The problem lies in the fact that most of the wealth created in the game stays in one player's possession for way too long. It doesn't change hands. There's no "consumer spending" as its called in the real world. Players horde their wealth by purchasing armor, weapons, rares, etc. These items don't need replacing for a long time, so what ends up happening is that a minority of players end up with all the gp (those who sell the armor weapons, rares, etc.). What do they do with all this gp? Well, they try to spend it on other armor, weapons, etc., but the supply of such items is low as many players don't want to sell their only whip. So how do the wealthier players get that whip that they want? They raise the price, and thus is created the problem of high prices. The problem is essentially that a small number of runescape players, say 20%, control over 80% of the Runescape market. The actual numbers I don't know, but I do it is a minority amount. This leaves the majority, those who have less wealth, unable to purchase such high priced items. This is actually just one problem. Runescape's economic crisis, if you want to call it that, is a result of many different errors. I believe it's impossible to just pin the crisis on one, single problem.