they weren't worth enough to bother selling. Many of these folks have now tried selling these products, causing prices to drop down to alch value. Seeing them at alch value, many people will alch them rather than continue trying to sell. In fact, many people are now buying armor and weapons from the GE just to alch them.

:lol: No, it's not. That is not what the term means at all. If someone reverse engineered the game code for RS and put up a duplicate site very similar to it to compete with it -- that would be intellectual property theft. All that gold farmers are doing is violating Jagex's T&C.

The number one key to enjoying RS is to stop caring about what random people say to you.

This seems to be the core of your argument.. but is it really true? I honestly don't know, but I am skeptical because I can't remember the last time I bothered to sell anything to a general store.

Well well.. seems ego_scorpion is back to tell us all about how wonderful he is... and toss in his usual smug insults and innuendo. Hate to break this to you, sport... but your main prediction was that prices would "collapse", including rares. That most certainly did NOT happen -- just as I and many others said it would not. You're patting yourself on the back for saying that prices would initially go down? Whoopie.. everyone knew that would happen. And no, I didn't get you suspended from Tip.It -- YOU did, probably from acting like an obnoxious jackass (and you apparently haven't learned anything from it). And no, I don't have any other accounts here, so you can stop with the BS on that front as well. Finally, if you want to find someone to blame for the price restrictions on the GE that are hampering its usefulness for everyone, look in the mirror. It was done in large part because of price manipulators like you.

First, if nats weren't worth 300 based on demand, nobody would have bought them for 300. Simple as that. Second, nats are *not* common slayer drops -- they are far less common as drops than deaths and bloods, for example. Third, laws were usually over 300. The efficiency issue is valid, but has nothing to do with price manipulation. Merchants charged more because it took time for them to accumulate smaller quantities of items, and people were willing to pay more to buy 10k or 20k of nats at once rather than buying them 50 or 100 at a time. If you can't remember the old prices then how can you say there hasn't been a crash? That doesn't make any sense at all. I do remember the old prices and so do most others, and the crash in prices is very real. Just a few examples: Super energy pots: used to be 1.5k to 2k each; I have bought them as cheap as 500. Snapdragon seeds: before, up to 40k each, now 25k or so. Sara brews: I've bought them as low as 1.1k each; no joke. Ranarrs and prayer pots: Down at least 30% if not more. Coal: used to be 190-200, dipped down into the 150s before recovering. Iron ore: down from 100-110 to 70 or so. Maple logs: down from 60-70 to 40. Sharks: down from 900 or so to 650 or thereabouts. There are HUNDREDS of other examples. That's not price manipulation, it's arbitrage.

Thanks for the comments everyone. A few replies. tryto: The problem is that most items in the game are not tied to high alch values, because Jagex has set alch values far from their real market value. The ones where high alch values come into play are the minority. Barihawk: You make some valid points, but really go too far in saying that this is good for everyone but merchants. It has had a major negative impact on skillers as well, especially ones who were trying to raise skills without taking a big financial hit. jp7725: Being independent in terms of skills means that the market prices are not terribly important. Some people do play this way, though they are becoming increasingly rare. Geekguy: Thanks for your kind words. :P Um, if you don't see a market crash, it's because you don't WANT to see a market crash. Your criticism of my preview is valid -- that's what happens when you make predictions. I compounded the problem here because I was using the word 'crash' there to refer to the ECONOMY as a whole, which certainly has not crashed, even though market prices did.

The price rises before the GE and the drops after it had very little to do with merchants. There are still plenty of them around anyway. "Made my decision"? I don't understand what you mean. The article explains what is going on, and specifically avoids claiming whether it is good or bad. In fact, I have mainly argued to open up the GE (remove price controls) and let the market go where it will. I called the prices of some potions ridiculous because I believe people are panic dumping them. In some cases they are selling potions for 1/3 of the cost of the components, in huge quantities, just because they fear prices going even lower still. Most of these people will be kicking themselves in a few weeks. I already said that I believe that some of the old prices were inflated due to inefficiencies, but some of the new prices have overcorrected, going far below what I would have expected a reasonable correction to be. That's especially true in some areas of Herblore.

Sorry, but that's not what a crash means at all. Perhaps that definition is why you don't think we just had one. It simply means a fast, steep drop in prices across a wide variety of market segments.

I have to wonder how well you've looked, then. The vast majority of the common items transacted in the game are down by over 25%, and some by more than 50%, in just a couple of weeks. The items that have dropped are across the board -- everything from ores to herbs to potions to seeds to bowstrings to runes to armor and weapons. That's a crash.

Whatever you may think of the Chinese, they are not stupid. That would accomplish nothing. The analogy of the illegal drug trade is spot on. Both function in much the same way: the demand from those willing to cheat by buying is the reason for the supply of those willing to cheat by selling, and vice-versa.

Here are some replies to the (few) actual on-topic responses from the prior thread: Fredz: Thanks. Yes, the power-leveling using low-level items is a big part of the problem. It's part of why there are far too many items like Sara brews, iron ore and dragonhide sets in the game. The solution is better, high-XP high-level activities, preferably ones that produce in-demand consumables, or that give XP without creating items that must be sold. berbatovsky: If the term "crash" applies, as you pasted, to "steep double-digit percentage losses" characterized by "panic selling and abrupt, dramatic price declines", then this is a crash, as I said. As for your comments about merchants, they are mostly exaggerated. Very little of what we are seeing now is because of merchants being removed from the picture. In fact, the GE's flaws are ensuring that merchants will be with us for a long time to come. Ts_Stormrage: The GE fills large buy orders as the sellers put in items. If you saw them in 100's it was just coincidence.

NOTE: This is a remake of a thread from last night with the same title, which was destroyed by childish complaining and flaming. PLEASE respect the time required to make these articles and threads and try to post reasonable, on-topic comments. Thank you. --- TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007 I have just published a special report on the current happenings in the RuneScape economy, which some of you may find an interesting read. My goal in the report is to shed light on what is really happening in the economy, explain the many reasons why the price drops have occurred, andÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ã

Why don't you just be creative and find ways of raising mage without blowing tons of money on incredibly boring things like teleporting over and over?

Thanks Rick. crazygrunt, what's there to make a map of at Camelot?

I think your levels are a bit low, to be honest. You could do it if you had prayer, but without it you will take a lot of hits with only 63 HP and 40 def.