zubeedoo

... ... There's a difference between generosity and nonchalance when talking about money in a game. I do like having Runescape money, but I wouldn't care if I lost it because of a glitch. Things like that are beyond my control. Giving money away is different, as it is willfully done. I think you've missed the whole point of that argument. It's not that the person SHOULD give away all their stuff, the idea is to prove that even runescape's pixel items hold value. Naturally how much value would depend on the person, but the items are worth more then just the pixels they appear as on the screen, which is why someone nearly always brings it up after some idiot comes along and says "ZOMG itz just a game nub" The difference here is the amount that we dedicate ourselves to the game. You clearly take Runescape more seriously than I do, the most time I spend playing in a day is one hour, if I'm fishing, which doesn't require my attention (that's why it's my favourite skill), I can even play up to two hours. Your estimation of 6 months for a party hat suggests that you play quite a bit more than me; it would take me more than 18 months at the rate that I play to get that much. I ask you this: If you stand to lose nothing by people who've lost items to glitches having their items returned to them, then why would you care if they do? Where exactly is the argument against returning items here? Sure YOU may not care, but other people DO, so why not give them an update that would stop jagex from ruining their favorite passtime?

I hate people to come up with arguments like this. They are akin to the people who say "If you think that 1M is nothing, why don't you give me 1M?" Runescape is a game after all, but that doesn't mean she's going to drop all of her things because of that. Although Runescape is just pixels, we put time and effort into those pixels, which makes it fun. Losing a phat in Runescape is disappointing, but it shouldn't be a big deal to you in real life. I fail to see how that argument, and even the example you give, aren't valid. Runescape is either important or it's not. It's either worth something or it isn't. If you think it's just a game, and that losing large sums of gp isn't a big deal then yes, you should give your stuff to someone who appreciates it. If you're not willing to do so then clearly you don't believe your own argument, and you DO hold some value to your pixel items. To many people, being rich in runescape is what makes the game fun for them. Take away their wealth and all of a sudden you've ruined their fun,more or less permanently because of the horribly large amount of boring things they'd have to do to re-obtain it. The first time around, most people enjoy earning the gp needed to buy their expensive gear. You look back and think you didn't, but think of what it felt like like each time you made another million gp, it was another milestone and the feeling was similar to the one you got when you got your first full set of armor. The second time however, it's all been done before and getting the money seems more like a job then anything else. Since it takes months to accumulate enough gp to get a rare (if you're dedicated, if you're not it's nearly impossible to obtain),most people either give up right away or try, realize just how hard it is to get a rare and stop. I'm working purely on speculation here, but I say that most people with rares in runescape in this day and age (who still play) are fairly dedicated players. RS is a sizeable chunk of their lives, and is most likely their main passtime. Now immagine having someone ruin your favorite passtime, and then tell me how it is that the game is "just pixels". Oh and while I'm on the subject of just pixels: Your bank account? Just Pixels The money in your wallet? Just paper Your car? Some plastic, glass and metal Things are worth as much as people believe they are worth. If someone says that their phat is worth a lot to the then guess what? It is. Since when did YOU get to decide what should and shoudn't be a big deal for others? As someone who owns a rare I can honestly say that even now, months after I'd stopped playin (I do occasionally log on though) I'd STILL be really mad if something that I had no control over cost me my green mask, so I think it reasonnable to say that others, with more valuable rares who still play runescape on a near daily basis would be even more upset. Now I'm sure you've noticed a bit of hypocrisy in my post, as I go on about not telling others what certain items' worths should be, only to do it myself. There's a reason for that. I'm working under the assumption that at least one person out there would be really upset if they lost their rare to a glitch in the game. It's an assumption, but one that I think we can all agree is a reasonable one. Now, if jagex introduced an update that helped even ONE person, without hurting anyone else, why shouldn't they do it? If you had the choice between completely ruining the game for someone, or making an update that 10 people didn't agree with (in principle only, as returning item lost to a glitch would not actually hurt anyone) would it really be a bad idea to do the update? Jagex has claimed in the past to be able to track the transfer of gp (something they do to find RMTers), so would it really be that hard for them to track rares and expensive items as well? Surely they could tell if the person actually lost it to a glitch if there was a bug near where they were, and the item in question dissapeared (rather then being transferred to another player, actually, if they'd looked to see who'd lost phats in the world of the massacre and who's phats had turned up in the hands of whatsisname, they could have easily replaced all the lost goods). Well I seem to have started rambling again :mrgreen: I'll stop here, since I've been typing long enough to have forgotten what it is I was originally rebutting :P

Oh my I can't believe someone made an eve-topic and it wasn't me :P Ok, for those who don't know what eve is, simply put, it's a space mmo. Its biggest problem is that if you won't have friends to play with, it can get very boreing very fast. That, and it's a PvP game. That in itself isn't really a problem, but most people tend to experience the PvE and get bored. Surprise surprise, the PvE in a PvP game sucks. Get into fleet battles with people shooting guns as big as your ship, then the game gets fun :D We had an enemy corp set up a player owned starbase in one of our systems (another one of eve's gems, player owned space and structures) and we gathered up a fleet of 80+ people and sieged it, now THAT was fun :mrgreen: much moreso then anything I've ever seen on WoW or RS.

Ovan: The Rebirth (the pic I use as my avatar) Haseo: The Terror of Death Tri-edge Balmung of the Azure Sky All from the .hack// series of games. Actualy in eve all of my ships get named after one of the 8 .hack// phases (The Terror of Death, The Mirage of Deceit, The Propagation, The Prophet, The Machinator, The Temptress, The Avenger and The Rebirth) :mrgreen:

If you are flammable and have legs you are never blocking a fire exit. Priceless :mrgreen: Mitch Hedberd is my hero 8-)

I think you missunderstand the concept of Time Code selling. Bob goes and spends the 15$ on a time code from CCP. Bob goes and sells this time code to Billy for 120million ISK. It's not really any different from simply buying the isk on ebay, other then the fact that it's safer for both parties (it's next to impossible to scam someone out of a time code with the system CCP has to trade them)

Says the games who are heavily bogged down by RMTs. Oh? Again I'll bring up eve as an example (It's all I'm playing atm so deal with it :P plus, it's a game with a LOT of RMT going on) You go to jita (the equivalent of W1 and W2) and you will pretty much ALWAYS see people selling timecodes (the only legal way to RMT in eve). However, because so many people do it the codes are fairly cheap, and you'd have to spend hundreds of dollars to be able to get anything decent with the codes (I myself, after running into some bad luck and grinding cash for about a week earned the equivalent of about $60 in ISK). The problems with inflation don't come from RMT, so get that silly notion out of your head. They come from the fact that the biggest cash income in the game (alching) is completely unregulated, and from the fact that the game is laughably easy to cheat in. I can go out and get myself a bot, and just let it loose on the poor unsuspecting rocks. Jagex needs to incorporate some sort of system where players can actually do something to stop/slow down bots. In eve, you mine into a can that floats in space. Anyone with the guts to do it can steal what you've mined. If they do, you are allowed to shoot at them. A common thing to do if you see a macrominer in eve is to steal his ore and wait for him to steal it back, bot or not he will eventually steal it back. At this point you scramble him (the eve-equivalent of teleblock, and unlike RS it's impossible to get anywhere without warping) and start talking. If he's a bot he'll say nothing, and if he's not he'll talk back. If he's a bot you can shoot him, and if he's not he's probably called in his corpmates (eve has much better corp/clan support then just about any other game I've played) to coe and kill you, so you'd best be leaving =P Another way to drop inflation is to incorporate taxes. Eve has a tax of anywhere from 1% to about 3% on just about everything you buy and sell. Now the tax is minuscule to whoever's doing the tradeing, but when you think of how much gets bought and sold each day that's a LOT of isk getting removed from the game, I immagine some people would complain if jagex were to do something similar for a fair while but I doubt they'd lose many players over 2% taxes.

No, they wouldn't. Let's be perfectly honest, do you really think that it's a bad tradeoff to have the occasionnal little kid getting something they didn't earn in exchange for the safety of only being able to lose an item to circumstances you control? Actually this is another one of the things I love about eve, if you lose something to a bug (or even lag, assuming the lag is happening server side) it gets replaced. Actually as I was typing that something occured to me. Why would jagex returned scammed money to someone? A bug is one thing, but I see no reason for them to go as far as to return scammed items, (unless the scam involved a glitch or bug) because that is in no way their fault, if you get scammed it's your own damn fault.

Buying drugs is Dangerous mayb if the supermarket sold it people would be alot safer. Same argument... That's not really a good comparisson, as I'm guessing the drugs you're referring to are the ones that are currently illegal... Because otherwise that argument actually makes sense, or would you rather go buy Tylenol off a guy in a dark alley? Its legally the property of Jagex anyone trying to sell runescape items is commiting fraud. Placing that stupid disclamer on the bottom of their ads dosent make it any less fraudulent. There's 2 views to be had here, what you've gone and done is used them interchangeably to make yourself look right, which you aren't. Moral views: Realistically speaking, the people selling gp on ebay are, in fact, selling gp on ebay. Legal view: They say right on the auctions that the stuff remains the property of jagex, and that you're only paying for the information required to use said items. Legally speaking,they're in the clear. Yes, placing that stupid disclaimer on ads DOES make it less fraudulent, what we're arguing here is whether or not it's RIGHT. Now, what I was questionning is whether or not it's morally right for companies like jagex to complain at ebay, because from a legal standpoint what the bulk of people are doing is perfectly alright.

Once they've been paid for do you think someone's just going to let their workers go? If they're not playing video games all day they'll be doing something worse, there were slaves before the MMOG market and they will still exist once it is killed The ebay side of ebay is safe, it's the game side where things can go wrong. On other sites, either side can be corrupt, as a site could just demand credit card info and run off with that. Not only that, but there would still be a fairly large market for gp with ebay out of the picture, off the top of my head I can already think of one forum where such trades run rampant (and it's one I came across while doing a search on one of my friends in RS on google, and a site that TIF knows about and cencors, nuff said) and I'm sure that if anything that site, and others like it, would benefit quite a bit from the lack of availability on ebay. Hell, even TIF has hosted (though not intentionally I'm sure) a few ads for GP, and any free forum site will host a few of those if you chose games as the category of forum you're setting up. GP sellers are no harder to find now that ebay no longer sells it, it's just a lot less safe for people.

Ok, now I'm going to have to be very careful with how I write this, since it's a topic that can easily get people in trouble(if someone wants to lock this please mail me first, I'd much rather make some changes then have to give up on such a good topic for debate), so first let's lay out a few ground rules: (I ask mods to remove any posts containing these) 1) Do not talk about any selling/buying you've done, there was a good topic on a similar subject that got closed because people kept admiting to breaking jagex' rules in their arguments. 2)Please don't turn this into an argument about jagex' rules on selling/buying items/gp. 3)If you are of the oppinion that it should be allowed, feel free to argue but don't go suggesting that other people should do it in spite of the rules of runescape. Now, the other day I was reading through some posts on my alliances forum and came across a rather interesting post. It was a link to an article claiming that eBay was going to stop all auctions on MMORPG items and currency. Not entirely sure of whether or not I should believe this, I went over to ebay and punched in some names of various games I'd played over the last few years. To my surprise the article wasn't lying, as I did not find a single online item auction. At first I thought that this was a marvelous idea, but then I thought about it for a while and my oppinions changed radically. I'll list some of my thoughts here (but not all of them as that wouldn't be any fun :P ). 1)Compared to other sites, ebay is SAFE. People know to be wary of those with little or no feedback, and it's hard to set up multiple accounts as ebay requires identification and will not let you set up more then 1 account. People also know not to trust those with poor feedback, which they will inevitably get if they take people's money and don't deliver the goods. Now that ebay no longer sells gp, the people who actively bought and sold the stuff will look to other, usually less safe, ways of doing buisness. Schools that once preached abstinence now preach the use of now preach the use of prophylactic devices (I SWEAR I've heard both words used on disney's family channel so I'm hopeing it's G-rated enough for this forum). They know people will do things even when they're told not to, so they may as well try to keep the practice safe, why can't the same be done for the MMOG market? 2) Is it right for companies to complain to ebay? By making it against the rules game companies are already covering their backsides from mails demanding that so-and-so deliver the items they bought from them, so what difference does it make to them? 3)Now here's the one that really got me: I'm not sure of how many people have heard of this, but there actually is a slavetrade going on in 3rd world countries (and even in some developped ones) surrounding MMOG's. They basically force people (usually children) to grind out cash on various video games (especially WoW from what I've read). Now, while most people are against the slave trade, you can't argue that forcing someone to play video games 19 hours a day for scraps of food isn't nearly as bad as forcing them to do hard,physical labour under the same conditions. Knock off the most popular way to sell the obtained items and now you have these slaves doing much harder work.. That's all I'll post for the time being,as I'd like to hear what other people have to say before diving in any farther.

Pure f2per here, and one with 80 range (my only higher lvl is mining at 86) So as I have a bit of experience with range, I feel the need to point out a few flaws in what you're saying First of all: How many f2pers do you know that can make full rune? I myself no one (and then only because he was one of my bulk suppliers when I was merchanting the stuff), it's not very common. The only reason rune prices have dropped is because of the sheer number of members who get them from monsters. (well there may be others, but that's the main one) Next: Though it is true that most comsumable items used by melee and mage can be made or gathered in f2p, the real question here is is it efficient to do so? Typically speaking it makes more sense to do whatever you do to earn money and just buy the stuff. Hmmm...how do I explain this... Ok, let's say you can mine coal and sell it at a rate of 100k an hour. You need lobsters. You could go and fish it yourself, but as you're not as good a fisher as you are a miner you'd only be gathering 50k worth of lobs an hour. Plus you wouldn't enjoy it as much. Because of this most people stick with what they're good at, and just sell and buy till they have all they need. Arrows aren't as expensive as you seem to think (30gp is about where steel sits in price ranges, iron is closer to 15-20) When I began training my mage I'd just got my range to 80, my mage was like 50 at the time and I was shocked at just how much it was going to cost me to get to lvl 67 (it was something to the tune of 3mil with fire blast [which is what I used], and like a mil and a half for lower end runes). It was going to cost me more then I'd spent getting my range from 70-80 (I spent a mil at the most on arrows). The ONLY dissadvantage range has in terms of training is the time. Training range is very, very slow, but very, very much worth it. I'm guessing that you've never been introduced to the concept of time=money. If you spend 2 hours gathering ess and making runes (which btw will not last you very long, mining ess and rcing is a long boreing process in f2p) and I spend 2 hours merchanting and then buying runes, who do you think will have more runes? Let's say I made 250k an hour merchanting (which is about what I DID make), that's going to give me half a mil to spend on runes (time bought runes won't be counted as I merchant in W1 not a full screen away from the people merchanting runes). Now even at my mining level I couldn't come anywhere CLOSE to that amount in rune ess. let's say I need 2 airs and 1 mind per spell. 15gp+20gp+20gp= 55gp (and that's if I'm generous or desperate for runes, it's usually a bit less) That's about 9000 spells I can now cast, doing something that requires no levels at all (just one set of full rune and some typing) Do you think you could mine and craft enough runes to do that in a couple hours? at 86/40something mining/rcing, I know I couldn't... Again, they're not free, you just choose to spend your time rather then your money getting them. I've pked with range before, don't knock it till you try it. Mages go down like nothing, and contrary to popular belief meleers don't have this unbeatable advantage over range. If your opponent is a pvp enthusiast (high str low def) you should be able to win. I've beaten plenty of people my level with range vs melee, so it is doable. It's the meleers with high defence that you need to worry about. 1) The same could be said for range: How many arrows do you bother brinign into the wildy? Low risk for low reward. 2)You seem to forget an important fact: Mage hits very slowly, about half as fast as range (maybe less). If I can hit 2 12's in the time it takes you to hit 1 16, who's really hitting more? Same can be said for melee, but I can say without the slightest doubt in my mind that defence/armor aside, range hits higher then any other attack type in f2p. Also, you neglect to mention PvE in this "range sucks" rant. At 80 range I beat anyone combat 110 or lower to kills (assuming we're in a multi-zone, otherwise I'd be beating everyone who's not ranging :P ) Range>Everything else in PvE (for f2p anyway) I will partially agree here. IMO f2p rangers should get rune arrows+yew bows and the ability to make up to iron arrows. I also think that f2pers should get the second bind spell (snare I think it's called, I always forget which is which) Not so much because I feel they have any massive need for it, but because the wildy is VERY boring with people fighting each other in full rune ith scimmies. Takes like 10 minutes to finish a damn fight. So few people use mage and even fewer use range when pking, so IMO jagex needs to do something to make them more appealing.

Gee striker, I was wondering how long it was gonna be before you'd pop in and spread your nonsense :P Oh? Care to prove it? I've already explained countless times how rares slow down inflation, which is beneficial to just about everyone. How bout for once, just once, actually proving one of your points, or at the very least counterring someone else's, rather then just walking in, saying "rares r teh suk" and walking out. Who needs maxed skills or stats? Who needs armor or weapons? Who needs runescape at all? And since when do rares not benefit your account? Last I checked they're a great way to have your gp work for you. Name me any other item in the game that makes you as much money as a rare... If you respond to one thing in this whole post (which I doubt because that would suggest that you actually have something to back up what you say) then respond to this: By what stretch of the mind is a paper hat in a video game any less valuable then a plate of armor? If runescape were to cease to exist today, would it really matter? Nothing in runescape is really, trueldy important, so why the hell do you think that the teeny little blips on a screen that you've worked to obtain are any better then the tiny blips on a screen that someone else has? Gah striker's gone and gotten himself under my skin *scratches madly* Oh and solidus: 1) If you don't understand the whole removing-rares-removes-no-gp concept, go back and re-read what I'd wrote with the whole 10gp 10item thing 2) It's quite obvious you're taking an economics class :mrgreen: Because no one who isn't would put such a long meaningless definition as the bulk of their post :P 3) There is no 3, I wanted there to be a 3, because it would have given my post a little more meaning, rather then me arguing with a brick wall (and I'm sure some of you will get that while the bulk do not, if you're one of the people who do you may officially consider yourself one of the "Old rants crew" [ I think it was wolfboy who'd labelled us like that] )

I fully disagree with this. Inflation would become a MASSIVE problem if rares were removed. I'm sure I already explained why, but I'll do it again just for kicks: 1)All the items in rs need to have an equivalent value of all the gp in rs. Because we don't really depend on a bartering system, items are most often exchanged for gp. If there is a rise in the amount of gp in the game, the demand for all items (well, most) increases (because people now have more money to spend, and more people can afford these items). The inverse is also true, but isn't really important to this debate. 2)If I had to pick a number I'd say about half of the total gp in runescape would be needed to buy every single rare (may be less now with the recent drop in rare prices, but the number would still be signifigant) Now to simplify this: Game X has 10 items and 10 gold coins with which these items can be purchased. Each item is worth 1 coin. The creators of Game X decide to remove items 6 through 10. Items 1 and 2 can be bought in stores for 1 coin each, so their prices don't change. That means all that extra cash is going to go towards items 3,4 and 5. Players who had items 3 4 and 5 can now sell them for up to 3 coins each, whereas players with items 6-10 now have nothing, and players with items 1 and 2 have lost a good 60% of their net worth. The value of the coins other players were holding now drops as well, as more money is needed to buy many items. In rs terms: Alchers, RCers, some smiths, fletchers, anyone who carries their wealth in gp (or in items that can be purchased from npc's) lose a LOT. Rare owners would well lose everything.

Jagex' problem isn't that they don't have enough high-end content, but that they have too much low-end content. Because of this they face the same problem that they do with rares and pures: They didn't work out the way they were expected to, but removing them would anger a LOT of people, so that's not really an option. It doesn't matter how many new quests and whatnot jagex adds, because they will all, eventually, be considered easy. Jagex releases a new item, one of 3 things happen: 1)It sucks, everyone whines. 2)It's good for it's level requirements, high levelled players whine about never getting updates made for them. 3)It's good, even for high levelled players, High levelled players now whine about quests being too easy. Jagex doesn't release a new item: Everyone whines about the lack of new items. Now, if jagex released a truely hard quest, people would complain about it being too hard, because only the truely patient/attentive would be able to beat it. Sorry to say this, but the people whining about things being too easy are now a small minority, you bring in less money then those with no patience, so expect their oppinions to be looked at more then yours. Oh and here's an idea: If you really want a challenge, do these quests with lower-end stuff. Try to get a fire cape going melee etc. You either want to have a challenge with quests or you just want to finish them. If you just want to finish them, you get high-end gear, and if you want a challenge, use low-end gear. What jagex has done is in no way wrong, it allows people with both oppinions to enjoy what they do. What people here suggest is allowing them to have fun at the expense of others. Let's say Bob like things easy and Billy likes them challenging: Bob runs through quest X with the best gear he can buy, he is happy. Billy does the same. He is unhappy. Rather then doing something himself to fix the problem, he whines until jagex makes things harder. Now Billy can have fun, but Bob cannot. Had Billy just taken worse gear, they could have both been happy. Jagex in no way forces you to use the best gear you can afford for quests. Now before anyone goes and says "Oh but why should we have to change our setups just to get more of a challenge from quests?" Well answer me this: Why should Bob have to change his setup to do them more easily? He's more or less forced to wear high end gear if he wants to do the quests easily, just like you're more or less forced to use lower end gear to get a challenge from them. The only difference is that it's harder to get the stuff he needs then it is for you. P.S. I've been busy with ISP's and exams these last few weeks, which is why I've not posted. Also, There may be some eve-terminology in this post as I've been playing nothing else these last 3 months (Rs just sucks by comparisson, I had a guy on eve message me after I killed him telling me what a great fight he'd just had, as well as a guy who'd killed me offer to replace my ship. You just don't see these kinds of people in rs) Only downside to eve is the 15$ a month fee =\

Sorry, but when did "the economy is run by a bunch of 13 year olds" become a valid arguement in economic debates? It was funny when I first saw someone use it (even though the person meant it seriously), but it seems it has now become a widely accepted valid reason why RuneScape's economy is like it is, as I've seen several people use it in debates now. The arguement is completely ridiculous mind you - the economy would have worked exactly the same way if you had putten a bunch of 30 year olds together. Gee, thanks a whole bunch for taking my whole post, looking at one line, and instantly dismissing what I said because of it... That was one point, supporting one argument of what I'd said. Not only that, but you looked only at the lesser of 2 points. The rs economy is not stable. Yes the fact that it's decided mainly by little kids who only play runescape because it's the "cool" game among their friends DOES contribute to that. I never said that this was the only, or even main reason for the economy's instability, so please don't put words in my mouth.

You sort of shot down your own argument here. RS is in no way a "real" economy, at least not one that would follow an economy's standard rules. Why? Because any real life economy is based on needs before wants. People will always buy food, houses etc because we need them, whereas other things will have a much smaller (but much more varied) effect on the economy. In RS the economy is based solely on wants, and it's run mainly by 13 year olds. Not exactly the definition of stable. Now, let's look at what would happen if rares were removed: It would not be unreasonable to say that rares have a total value of about half of the gp in the game (go read some of duke_freedom's articles if you havn't already). Though it's entirely possible that this is no longer true, you can't argue that rares have a total value that would take a large part of the total gp in runescape to gather up. Now, let's look at some very simple logic: All the money in rs = all the items in rs If the amount of money in game rises too much for the number of items, the value of the gp goes down until the problem is solved (it works the other way too) Now, if rares take up half (using loose numbers to make this easier to follow) of the gp in the game,removing them would have the same effect on the gp-item balance as doubling the total amount of gp in the game. What then happens to the value of a coin? It gets chopped in half. This means removing rares would not only hurt the rare owners, but it would hurt anyone who depends on the npc market to make gp (alchers for example, as well an anyone who sells something that can be bought in an npc store) as well as anyone who has more of their wealth in gp then in items. You now have a large chunk (if not the majority) of people who have little/no gp. The economy has now changed very fast, in a way that affects a massive number of people in a negative way, it's a crash. Now, instead of the wealth being controlled by some people lucky enough to have been here when rares were dropped, it's being controlled by the people who were lucky enough to get dragon drops. Is that really any better? Yes some people would really put the effort in to getting dragon drops, but would that be any different then the people who put all the time and effort into owning rares? Oh and taking an economics class IRL means NOTHING in game. That's the rough equivalent of me saying that you do more range damage while running towards someone, and using the fact that I'm taking physics as an argument. RL physics and RS physics are about as different as RL economics and RS economics.

Hoo boy do I hate people like this -.- Looking at your stats, I see that you have 3 million (ish) xp total. I have more then that in my mining alone (my highest skill). I've put more effort into my mining level then you have into your whole account. (currently lvl 86) I also have a green halloween mask. Guess which of these 2 things in rs took more effort on my part? That's right, the mask. So, why the hell should I have to give up something that took more effort then you've put into your whole account just because you don't like rares? Admittedly I wouldn't be all that wounded if jagex were to remove all rares from the game, as I no longer play it. However, when I bought my mask they were selling for 9mil (I was and still am an f2per, so making the money was no easy task ), and I shudder to think of what it would be like for someone who's just recently bought a mask, or even worse, a phat, to lose all that simply because someone thought it would be a good idea to remove them from the game. Hey, while we're at it, why not remove skills from the game as well? I mean it's just not fair that higher levelled people can kill things/mine/wc/fish faster then I can just because they've put the time and effort required into getting higher levels in their skills :roll: You know, the funny thing is I have NEVER,EVER, seen a SINGLE logical argument against rares. It's always some whiny 10-year-old who thinks that just because they can't get one it means that 1)No one can get them and 2)They should be removed from the game. All other arguments aside, you can't really expect the general rs public to agree with you if you can't even back up what you're saying, so try again, and this time actually tell people WHY jagex should remove something from the game because players are willing to pay a lot for it.

Well if it's any consolation I think you're famous :mrgreen: I'd say I'm fairly famous :mrgreen:

No i think it's pretty weak of jagex to change the rules again and act like everything is back ok, but it isn't... Purely out of curiousity, why do you 2 think that jagex changing the rules back is a bad thing? I think the players SHOULD be the ones deciding which rules should be made and which should not, as in the end it is the players paying jagex' paychecks. I actually logged in yesterday solely to see what was going on when a friend of mine msn'ed me telling me that rs had banned ss and that people were litterally rioting. I was not dissapointed :mrgreen: If people got that upset with jagex for banning SS, don't you think that it would make sense for them to unban it? It's, not being weak, it's being decent.

5$ a month is not a lot. Period. Even to people with low wages, 5$ a month is not a lot (it seems to them that it is mainly because it's 5$ added to what they'd have to spend otherwise, it's the straw the broke the camels back ) I myself now pay 15$ (USD) a month to play eve-online. Even then, a month is a LONG time, and it's not hard to save up the money if you reall want to. Think of it this way: I pull a 5$ bill out of my pocket. With this bill, I could go to mcdonalds and buy myself a hamburger and some fries. Or, I could send it to jagex and get to play P2P for a WHOLE MONTH. Think of just how much gametime you get to have in a month. It's only been a month since I started playing eve, and I now have a large assortment of ships and a hangar full of snowballs and snowball launchers (tradeable christmas drop from last year, the FIRST ever eve tradeable holiday drop, and not one of my friends managed to figure out why I'd gone and spent the bulk of my money on them :P *crossess fingers and hopes that eve follows RS in rare trends*) Rather then focus on the fee, which is what most people seem to do, focus on just how many hours of fun you're going to get by paying the fee.

green mask, green d'hide, defence ammy, maple shortbow, zombie gloves or full sara+mime gloves or full black (or rune) G with a yellow phat or full sara+mime gloves, but replace the helm with a white phat Some more affordable looks: black(g) platebody and legs, yellow cape and gloves, and a tiara full zombie (make sure you get your base clothes changed so that your sleeves are long, tight, and black) dhide with frog mask (common but amusing nonetheless) here's some of the things I used to wear: (this is an old siggy I used for my clan's forums) my personal favs are the santa and guard outfits. (tbh I almost regret selling my santa to buy a mask, I miss that santa :( ) trust me, the novelty of a green mask and guthix wears off quickly, masks look MUCH better with dhide or robes.

I wonder if all of those "well written rants that have been against the boards rules" would have survived to develop into good debates if the first twenty or so replies were all guideline flames. The funny thing about well written rants is that against the rules or not, they usually repel forum trolls. You make a rant full of valid points, and it becomes much harder for trolls to do their thing (and much easier for others to ignore it). See it only really takes a few good responses to both repel trolls and forum mods' locks, as there have been more then a couple threads involving topics that are against the rules that have remained open (as well as relatively flame/spam free). The only real exeption to this is things that are really,really against the rules (like that thread about item transferring that got locked to stop any more people from admitting to having broken the rule). Even if it is technically against the rules, mods tend to let it slide if the discussion's good enough (a good example would be this very thread, as it's a non-game related rant, and I've seen quite a few threads get locked for ranting about similar subjects,the only difference being that there was no real discussion and the rants themselves were poorly written) Point(s) being: Flamers alone can't trash a thread Mods alone usually don't (and shouldn't) trash a thread A well written rant, with some well written replies can avoid both flamers and locks, even if it is against the rules Flamers can be wrong. So can mods. Mistakes happen. Nobody's perfect. However, for a rant to be falsely flamed, and then get locked, both parties need to be mistaken, which is highly unlikely. If the mod who locks it is mistaken, the person will assume just that. They won't see it as wrong (and they may well bring it up again in the future, or end up pming the mod). If the flamers are mistaken, then a mod can simply either clean up the thread, or do nothing. If the mod does nothing, and no discussion arises to cover up the flaming, then the topic wasn't going anywhere anyway. If a rant is viable, a couple of flamers aren't going to change that. You're right, it shouldn't. However, what I'm saying is not that I agree with flamers, but that they do actually accomplish something. Would we be better without them? Probably. Should we focus on removing them, rather then horrid rants that serve as kindling? Not a chance. As always - yes - your posts make sense. (Your worried? The last three posts i have made on this board weren't competed til after 1am. Nescafe have been calling asking if I would like a wholesalers discount! :shock: ) TBH I've been worried for quite a while now that my posts have been off. Posts like this one I don't worry about, as it's simply me responding to what someone else has said (which is what ALL of my good early posts on TIF were). It's the ones where my post is a solid chunk of text that I worry about. I have a tendancy to drift off topic without realizing it (IRL as well as on forums), and long posts make it very easy for me to switch topics from the morals of pking to what type of pop I like with my pizza.

I'd say go for the money, for the following reasons: 1)Skills keep getting easier and easier to lvl, so the longer you wait before touching skills the easier it will become. 2)Though it is easier to make money, things like party hats are constantly becomming harder to get. 3)The best way to make money in the game is to merchant. The best way to lvl is to powerlvl. Most powerlvling requires large amounts of money,while giving very little in return. Therefore the fastest way to improve both is to focus on money first. 4)Though it may be true that zezima is more famous then any merchant, it's worth noting that merchants hold MUCH more sway over the game. A merchant with enough money could easily sway the prices of any item on the market (assuming it's not something that can easily be bought in infinite amounts from an npc). If I put 100billion gp into buying all the d chains in the game (the available ones anyway) and then selling them at ridiculous prices, I'd easily be able to dictate what the price of that item would be. (if I sell for 1 billion each, who's going to sell for much less when they could be selling for a bil?, and if I sell for 100k, who's going to pay much more?)

Dammit Neo! :x You waited until I dissapeared to post this :P First let me start off by saying that it put a BIG smile on my face to see something be done about the rules of the rants board sticky :mrgreen: (personally I preferred the old one, as I couldn't count how many times I'd simply quoted "What is a rant? A rant is an argument, albeit a somewhat more emotionnal argument, but an argument nonetheless." And then the new guide came out, and countless spammers got to quote "The rants board is a place to vent blah blah blah" On people flaming in rants that don't follow the guidelines: It's not nearly as bad as it seems. If someone posts a horrid rant, and no one says anything (as it's spam) and a mod comes along and locks it, do you know what the person is going to think? *Uses psychic powers to read would-be-ranter's mind* "Omg what the hell did that mod lock it for?" It's a lot easier to think that a mod is at fault when there's no one else telling you that you're wrong. However, if you get a barrage of insults from local pyromaniacs prior to the locking you'll either: Learn not to post something that stupid ever again or (if posting intelligently is beyond you) Leave, and never come back While I in no way encourage flaming, and believe that the people who flame are monstrously annoying, they do still serve a purpose. Anyway, I'd like to point out that most people learn by making mistakes. It's nice to change the rants sticky, but there is not, nor will there ever be, a way to ensure that people actually read it. [confession]By the time I actually got around to reading through the whole rants sticky, I'd already had over 100 posts (at the time only one or 2 were in other boards) and I'd already become fairly well known. [/confession] After reading the sticky, the way I posted did not change. Nor will the way most people post after reading it. Plus let's not forget the fact that there have been some very well written rants that have been against the board's rules (especially with things like pking) that have brought up very active discussions, as well as dozens, if not hundreds, of rants that followed the rules and still sucked. You simply can't make a guideline that will ensure only good rants being posted (assuming the guideline is followed), or one that only filters out bad ones. It's nice to have a guideline, but it's just that; a guideline. You can't stop spammers from spamming, and you can't block anything without potentially blocking good rants in the process. Personally I think a good way to help the situation along would be to, rather then simply loking spam filled threads, to either move them (is there a way to filter locked threads to the bottom of the list, rather then only the oldest?) or delete them. The problem isn't so much the number of spam threads, but the fact that they don't get dealt with. Sure they get locked, but they still show up on the front page. The problem thread hasn't been dealt with so much as it's been highlighted. The mods here seem to be doing their job, the problem threads being adressed, but I think it would be much easier to simply use a method that actually deals with the problem as it arises, rather then attempt the impossible by stopping it at it's source (which here is human laziness and stupidity). You're in charge of a villiage, near the ocean, being terrorized by a volcano. A warning alarm goes off when the volcano erupts. The warning doesn't stop the lava (spam) so much as it makes sure everyone knows about it. People here, thus far, seem to be under the impression that the problem can be fixed by simply plugging the volcano (dealing with the rant guide). The thing is, you can plug the volcano as much as you like, but some of the lava (stupid people with stupid rants) will eventually get through. A better solution would be to dig a trench, moving the lava in to the ocean. Move the lava to where it's not hurting anyone, and it's no longer a problem. It will annoy some, between the eruption and the lava hitting the water (the time it takes to lock spam threads), but a decent solution that works is much better then a perfect one that doesn't (I should sooo have that printed on a coffee mug) That's all for now. (is it my immagination or have most of my replies to rants become long ramblings about nothing? Could someone please tell me that what I just posted made sense?)