I think this major price crash has been much more affected by Jagex's method of releasing this item, as well as the mindset of today's "merchants" (and even the mindset of average players) First of all, every single person who did this quest got 1/3 of a dragon plate immediately as a reward. No additional effort required; all those people who were in a mad dash to do this quest and get their quest cape (back) were instantly granted a piece of what could have been another status symbol in Runescape. Now as a rough estimate, I'm going to assume 10,000 people in Runescape have done this quest. that's about 3,000 dragon platebodies' worth dumped into the economy within the first few days of release. Then when you add in the ease at which these dragon pieces were obtained from tormented demons, that's a heck of a lot of dragon shards/lumps/slices in the game soon after the platebody's release. Although I appreciate that Jagex has tried adding a new level of versatility to their boss monsters, basing difficulty on the focus of prayer switching / weapon switching rather than simply high levels, these are fairly easy to kill and the drop rate was, and still may be, ridiculously high. I've met several people who have gotten 3-5 dragon pieces per DAY from these demons. Although this is a huge fault on Jagex's part, that's not all of the problem. The mindset of today's so-called merchants - those who own 3rd age and other highly sough-after items, and those who run huge "GE merch clans" - is simply this: buy out the supply of a new item upon it's release, and you have the power to get what you want for it. 90% of the people in possession of the dragon plates didn't care to own one, they simply wanted to make money by selling after it rose in price in the G E. This has already happened the last time Jagex released a new boss monster with promising rewards: The Corporeal Beast and the Spirit Shields. Arcane and Spectral Shields were not really of anyone's interest, but that mindset led merchants to buy out all of them. Today these items are considered junk after realizing there was nobody to sell them to; VERY overpriced junk, due to the price boost that the merchants originally gave it by buying them for max in the G.E. However many of these merchants, who often hoard 3rd age and other highly "street-valued" items, can simply sell their investments whenever they begin dropping, by adding some 3rd age armour to the deal. You can see this all over the forums with any items that has recently been bought out by merchants or merch clans and have begun declining. In effect, they can lead everyone else into thinking that these items are actually rare and in high demand by players who actually want them. But once it becomes obvious that there's no REAL demand for them, it's these merchants who will have no trouble selling even as they plummet to half of their original price. Meanwhile, everyone else is desperate to sell, willing to accept a ton of junk to prevent any further loss. In short: Jagex is at fault for making this so easy to obtain Merchants are at fault for buying out the item in the hopes of a quick few mil Some players are at fault for following the G E prices without actually looking into the item theyre buying...and not REALLY wanting to keep it. This happens to everything, nobody actually buys an item with the intention of keeping it unconditionally...an item starts dropping, everyone panics and it only feeds into the price crash. I suppose you could blame the Grand Exchange itself for that one, but that's a whole other story...
