Mstrling70

In front of Al-Kharid bank on world 132. A size 9 star. Need 90 mining.

Jagex usually releases updates on Mondays, although if something goes wrong, they will push it out several days. That is why the entire week of the 14th is circled. They release on Mondays because most of their staff work Monday through Friday (morning and afternoon), and a Monday release means that they will have FULL staff available to deal with issues, bugs, increased forum posts, and complaints for an entire week. Why release at the weekend when you only have a small support crew on nights and weekends? The entire week is set aside to let their own staff know that they will likely work overtime that week, so no vacations, appointments, family life, etc.

Summoning is a member's skill. That settles that argument. Also, the entire week of January 14th is circled, so this will be released next week. I'm assuming the related quest will be out the same day.

I hope Jagex finally understands that communication is the key. Tell us what you are doing, tell us: "I feel your pain." in the best Bill Clinton impersonation you can muster. Otherwise, the speculations will rage uncontrolled. As to the updates, 120K per hour is much better than 12K per hour, but I hope they will look at increasing it again. I wonder how this will work with F2P, since they have fewer QP available to them. I also hope that as the GE matures, they will loosen the reins sllightly on the +/- 5% range, and remove the fixed lower limits. As soon as an item drops below the High Alch value, demand will increase and the cost will naturally rise. The market will take care of itself if they let it. Not completely uncontrolled, mind you, but looser than what it is right now.

Both articles are well written, especially considering the short amount of time since these changes came out. Qeltar, your article was a very good read. I do believe that Jagex has good intentions, but do a poor job of communicating in any unified way as to what their overall plans are. As customers with time and money invested in their game, we do deserve more information from them as to what their overall plans are. Jagex has taken a big, hefty brick, and slammed it into the collective heads of the RWT problem makers. I just wish they could have given us this information before these changes were implemented. When the December BTS came out, I was with you-big changes were coming this month. The BTS was written in a way that it was obvious that Jagex was going to make a huge, fundamental change, but without actually going into any type of detail. This is where they really failed. If I were to look for a silver lining, it is that this is the first step. Bash the crap out of RWT, then start making some of the necessary tweaks like what you have brought up. But without open communications, we may not know what Jagex will do, or even if they acknowledge that there is a problem at all. This has been Jagex's biggest shortcoming.

The difference is that virtual items that have no intrinsic value are not protected under the law (in the US.) The whole process of buying Runescape items and gold pieces for real money is against the rules for Jagex, but there are no laws, at least in the US, that make this activity illegal and prosecutable.

First of all, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was in June, 1989, not 1993. Second, goldfarming is not a crime. It is against the rules of many games, but not a crime. Third, there will always be a demand for this type of service because it is in the nature of some people to always find a shortcut. Any gaming company who tries to change this aspect of human nature is bailing the Titanic with a teacup. What Jagex has been doing lately in their battle against this type of activity is to identify the bot-pimps and johns who perform the final transaction. There are too many bots to battle, so you go after the fewer number of bot-pimps and their in-game customers instead. Transferring gold and wealth one way is what Jagex is trying to track, but there were too many options available to the bot-pimps. Staking and losing, one-way trades, voluntary PKing, Party Room drops, and drop trading would be difficult to track, so Jagex is trying to corral the bot-pimps. The duel arena has been gutted, so the bot-pimps cannot use it anymore. The Party Room has been changed to announce valuable drops, so it does not work for the bot-pimps anymore. The GE has reduced the volume of individual-to-individual (I2I) trades throughout the game, making it easier for the employees at Jagex to track unbalanced trade patterns. Bounty Hunter will likely allow some sort of Wildy change later on to make voluntary PKing less desirable. We will also likely see some sort of change that will make drop trading more difficult in the future. All of these changes won't eliminate real world trading, but it makes it easier for the employees of Jagex to track the few avenues the bot-pimps have left.

I'm looking forward to the RWT diary. Jagex has been on an anti-RWT tear lately, and many recent changes are geared towards it. It's too difficult to stop the autoers. They ban one, and five more sign on. They transfer 1000's of raw materials to "person X", and "person X" sells for gp. "Person X" then sells the gp, or buys desirable items in-game, then RW sells those items. Ultimately, RWT involves a one-way trade of something valuable in-game. Jagex's approach is to make that harder by tracking and banning all of the "person X's" out there. One-way transfer through staking? Bam, gone. One-way transfer through the party room? Gone, too. One-way transfer through PKing? Changes are coming this month in some way. The signs are too obvious in this month's BTS. One-way trades? By introducing the GE, individual to individual (I2I) trades outside of the GE are reduced, making it easier for Jagex to track one-way trades and ban the accounts of the heads of these RWT organizations. Fewer I2I trades means less data that they have to sift through. I hope the diary will go into detail on this, and explain their thinking on these recent changes (including whatever wildy changes they are working on.) Edit: Perhaps you can buy a gravestone, and if you die in the wildy while you have one in your inventory, then you drop the gravestone instead of anything else? Just a random thought that popped up in the old grey-matter.

The Bounty Hunter is listed as dangerous, so I'm guessing you will lose items when you die, but the catch is, it will be a random target, so RWT will not be possible through this system. The reason people are starting to mourn for the wilderness is not because of the gravestones, but because there will be an alternative form of PKing. This suggests that in order to stop RWT through PKing, Jagex will end up changing the wilderness in some way to prevent that. These minigames are alternatives to wilderness PKing, which suggests more wildy changes are coming.

Qeltar, Choice #1: Jagex influences the trading market by imposing controls and restriction. Choice #2: Gold farming organizations with thousands on the payroll use their purchasing power, massive amounts of materials, and their interconnected network of individuals to control the market to their advantage. That's it. There is no choice #3. In theory, the free market system is best, but that's just it, free markets only exist in theory, not in the real world. Jagex has based their controls on the New York Stock Exchange. After the crash in October of 1987, they put in controls to slow the market when things get out of hand. When the value rises or drops past a certain percentage, the computer trading is automatically slowed. If things don't improve, trading is stopped altogether. This system has kicked in a few times since then, and has worked, particularly in the days following 9/11. These rules benefit the market, even though they are artificial controls. Your argument is sound, but unrealistic given the reality of gold farming.

Not only did I get rid of a few things, but I bought a full set of Mahogany flat pack for my costume room, for like 20K or so, and now I can store all random event, TT, armour, and mage outfits with ease. It's amazing how much bank space all that stuff took up.

Regardles if I agree with Qeltar or not, I respect his ability to communicate his point in well thought out language. There is nothing wrong with a discussion that is articulated well. However, the controls that Jagex put in are necessary. Instead of thousands of trades across hundreds of locations on over a hundred servers, we now have one, unified market. This is a good thing, but without limits, it would be too easy to manipulate the prices of commodities. The potential influence of gold farming organizations cannot be underestimated. For example, the price of maple logs has been on a general decline because more and more gold farmers are cutting and selling these logs. Now, these organizations could send an e-mail out to the thousands of people who are on the payroll, with instructions to buy and sell in such a way to raise the price of commodities such as maple logs. The system Jagex has put in place gives them enough time to review these transactions, and react to them in an appropriate way. Yes, they will have computer scripts to alert them of potential anomalies, but it will still take a human review to make a final determination as to whether the anomaly is normal noise, or statistically significant. To put this into a real world comparison, and yes, the Runescape economy does follow general economic rules, diamonds are a commodity that most people are familiar with. You can go to many different places to buy diamonds, but the price for the same cut, size, and quality of a diamond in two different locations will be very close to the same. (I am not talking about jewelry, but the loose diamond itself.) The price doesn't vary much because there is one large company, De Beers, that controls enough of the market (40 to 50%) to influence the prices. Even when companies come in to play in this market, they still play by the rules that De Beers has set. Just look at Apollo Diamond as a prime example. Even though diamond prices are not controlled by governments, which technically makes the diamond market "free", it isn't really free. One large company has enough control to set general prices. If Jagex didn't put controls on the Runescape market, the gold farming organizations will, and that would be a bad thing for Jagex, and probably, ultimately, bad for most of us who don't command millions of any single item. Thanks for the good discussion.

I was doing Jungle Potion Quest, the first time I was ever in Tai Bwo Wannai, and got poisoned by a Tribesman. I had to collect all those stupid herbs again, not to mention half my armour. The quest guide didn't mention anything about anti-poison pots. D'Oh!

After reading through this thread, I can see a basic disagreement about the so called "free market". It would be nice if the Grand Exchange allowed people to buy and sell for any amount, but it can't. That's because free markets are not free. Large groups, in this case the people who manage large gold farming operations, could easily send out e-mail instructions to their thousands of "employees" with explicit instructions to buy and sell in such a way as to push prices any way they desire, bringing in more gold for their materials (which have been largely dropping in price over time.) By slowing down the rate of change in prices, Jagex has given themselves enough time to analyze price trends to see if there is any attempt to manipulate prices by large (1000+) groups of people. Yes, there are computer scripts that Jagex can use to point out possible irregularities, but it still takes a human being to truly decide if an anomaly is noise in the data, or something statistically significant (there goes my statistical engineering again.) To put this into real world machinations, my one ounce of gold is as important as anyone else's one ounce of gold, but those who control tons of gold can use their stores to move the price in either direction, where I cannot because of my one measly ounce. There are controls in place that will activate when the price of gold changes too rapidly, and there are controls in place to prevent someone from dumping large amounts of gold into the market at 10% of the going rate. This makes the market much more stable, but it will still change over time. You have to put in a system that prevents one large group of people from having a large influence on the market that will benefit them and harm others. It can't be completely free because it never will.

When a company says that they will have something for at least five years, then that just means that it is in their five-year plan. Jagex, like most companies, establish a five year business plan to chart out their overall development for five years. Every three to six months, they will revise their five-year plan so that it always covers five years. Runescape is listed in their five year plan as ongoing. In six months, when Jagex revises their plan again, Runescape will still be on the entire five year plan. When talking to the press, they can't say that something will last 10 years or 15 years if their plan only goes out 5 years. Don't get hung up on the five year thing, it's just standard business speak. It does not mean that RS will end in five years.