Burta

OK I'm back with the first part of my data collection. Here are the top 5 forums by posts so far: Approximated Posts Per Day: Zybez - 9300 Rune Tips - 4600 Sals Realm - 3100 RS Realm - 1400 RS Boards - 1350 **I seemed to mess up RuneHQ tracking, that or they changed their post IDs in between my tracking date and revision date. They no doubt will be in the top 5 in the next revision.

Thanks for the input guys, I'm going to start trying to collect some data from all the major forums now. I'll keep you all posted.

I was planning to do a little study on which are the most popular Runescape related forums. I was just wondering which forums do you guys think I should include in the study other than this site of course?

I'm going to assume that most people didn't read my actual article that I linked to in my original post, it addressed many of the issues and concerns you guys raised. I suppose I should probably qualify myself. I'm actually in my 5th year of university studying Business Management and ECONOMICS, and I have been studying economics for over 7 years now. So I'm not unfamiliar with basic economic principles like "inflation" and the basic rationale of modern online business because I run an online business myself. So I'd appreciate not being treated like an idiot the suggestion I made which you can read in full HERE - is pretty well thought out. OK now to comment on the actual constructive comments made. Firstly the idea of a price war is not rediculous but I think in a practical sense it is impossible for Jagex to lose the price war because everything is working in their favour. For example a RS gold seller needs to play employees to play the game (gold farmers) they need the capital to buy computers for gold farmers to use, and they have the other operational expenses including advertising in what is already a very competitive industry. Now if jagex were to enter the market they would be able to create gold for free, they wouldn't have to advertise or invest capital into computers to harvest gold - in other words they have an unbeatable cost structure and they would be the low cost provider by miles. Secondly Jagex would have no incentive to enter a price war. If Jagex set gold prices at $5/M and black market traders were selling at $3/M people would still buy of Jagex because they are the reliable source of gold and there is no chance of losing your account. Next thing that hasn't been considered in the fact that these black market gold sellers are business men, if the return on investment is in selling runescape gold then they will move to other MMORPGs to make money. What I mean by this is gold farmer don't care what game they play whether it is Runescape, WoW, Everquest or any other MMORPG - they are in it to make money and if there is more money to be made in other games they will move to those games. So by Jagex entering the market they WOULD crush the competition because the black market traders can't compete on the same level as Jagex because Jagex has the low cost structures.

To be completely honest I agree with you 100% I personally think that Jagex is in a position to actually significantly help reduce third world poverty. I'm actually going to do a bit write up about it. I have done a lot of research into this area of Gold selling in MMORPGs and I think the emergence of MMORPG and gold selling actually gives third work countries a serious ability to export produce cost effectively and have the grass roots of the population reap the majority of the returns. By that I mean, say for example, instead of Jagex just creating the money like I mentioned in my above article, what if they setup their own Chinese/Indian/African workshops and had employees work for say $0.50 - $1/hours to make gold by playing the game, and then Jagex just act as the middle man between the players as these establishments. Jagex in my honest opinion has the potential to DRASTICALLY change the lives of thousands upon thousands of people in third world countries if they wanted to. I don't in any way imply that this problem is exclusive to Runescape, if anything Runescape is far from one the worst effected MMORPGs.

OK everyone knows that the black market trade of gold and the indrect problems that it cause (autoers) is a primary concern for Jagex and a problem they have been fighting for ages with very limited success. Now my suggestion isn't really new, but it is slightly modified to reduce the negative results of it's implementation, but it centers around the idea that Jagex should sell gold to undermine the black market gold industry to make it so there is reduced profits for gold sellers reducing their incentive to sell Runescape gold and therefore reducing their desire to use autoers and reduce the game play for other players. I believe if Jagex sold Runescape gold they could not only make more money and in turn reinvest it into the game but they would obviously be servicing a growing proportion of the Runescape community that is willing to buy gold. Though in selling gold I'd like to think that Jagex might be able to set a limit to the amount of gold an individual player could buy in any given month, to not only reduce their own liability but also to promote game play as the primary source of revenue, not to mention preventing playing bankrolling aspects of the game. Jagex might also look at some of the method applied by other MMORPGs to solve the black market problem like the creation of special servers that allowed such trading to take place. My propose suggestion is quite long, but those points above are the basics of it. If you care to read the whole thing the link is below. What do you think? Source:Solving the Runescape Gold Selling Problem

I recently made a post about my thoughts on ways to Solve the Runescape Gold Selling Problem I think it is probably the best solution to the problem, but it evolves around the principle that Jagex sell Runescape gold in an attempt to undermine the black market.

I'm sure Jagex could include a simple disclaimer on a links page where they link to Runescape fan sites absolving them of any responsibility for the damage that occurs on third party sites. To be completely honest Jagex has no responsibility to anyone all Runescape accounts are still owned by them and if any damage was to occur to them there is no way someone could seek compensation for damages. The worst that could happen is bad publicity - which would be lost in the sea of endless complaints about Jagex's customer support.

I have posted a rant here - http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=671057 - about how I don't like the way Jagex badmouth Runescape fan sites, and I was thinking what people thought about Jagex potentially showing support in the form of a link for genuine fan sites that offer good information and services to Runescape players? Source: Jagex Created Runescape Fan Sites

Like?

So what can Jagex do to slow this upward trend of gold selling?

Man I hope that isn't their attitude - that seems like a very hit and miss sort of approach.

I recently made a post on my little Runescape blog site, Runescape Haven, about how I think there is an upward trend of buying gold in the RS community. According to Google trends, the frequency of people searching for gold is increasingly dramatically quicker than the games growth itself, but I'm not really sure why there is an upward trend when Jagex is always advertising about how it is illegal. What do you guys think? Is it maybe because there are more sellers entering the market and therefore more sellers advertising and promoting their services or is the sheer fact that Jagex seems to often mention the idea of buying gold being illegal only go to further aid the exposure of the industry? Source: Upward Trend of Buying Runescape Gold

What site do you run? In the near future I will consider hosting Runescape sites and buying domain names for them if they need and if they are big enough to justify the expenditure. This would be done in exchange for a text link back to my site I imagine.

Yes most forums to a degree do delete posts, but again without all the forum owners giving me admin to all their forums, my ability to see the intricate detail and setup of each different Runescape Forum is always going to be hard, so I'm forced to make some general assumptions, and use the occasional guestimate... :roll:... I generally just figure that most forums will be run and administered much the same as each other. Anyway, this little study seems to have sparked some general interest amongst more than just the Tip It community, but the general Runescape Community (I posted my finding on some of the other forums as well) so I might do a follow up study in a month or twos time, and I'll make it a little more accurate by using post IDs. It will also be interesting to the growth and development over a period of a month.

I used the figures at the bottom for those forums that I knew weren't being pruned, but for those forums that were being pruned I tracked them with their IDs for 48 hours and then assumed that there would be a similar amount of posting on the ensuing ten days. But you are right the latter would have been a better option, except it would have required that I sign up to all the forums... and well I got lazy... :roll:. Still I'd say whilst those results are probably not perfect they'd be fairly close (within 10%) and they give more of a good overview than anything.

I don't understand why you posted this? No problem, I really did the study to find out where my own forums (Runescape Boards) stood in relation to everyone else, but I figured if I was going to do it I may as well share the results with everyone so at least there is some factual evidence as to which Runescape Forums is actually the most popular.

OK well it has been 10 days since I started this experiment so I think it's time to show my findings. So below is my final rankings for the Top 10 Most Popular Runescape Forums and The Fastest Growing Runescape Forums. So without any further adue here are my results. So what does everyone think? Top 10 Most Popular Runescape Forums (By Posts Per Day) 1. Runescape Community (4000/Day) 2. Rune HQ (3800/Day) 3. Tip It (3600/Day) 4. Sals Realm of Runescape (2100/Day) 5. Runescape Realm (1600/Day) 6. Rune Village (1400/Day) 7. Runescape Boards (800/Day) 8. Rune Crypt (600/Day) 9. Runescape Bits & Bytes (400/Day) 10. Runescape Forums (300/Day) Top 10 Fastest Growing Runescape Forums (by New Members Per Day) 1. Rune HQ (310/Day) 2. Tip It (188/Day) 3. Runescape Community (166/Day) 4. Runescape Bits & Bytes (58/Day) 5. Runescape Boards (49/Day) 6. Runescape Realm (48/Day) 7. Sal's Realm of Runescape (35/Day) 8. Rune Village (32/Day) 9. Runescape Crypt (17/Day) 10. Runescape Forums (14/Day)

Yeah I think it is pretty immature to be running off to flame a forum, I hate it when I hear my members have plugged my forums while flaming other forums, saying how bad one their forum is and how they should join ours. It's pretty silly and bring all the wrong sort of attention. That said of "BIG 3 RS Forums" (Tip it, RSC, Rune HQ) I'd say that tip it is probably the most laid back, which is a good thing in some ways but at the same time isn't always the best thing when your members get a little wild.

Yes well being a member you would say that. Personally if I don't count my own forums, I'd say I don't really have a favourite, they are all pretty much the same to me, the oly difference I guess would be the forum software they use, I personally have always preferred phpBB and RSC uses Invision so I generally find myself using tip.it more than RSC, and RuneHQ is probably a bit too modded for my liking. Whilst tip.it is my number two choice, I'm also a member at RSC, RSR, and RV and enjoy posting at all those forums as well so like I said I don't really have a favourite.

Heeey! What a way to abuse the Scapeboard legend, eh? Come on, this site isn't even worth considering. It's blatant abuse of the original Scapeboard. Yeah this forum wouldn't be in the top 10 anyway. It really looks like a bit of a scraper site that has loads of different domains all redirecting to one site.

Well I thought I would give a quick update at how things are looking. I have decided to essentially break things down into two top 10's now. Top 10 Most Popular, based on the number posts a day, and Top 10 Growing, based on the number of new members a day. This is my rankings so far, mind you they are still pretty rough. Top 10 Most Popular Runescape Forums (by Posts Per Day) 1. Runescape Community (4000/Day) 2. Rune HQ (3800/Day) 3. Tip It (3600/Day) 4. Sals Realm of Runescape (2100/Day) 5. Runescape Realm (1700/Day) 6. Rune Village (1400/Day) 7. Rune Crypt (650/Day) 8. Runescape Boards (600/Day) 9. Runescape Bits & Bytes (390/Day) 10. Runescape Forums (370/Day) Note: After that there is a fair drop off with no other forums with over 150 posts a day. Top 10 Fastest Growing Runescape Forums (by New Members Per Day) 1. Rune HQ (320/Day) 2. Tip It (230/Day) 3. Runescape Community (165/Day) 4. Runescape Bits & Bytes (60/Day) 5. Runescape Realm (50/Day) 6. Runescape Boards (45/Day) 7. Sal's Realm of Runescape (35/Day) 8. Rune Village (30/Day) 9. Runescape Crypt (20/Day) 10. Runescape Forums (18/Day) Note: Again there is a fair drop off with no other forums with 10+ new members a day. So what can be concluded so far from all this? Well from my perspective there are an obvious three major forums, being Runescape Community, Rune HQ and Tip It - but this isn't really new news. I personally was quite shocked how similar their posts per day actually were with no clear winner over the past 4 days (I have only been tracking for the last 4 days). That said though there was a distinct difference in the number of new forum members signing up to each forum, with Rune HQ far and away having the most new registrations, followed by Tip It and trailed by Runescape Community. It will be interesting to see what influence this has over a longer period, in say 6 months time. My projections put Rune HQ as the forum with the largest number of members with 135,000 in 6 months time, which is a few thousand more than that of Tip It and close to 50,000 more than that of Runescape Community, which I would imagine would also result in a leadership change in regards to the Most Popular Runescape Forum. The next distinct bracket of moderately popular forums would include, Runescape Realm, Runescape Village and Sals Realm of Runescape. There is not much to say about these forums other than non of them are probably growing fast enough or really have a post per day count that is really suggestive that they would be looking to move up into the top bracket or compete for a top 3 spot, but I'd argue that both Sal's Realm of Runescape and Runescape Realm are both fairly secure in their top 5 positions, with Rune Village being of the three that is most in danger of slipping in the ranks over the next six months, with it having the lowest growth rate and daily post count of the three, including a growth rate that is far smaller than that of two forums, Runescape Boards and Runescape Bits & Bytes, which are actually ranked below it in terms of post per day count. A projection of these three, Rune Village, Runescape Boards and Runescape Bits and Bytes, shows that in 6 months time Runescape Boards and Runescape Bits and Bytes can expect to have their member base double (200%), where as Rune Village's overall increase in members will be a fraction of with an estimated increase of 8% - the lowest of all of the top 10 forums. The final bracket is what I'd call "developing" Runescape forums would be made up of Rune Crypt, Runescape Boards, Runescape Bits & Bytes and Runescape Forums. Each of these forums show quite a bit of promise, and as I have mentioned above, especially Runescape Boards and Runescape Bits & Bytes - but that's not to negate the promise of Rune Crypt or Runescape Forums. Each of these forums has quite a bit of activity, but they are also a fair way shy of there larger counter parts, but they all have the potential to move up in the ranks over the next 6 - 12 months. Well that is my summation after studying each of these forums for 4 days. What do you guys think of my conclusions?

Yeah I was going to factor the forums that are pruned, I'll probably just select a single day where I will track the number of posts in 24 hours and just times it by 7. I think that should allow us to see which of the top end forums like, RSC, RHQ and Tip It, get the most. Can I ask is Tip It pruned???

Alexa is really a very "rough" guide to a site's popularity, it's prety common knowledge that its rankings are farily dodgy and they don't rank forums individually unless they have their own seperate domain. Plus this isn't about traffic this is more about forum popularity, posting, members, etc etc. Also I'll add Runeboards. Well I'll post my figures back here when I have compiled them all. RS Haven isn't a forum. So anyway without any further adue I have collected some information on all the forums involved in the analysis: Total Posts || Members || Site 1537964 || 90084 || Tip It 2806126 || 67261 || Rune Village 342125 || 59197 || Runescape Community 624954 || 77056 || Rune HQ 951680 || 15830 || Runescape Realm 311027 || 27214 || S ythe 212200 || 11653 || RSBandB 183916 || 7116 || Sal's 82058 || 10960 || Rune Crypt 84545 || 5487 || Runescape Boards 57404 || 4127 || Runescape Forums 38319 || 2416 || Rune Hints 57858 || 2470 || Rune Web 21450 || 1461 || Rune Board 9384 || 1069 || Global Runescape Site Down Rune Masters

The direction of the site's isn't really what is in question here, it's more their popularity. Also I'm really looking for suggestions as to if there are any obvious Runescape Forums that I have forgotten to add and really should be considered for this study?