Duke_Freedom

You're whole theory is right, if this is right: The 'fact' that the new rare would follow EXACTLY the same price growth rate that the other rares have. Which I highly doubt. The whole theory is right providing that this remains to be true: When santa's came into the game, phats had already reached the state where they were worth in the millions. Santa's were, around introduction, priced roughly 10-35K. It took the santa's 1.5 year to reach the price of a million, yes. However, the price growth rate has always been similiar to that of the phats. There is absolutely no reason for why this wouldn't be the case for newer rares. This arguement, which many of you seem to use as a reason for why the new rares wouldn't have the same price development as the older rares, is actually a reason why they would behave precisely the same as the older rares. If "everyone" or "nearly everyone" stocks up on the new rare, that means there will be an "extreme" shortage of the new rare, especially if it is only handed out one a person, effectively ensuring that the price will rise. To argue otherwise is defying logical reasoning. Similiar to the fact that neither santa's nor phats were worth in the millions when they came into the game, it is to be expected that any new rare, depending on how much it would be worth at introduction in the game, would take around 2 years before it would reach a worth of one million. However, we can expect the rate at which it's price will grow to be similiar to that of the older rares; in practice this would pretty much mean that in the time blue phats would rise from, for example, 500mil to 1000mil, the new rares would rise from 50K to 100K - both an increase of 100%, which is all that really matters. Yes, I did realize that he was talking about the dropping of rares, but just like you said 1 rare per person just makes more sense and since we're mainly discussing the tradability of new rares here, I merely assumed that the way new holiday items are given out stays exactly the same, with the difference that they'd be tradable now. Nevertheless, for the theoretical approach it doesn't really matter much whether the amount of new rares would be 5mil or 20mil. In fact, I actually doubt that the amount would be so much higher if the old system of handing out holiday items was used. In practice, things obviously don't go as neatly as the theory tells, but the underlying idea and long-term price behaviour should be roughly equal.

Apparently you didn't read what I said, since I just assumed everyone was handed out one of the new rare. Furthermore, it doesn't even matter if there would be 20 million in existance - it doesn't change anything to the concept of rares, which is that they will go up on the long-term as long as the general game conditions (with key factors being player population growth and inflation) don't change. Plenty of people knew what happened with phats by the time santa's were introduced - santa's are worth millions now as well and there were plenty of people who had stocked up on 100's of them.

I strongly disagree with what was said in this topic. You all seem to miss the real point of rares, which is not their present value, but their consistent price growth, which is roughly equal of all wearable rares when expressed as a rate. Let's take a purely theoretical approach to this and let's assume that Jagex would introduce new tradable holiday items as being handed out one per person. Let's say this roughly means that there will be 5 million of that new tradable holiday item. So the question is... What would happen? We could give a very rough and theoretical guesstimate of the price of the new rare when it is introduced by looking at the total market value of other rares. Santa hat's are probably the best for comparison. Let's first assume that there are 15,000 santa hats. Multiplying that number with the current price of a santa hat (~23mil) gives us a total market value for santa hat's of ~345bil. Now, since we are taking a purely theoretical approach, we can say that the expected market value of the new rare would roughly be the same, which means that the price of the new rare would roughly be 345bil / 5mil (the available number of the new rare) = ~70K. However, as I said, the key point of rares is not their current price, but the price growth rate of rares. This new rare should (again: theoretically) follow exactly the same price growth rate that the other rares have. Therefore the new rare will essentially act the same as the old rares, with the difference that the new rare will be much more in the reach of people with smaller budgets. Thus it literally provides everyone the chance to buy and own rares. What I've always found ironic and never really understood either is that all those people who always try to convince everyone that "rares are unfair" seem to be completely against the idea of new tradable rares as well, while new tradable rares give everyone the option to profit from the concept of rares, effectively nullifying the total "unfair" arguement.

And another one... Wasn't long ago that I said that as well. Ah well, stay in touch on msn Jaky. :)

I better not tell her something you told me once, as she'd immediately want to divorce then. ;) Not suitable for this forum, don't ask. :P

I would rather turn it the other way around - academic subjects can be applied everywhere. ;) After all, you're not going to learn about statistics and lineair programming problems by playing RuneScape. :P Anyway, it is not without reason that the academic world has a huge interest in mmog's because of this. They are an interesting and useful research area for subjects varying from sociology and psychology to economics, politics and applied mathematics. :) http://terranova.blogs.com

And another one gone, who's the next...? But I'm sure you'll stick around tip.it. :P

World 2 has passed world 1 in market significance long ago already... Almost immediately at the start of rs2.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/DJ+Ken+Duke How about that. :P For the rest most google results are about other people writing about me on various runescape fan forums or people impersonating me on other general forums though. :P

36% for Low Detail is enough for Jagex to keep it :P. I always used to play Low Detail because it used to have no sound and because I got used to it after playing on a slow comp for a long time. Found High Detail looking ugly when I got a faster comp that could run it. :P

Lol I have done that several times as well. :P Though I don't think I ever had any embarashing wrong pm's. :P Usually my wrong pm's went to people I hadn't spoke to in a while and thus continued with "long time no speak :)" and another convo.

Read the book thoroughly once and then try to make example exams or past exams if they are available. Works well... For me at least. :)

I believe the insane cabbage cult has received offers of several millions on their stashes of cabbages a few times.

Hmm. I'll keep it short. More and better communication could have prevented this whole situation if you ask me.

Jessy87, he never had so much, he just has a large imagination. And santa's are probably going up soon. It seems they already increased a bit in price again.

Jagex already had this in the plans for hmm... Oh yeah, 3 years or so. :roll:

Nah, physically impossible, unless the training speed of several skills is increased.

I have estimated (old estimate though) the amount of money drained by barrows before, but it is hard to do an accurate guess on it. There's practically no way to figure out exactly how many barrow sets there are and how many hours people typically train with a set. I believe he did post dy/dx? Yeah. The graph shows the growth in the prices of rares, which is the rate of change / derivative of the rare prices. Who knows, perhaps I have made such graphs already. ;) For now I can/will only say it is definately not consistent. People can expect an extended article about this in the future :). (Yes, I have plenty of idea's for future articles still :P) You have to keep in mind that together with the disappearal of various extremely rich people, a lot of high cost party hats left the market too. This means less supply and, in opposite to your arguement, is a reason for party hats to continue to rise. However, the idea of a potential "price roof" for party hats is not that unreasonable. Don't get me wrong: under constant conditions rares (and thus party hats too) will always continue to go up in price on the long-term. I do believe that there is some point, the price roof, after which the growth rate of rares will slow down though, but I think the prices are still far(?) away from reaching that point.. Over the last ~4 years there is no extremely convincing evidence that low cost rares have really risen more then high cost rares. Santa hats have shown a small extra progress compared to other rares, but it's not that significant when divided over the time. I suppose low cost rares may be rising slightly better then high cost rares, but I really doubt the difference will be that significant. IF it allows people to earn several billion(s) of gp with relative ease, then yes. More concentration of money on less people generally leads to higher prices on the short- to mid-long term.

I can barely call that merchanting whatsoever, but oh well, it generally does allow people to make some easy cash during the first few days of a new skill.

And you were not alone in doing that. I would say the lack of publically prominent merchants is partly responsible for more unstable behaviour of rares these days too. As far as I know there aren't many active, good and rich merchants around anymore.

It seems so. Prices had been going down slightly for 1.5 month already, but it seems that now people know hunting is comming out at the end of the month, the process is being speedened up. The amount of people saying they are stocking up on "money" in anticipation of hunting here seems to in complete agreement with this. No. That does slightly limit my ability to have a good 'feeling' about the current market sentiment and doing too strong short-term predictions, although I have my ways to make up for that. :)

Hm, I suppose I should be giving a new price graph of rares some time soon again. I'd like to remind people that even though most rare prices are roughly 20% below their peak prices, they still grew at an average of 15% per month during the past half year, which I had pointed out long ago already has pretty much been the average price growth of rares per month during the whole history. I can see with all the people creating threads about this (this is about the 5th thread about rares / economy now, whereas there have been none for various months before :P) that there is some panic and the amount of selling posts on the discontinued items board of the official forums does seem to support this. Still, unless you are planning to do some short-term speculation, I really don't see any reason for people to panic. I'd also like to point out that, even though construction was and is a money drain and the prices may have dropped a small 20% initially then too, the prices of all rares were more then doubled a month after construction came out.

Yeah - draynor was the trading home during my first 3 months of playing. I made my first ~50mil trading certs (mostly lobsters) there. :) Bars were certed there too. And yeah, lobster certs varied in price between 1-2K (200-400gp per lobster) in those days. :)

Forgive my reservation. I just needed to put warning signs for the exact reason you mentioned - it happens way too often that skillers sell their rares low while there is little reason to panic, like now if you ask me. Another concern I have is that everyone (including you) seems to be claiming that material prices are rising currently, while that seems as deformed data to me. Because I rather argue with factual data and not on the memory of individuals, here are the actual prices of some materials at the beginning this year. Date 1-1-2006 Coal: 200 each Steel bars: 650 each Natures: 310 each Yew logs: 300 each Raw lobsters: 260 each As you can see, these prices were roughly equal to the current prices of materials. So why is everyone claiming that prices are rising? Well, that is quite easily understood if I also give you the data of materials 2 months ago. Date 1-9-2006 Coal: 200 each Steel bars: 600 each Natures: 320 each Yew logs: 220 each Raw lobs: 200 each The catch lies in yew logs and raw lobs. As you can see their current prices are in fact 25-40% higher then now. However, at the moment it seems people are mixing up the causes with the consequences and thus drawing wrong and overhasted doubtful conclusions. The right question to ask now, is why the prices of yew logs and raw lobs were lower at 1-9-2006 compared to 1-1-2006 in the first place. I believe, and I'm rather convinced of this, that this was caused by the macroing programs that allowed people to automate ten(s) of characters simultaneously. As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong though), Jagex has taken action to counter (most of) those programs, which I'd say is the reason materials are back up to their original prices again. Key word there is that it were the original prices - the prices have not risen when compared to the prices at the start of this year. You should be rather wary with jumping onto conclusions too quickly when talking about economics. It is easy to end up explaining rises and drops using wrong 'causes'. Yes I also observe material market price fluctuations even though I rarely seem to write about it. ;)

Draynor was special due to the cert trading taking place there back in rsc. Draynor is of relatively low usefulnes these days, so I wouldn't see why the market would need to move there. ^^