iMiklaReal

All my skills are about the money, or maybe more accurately, about the "stuff" (I really don't care so much about accumulating wealth, it's the things you can get that let you do what you want that is important). The things I want that I cannot make or get in any reasonable period of time myself, are the only reason I level my skills or finish quests. You may say some skills loose money, but they only do so in a closed loop. That's very shallow skill-thinking. For instance, smithing may loose money if you buy your ore, but mining and smithing together do not. The only time I buy anything is when it helps make money somewhere else, now or eventually (or of course it falls into the category of something I cannot make or get without spending money). Enjoyment: yes, it is fun to make money and buy the stuff you cannot make or get in a reasonable time. Social Interaction: a distraction from making money, but sometimes necessary to make money. Opportunities: yes, to make money. Quests, to give me access to things that let me make money. Skills feed each other--to make money. Skill Related Rewards: what are these if not to accelerate your ability to make money. Construction makes it easier to get around to make money faster. For instance tele-tabs make it possible to do almost all your normal spellbook teleports while in a different spell book that allows you to do something that makes money or makes it cost effectively. I couldn't care less about a skill once I pass the point that raising it doesn't do anything for me. As soon as I can craft all the runes I need, carry all the pouches, and get the multiples >I< need, there's no real reason to advance runecrafting. Skill capes don't "do" anything useful in the game, it's just another way to show off. PKing for some was a way to make money from the spoils of other players (but for me a waste of my time I could be using consistently making money). But PKers indirectly made me money because they killed off the weaker competition for supplies in the wildy I could use to make money. For that reason, my combat levels serve to make me money because I can fend off the PKers who want to kill me, just enough to get the materials I am after (and when I did occasionally die, it's great fun to know they got virtually nothing because I used as much untradable defense as possible; gnome ammy, holy books, cooking gauntlets, etc. and sometimes even carried in a load of rocks or something just so they felt more cheated than getting nothing, but ultimately they were >my< tool for keeping the wildy free of competition so I could make more money). People cry all the time they can't make money. What they're really crying about is they can't think of new ways to exploit what's out there to make money. I may not have tens or hundreds of millions, but I have everything in RS I need or want and if I wanted all that money, I could easily get it back out of the things I have. And despite the fact that some things are horribly devalued from when I bought them (another thing people cry about), I can make that much more money that much faster now than when I bought them, so it doesn't matter. Everything new in RS creates opportunities to make money. Sometimes it's only for a short time. The exchange for instance. I made millions when it first opened, now I'm making hundreds of thousands. It's leveling off as a big profit center, so I'm developing other things that make money. Some people may play RS just to raise their skills so they can stand around and compare them to each other and brag about who's is higher, or claim that "I own you in that skill, ha, ha, ha), but I own everything I want, and can do almost anything I want, and that's much better for me. The skill levels, quests, achievement diaries, those are just a means to that end.