Duke_Freedom

Already made a guess at that once in this article (note that all prices given in that article are old now).

That might explain why red phats were the cheapest phats back in rsc then...? ^^

:lol: - that's not a trend they can continue to do for long..

He actually already earned his money back with his investement. Everything he earns from now on is pure profit...

NUCKIE!!!! :P

Didn't expect something like this from you, but I guess more people have different reasons for why they did what they did. ;) You seem like a perfect example of how accusing people of things they did not do, actually makes them do it though. I can understand the attitude that you seemed to have, being "if people accuse me of it already anyway, what difference does it make if I actually do it then?". You are pretty much an exception though.. I'm quite sure that most macroers don't care that they are cheating and eventually get banned for it. They don't care about not having a clear conscience. In fact, they aren't taking the whole issue as serious as you, or most "good" people, do.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

The reason this is written a bit vague is probably because in economics there is not really a 'central neutral item' that is used for comparison. Economics only considers relative values, not absolut values. However, in general, money (which in the case of RuneScape is gp) is used as a way to make comparisons. Mainly because money is "valued" what it represents to value. 1gp represents 1gp of value. 1 bank note of $10 represents $10 of value. I see what your issues are with this example, but the answer to that lies in a different economic concept (that I had rather not introduced to not make things more complex then they already are :P), namely the utility of item. The utility of an item is a 'number' that represents how "valued" people find the item. Again, what number it really represents is not too important, because economics only observes relative values between items. So to be short, the difference in the two situations you named, where people value rares as either 10mil or 100mil is a difference in what they value the utility of the items at. And to answer your (indirect) question: yes the total value of all items in a system depends on what people value the utility at. The utility of an item is a constant however, and never chances no matter what. Well the issue here is that this is one of those cases where it's not useful to take money (gp) as comparison item, because you're basically totally removing it from the "economy". However, using the just-introduced concept of utility it is easier to see that the utility after removing either all gp or all rares should be roughly the same and should be roughly half of what it was before you removed anything at all. Backtracking from utility to the unit of gp, we can say you removed a worth of 2000bil gp if you removed all rares in this example though. So to conclude, the real "neutral" comparison value you were probably looking for is the utility items have. However, it still gives us the same answer, that removing all rares from the game is the equilavent of removing several hundreds bills of value from the game. I hope it is clear now, because I doubt I can explain it anymore in-depth and clearer then this. :P Hmm.. Unconsciously you are raising a difficult issue here though. Isn't it much more unfair that newbies don't have any chance to get these magical eggs at all anymore, instead of the situation where they could get them, but had to pay older players a bunch of money to get them? Did you even think about that? ;) "Only" is a far exageration. There are plenty of people who buy them without the intention to ever resell. They are collectors or skillers who had set a goal to own a rare set - without having the intention to ever resell their rares.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28economics%29 Value is not defined as "only the material value" in economics, which seems to be the way you are trying to define it. Value is defined as the market value of an item, how much it costs in terms of money or other products - there is little to argue about regarding that. If you remove an item, you'll remove its value. In the case of rares, the total value is several 100bil's gp.

As if switching worlds to mine the unmined ore on another world is realistic :P.

I think that's a general problem of these games indeed. It is hard to make any impact on the game or the community. The only real ways are by doing something really special or by excelling in something (which generally takes a lot of time) or being the first to do something (which is pretty much the easiest). However, imagine we 'limited' the price of rares 1.5 year ago. The price of a blue phat was 18mil back then. Nowadays, there are a ton of people who could afford that. But, the more people owning such an item, the less prestigeful it is. If a blue phat would be buyable for 18mil in a shop it really wouldn't provide much prestige - definately not anything near what it does nowadays or what it did 1.5 year ago when it cost 18mil. I think you really underestimate their rarity and how many people would still try to get them before they were made untradable, but yes the prices would crash quite a lot, mainly because people who only use them as investement (like I said - this is a large group as well) will sell. To address the value loss discussion: it's not true that only 40K or 200mil or 2bil would be removed. Rares have a market value of several 100's of bils. If you remove them, you'll remove a market value of several 100's of bils, nothing more and nothing less. Your example of banknotes doesn't hold too well, considering very few currencies are backed up by gold these days - and therefore, by destroying bank notes, value is lost. I think a good example may be the stock markets. If the stock markets crash 20%, surely several 1000 billions of value is lost. If you're going to argue that no value would be lost, then why do stock market crashes oftenly lead to economic times of recession or depression? ;) Value is not defined by magical things like "high alch values" nor as the gold that slightly backs up our currency though. Value is defined as what people pay for items, the market price. Therefore, yes several 100's of bils of value are lost when you remove rares. I ment to say that intially they are likely to crash as investors get their money out of the rares (as rares won't go up anymore). After that, the market prices will eventually stabalize slightly below the shop selling price. All that will probably take a while before the first rare is actually bought from the shop. After that people will slowly continue to buy rares from the shop at a speed that is needed to keep the market price slightly below the shop's selling price.

Well I just don't agree this game becomes less attractive solely because newcomers will have to spent more effort if they want a rare. I personally just don't think any arguement based on "but they won't be able / have a tough time to participate in the rares market" is good. Noone forces you to get into the rares market. Yes, that's the most used concept actually and it does seem a lot fairer then RuneScape's system. Again the question arises whether ultimate fairness is what we are seeking though... Keep in mind that RuneScape's system, effectively links 200K players together in one economy at peak times, while these other games usually tend to only allow only 3K players or so on one "world". Err.. Please read this. Removing rares means a removal of several 100's of bils of value. Not to imagine how extremely "unfair" (as we haven't used that word a billion times already :P) towards the players who paid 100's of millions for their rares. Well I'm going to agree with Eldrad_Ulthran here as I doubt rares will stay as popular as they are if they weren't limited anymore. I think quite a few people buy rares as investement actually - they wouldn't buy them anymore if they weren't going up anymore. Your counter-argument that dragon chains aren't limited either is not completely applicable here. They don't enter the economy when you want to, they enter it randomly at small probabilities. With a shop that sells rares, there is literally a "limitless" supply at any time. There is a difference in that.

Well my total gp calcs show that p2p'ers surely create most of the gp (as fletching is by far the biggest gp creator), though who creates the gp isn't necessarily the same as who owns the gp. Still, who owns the gp isn't that important either as we're talking about the netto change in the total amount of gp ingame. Ofcourse, if F2P had construction too, construction would probably drain twice as much gp as it does now though. Yes, deflation is far worse then inflation, but the 400-500% money growth rate per year was not very healthy either. Also, the existance of rares are, IMO, an important reason for why we don't really notice much of the inflation on most items in the game. Well I can just give the boring "time = money" equation and have answered your question already, but I'll answer it a bit more in-depth. The point is you mine ore and smelt bars. However, instead of smithing the bars into, for example, steel plates, you could also just sell the bars on the market. You have a choice, and each choice comes at the opportunity cost of the other choices. If you choose to sell the steel bars, you would earn 600*5 = 3000gp for 5 steel bars. On the other side, if you smith steel plates, and high alch those (subtracting 300gp for the nature you'd need) you'd only gain 900gp for 5 steel bars. So the opportunity cost of getting the experience from smithing the 5 steel bars is equal to 3000 - 900 = 2100gp. Dividing this by the exp you get for smithing a steel plate: 2100 / 187.5 = 11.2gp / exp. So because of opportunity cost, you "pay" 11.2gp / smithing exp if you smith steel bars into steel plates.

And those markets are much smaller then the rares market is as well. If there were no more rares to merchant, those markets would be saturated of merchants. However your 'solution' may still allow a bit of merchanting in rares to continue on the other side. Price manipulation is in fact against the RuneScape rules, but Jagex just takes too little action on people doing it. And again I'm saying that the advantage is in fact open to everyone. :P Only not with results that were made in the history - but I don't really see why people should be able to have the same results that were made in history, even though they didn't even start playing back then. Rich people would have existed with or without rares. Those some people would have been able to train construction as fast as they did now for the same reason as well. I believe that materials are also kept down by the people who spare for a rare rather then using the cash on materials, which they may have done if rares didn't exist. So no, I don't think you really notice too much of the rares in the economy as long as you don't want to participate in it. Yes. Keep in mind that that is 3mil is only 7.5 times as large as the 400K figure, and that was reached in time span of 3 years, which translates back to doubling prices each year, quite a bit less then the 10 or 5 doubling figures that were given earlier already ;). Perhaps the real question is whether "ultimate fairness" is actually our main goal or not. The answer to that question may lie in a totally different discussion (that people are quite divided about), whether RuneScape and similiar mmo's are "games" or "virtual worlds".

Lies! :P Money made may be proportional to the number of people playing, but the amount of money ingame is something different then that. Furthermore, the player growth of this game is far lower then inflation rate and the rate at which rares grow. Yes. :P Yup, it's a good way to test if all the natures needed for all the high alching could even have been made - and yes they could, which does back up the numbers given in the article a little more.

You're exagerating it a bit, rares rise with a factor 5 per year. - They are no longer an investement item, so people are no longer rewarded for sparing gp. - The end-game of merchanting (which is the rares market) would be removed. - The interesting fluctuation and price development of rares would be gone. The whole "unfair" arguement is weak IMO. There are a ton of unfair things in this game, including the fact that people can gain tons more exp / hour these days then a few years ago, the fact that the first 85 slayers literally made billions of their skill while the current 85 slayers "only" make millions and tons of such examples. I think you overlook a lot of facts while saying this. Furthermore I find it weird why you "loose motivation" just because of the rare situation. If you don't plan to interact with the rares market, it has no influence on you. If you do plan to interact with the rares market, I question your motives. Very few people would buy rares if they wouldn't go up on the long-term anymore. But there are other things as well: 3 years ago, medium-leveled P2P players couldn't make much more then 100K / hour, this is at least 300 - 400K / hour nowadays. 3 years ago the top players were making 300 - 350K / hour. Nowadays their hourly wages are going at 1 - 1.5mil / hour. F2P players are still making 50-100K / hour, something they also did 3 years ago. Talking about 'unfairness'?

Well I did answer that issue, but maybe not as definite as you want... Right now I still think it is too early to conclude how big the money drain construction will stay though, so it is hard to say how much the price development of rares will be influenced exactly. Anyway, although it is highly unlikely that more gp is going to go out of the game then enter the game once the newness of construction wears off, I'll discuss the consequences of that as an "what if" case as it seems that is what you want to know. So IF more gp leaves the economy then enters it then that would mean that the total amount of gp in the game would be shrinking - even on the long term. As the indexed graph in my article shows, rares seem to follow the long term trend of the total amount of gp ingame very closely, so that would imply that rares would also be going downwards on the long term. However that would somewhat 'clash' with the true far-long term nature of rares, which is that they'll always go upwards on the far-long term. More people are entering this game all the time, slowly rares are lost, etc. In the situation of the past this were all minor factors as the inflation effect was giantic, so rares were mainly influenced by that. But IF deflation (more money goes out of the game then into the game) would occur then those minor factors would become much more important on the long term. If Jagex really wanted to bring rares down a lot - then yes, deflation is an option as a long term negative effect on the prices of rares. At first sight (before I updated my total gp calculations) I was beginning to fear that they were actually trying to do that with construction. Fear, because deflation is extremely unhealthy for any economy. Jagex really shouldn't want to cause deflation just to bring the prices of rares down - the consequences of something like that are desastrous as it will cause "a run on gp". But as I already said, as far as I can conclude, construction is definately not going to cause deflation, as it's not that big of a drain. Furthermore I wouldn't really look at construction as being a way to "fix" the rares economy, but rather as an attempt to solve the inflation issue that the game has. Nevertheless, by doing something against the inflation issue (which is the most important factor why rares go up in price on the long term) this will obviously influence the price growth of rares as well. As inflation will become a smaller factor, rares will, at least, slow down their fast price development a bit.

Although there were some people who found my predictions in the previous article contraversional, most of my predictions are quite conversative predictions actually as I base them on a lot of (historic) data. Though *insert lame standard investement disclaimer voice here* results from the past give no guarantee for the future ofcourse. :P It's good that you mention it, as very few people observe the "regular" switching of blue phats and crackers in price 'position'. Yet, for the top merchants their price development can sometimes be very interesting for speculation and quite a buck can be made from just trading between blue phats and crackers alone. I appreciate that people would like me to play again, but it is rather unlikely that I'll ever return to playing rs again. I don't really have anything to come back for and I was much less active on RuneScape then I used to be for quite a long period already. However, as you can see that doesn't mean I'm leaving this community (not for now, or anytime soon at least) yet. I've always had interest in just observing RuneScape's economy too and as quite a few people here like to read my observations as well, I don't mind writing about it either. :) Perhaps yes. I found it hard to make a reasonable assumption on how popular it would stay, but I mainly just wanted to point out what the potential effects of construction are. As said, to determine how important construction will really be, we'll need to take a look at the whole situation again in a few months time. I'm not sure what makes people think construction is so expensive. Well perhaps I do know: people can clearly see that construction costs money, whereas they may not notice that with most other skills. For example, do people realize that when you smith steel bars or mith bars into plates, they basically "spend" ~10gp / xp on smithing? Do people know that burying dragon bones for pray exp is even much more expensive then that? (although with the ectofunctus it should be somewhere around 10gp / xp as well I think) Construction, when you level it with oak logs, should cost less then 10gp / xp, somewhat depending on the amount of expensive items you make as well. Therefore, I fail to see why many people call construction "expensive". It is comparable to other skills in terms of exp cost (unless you choose the expensive way of mahogany ofcourse). I think that just because people can better observe what they pay for the exp, they think it's a lot more expensive then what they "pay" for other skills. Something I forgot to mention earlier, full phat sets also passed 1bil worth recently. Thanks everyone else for the positive reactions as well. :)

Hm, I didn't really say it this time, but I consider the gp on inactive accounts under the same header as 'banned' :P. While it's true that more people means more demand, that demand needs to be backed up by gp's. Therefore I think that the demand increase caused by population increase is only a very minor factor in the reasons why rares go up in price. However, more players does mean higher inflation, which in turn leads to higher rare prices, so indirectly more players are a major factor why rares go up in price - it is just expressed more by the inflation effect they cause rather then the demand increase. Depending a bit on the scale you are talking here.. I personally do not think that many people quit with much gp on their accounts. As far as I know, people tend to either buy rares when they quit or give away everything they own. But if you mean to say that "if (a lot) more people are starting to quit then starting to play" then I believe it's generally true that has a negative effect on the prices of rares. In case you are wondering about player numbers, this site keeps track of the subscription numbers of a whole lot of games, including RuneScape.

Hm. Keep in mind that is only a ~0.22 difference in average gp / xp cost though (2bil / 9bil total exp). Though I agree it's reasonable to say that people with that level have made the altar. Also keep in mind that roughly 2/3rds of the total exp is currently provided by people with a construction level of 60 or lower - people who, I think, are rather unlikely to have used mahogany? Thats fine - I'm open to criticism as it helps me make better estimates. ^^ While we're at it, do you have any rough idea how much exp you spend on construction in total and how much of that was really drained out of the economy?