Bluey

Thank you for the compliment :-) I just find it hard usually to find a subject that a) I'm interested enough about, and B) I know enough about to fill up an article without sounding like a complete amateur, and c) that hasn't already been done (properly) to death. And yes, it is "perfectly fine", as soon as you start taking into account the missing element in the equation, the XP. It's just that most people stare themselves blindly at the only trade item they are familiar with, money, and then find that there are anomalies in the system that they cannot explain. You'll find that if you let the RS economy orbit around XP, it'll fit most patterns much nicer. To the exclusion of XP-less items that cannot be created or converted, the most famous example being the "rares", such as party hats. THEY follow a normal economy based on GP. So do most weapons that are "dropped" ingame. Normal supply-and-demand based on a monetary economy works pretty well for them. It's like assuming the Earth is the center of the solar system. You'll find that most planets orbit Earth pretty nicely if you draw a solar system based on that premise, only at a certain point they make a little "looping", go back a bit (called a "retrograde" manoeuver or orbit), and then resume a normal orbit. This oddity could not be explained away until they changed the basic premise to "put the sun in the center". PS: Another interesting point to ponder in the RS economy is the rampant inflation of a few years now, that has pretty much slowed. I suspect the reason for this is the 32bit cap on data, which effectively means nobody can have more than 2.147 billion GP (2,147,483,647) if it's a signed integer, otherwise it's 4.294 billion (4,294,967,295). (Values based on 32 binary 1's next to each other and converted to decimal, with or without one bit reserved to indicate "sign", ie. "+" or "-"). Let's hope RS never goes 64 bit, because by the time THAT amount will be reached (and it's not double of 32bit) the economy will be down the toilet :-) (In fact, 64bit signed would allow for up to 9 quintillion GP, or 9,223,372,036,854,775,807; unsigned it would be 18 quintillion, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615).

This is exactly what I meant. You cannot "rig" the price because the real value of the item is not really determined in GP, but in XP. If you want to make it more valuable, it must hold more XP. Your posted your post when I was writing mine, so I just ignored it, but now I've read through it and... I see your point. You are saying that the finished items will need more xp, or what? Sorry, I just woke up and I am still a bit tired :-# Heh, sorry :-) Basically, yes, but that will never be possible, because the more XP you can make from the finished item, the more you can make from the raw material (since they lead to the finished item). Forcing the market will only result in solutions like junk trading. In a normal ecomomy, the further you go along the line of raw->finished, the more valuable the item (because the more time and skill and use of equipment etc) In the RS economy, the further along the line raw->finished, the less valuable, because less XP remains "hidden" in the item. Some finished items will be very valuable in other ways, for example sharks that can be used to regain health, but that just means raw sharks will be even more expensive, because they have both the "health" potential AND the XP potential.

This is exactly what I meant. You cannot "rig" the price because the real value of the item is not really determined in GP, but in XP. If you want to make it more valuable, it must hold more XP.

Well, the reason that raw materials in Runescape cost more than finished products is that RS is not a normal economy. In a normal economy, people buy raw materials, use their skill to turn those into finished products, and sell those products for a profit; the profit is determined by the fact that it takes skill (and time and money to train that skill) to turn these items into finished goods. In RS however, the most valuable commodity is not money (GP), but experience (XP). The reason people turn raw materials into finished products in RS is not to turn a profit (generally), but because of the XP gain involved (everyone wants to reach 99). Raw materials have a lot of "potential XP" stored in them. Finished products have little or no potential XP, therefore they are cheaper. In short, the reason that RS economy sells finished products cheaper than its raw materials is that finished products are "used up", the all valuable XP has been drained out. And that's why you cannot hope to make much money in RS skilling; selling off finished products isn't "showing off your skill, hard work and time", it's "dumping the unneeded remains after you used up their XP". The reason it becomes more obvious after the introduction of the GE is that before, these products had a difficult time getting to market, too much of a hassle for skillers and not always easily findable by buyers; now, the market is ubiquitous, easy to use and world-transcending. This doesn't "ruin" the economy, it rebalances the economy like connecting lakes with water that is at different levels in each lake; once the connection is made the waterlevel will balance out across all lakes. Note: You may find this surprising, but this came as a bit of a shock to some (early) developers at first, precisely because they forgot -or did not see- that XP is the valuable item here, not GP. It goes to show how unpredicable a market can be, and how easy it is to overlook some factors which turn out to be important. Never stare yourself blind on the fact that a market converts items to money and back, there may always be another -more valuable- factor at work. Money is just a convenient exchange mechanism, not always the only one. This is why "free" stuff on the internet can work at times, because sometimes the value of something is expressed in other things than money, such as getting the attention and time from people, both of which are finite commodities.

1) You don't need to actually go to court, sometimes filing a complaint with a consumer commission or just going through the startup motions is enough. 2) *Never ever* threaten to sue. 99.99% of people who threaten don't, and companies know this; you'll lose all credibility. If you want to initiate legal action, just do it. Contact a lawyer or legal representative and have *them* contact Jagex on your behalf. I advise using the angle of "membership payments lost" combined with "insufficient customer support" and "no feedback". The BBC has a consumer complaint division that will cover Jagex nicely, as they're both UK. There are some other UK organisations as well that accept business complaints.

Yeah, CET too. I always assume that the only correct time is in GMT and that all other times are derived from that; so when there is a discrepancy I go for the GMT time.

I was under the impression that (if pm is set to friends) unless you were on the (suspected) autoers friends list, he'll appear to you as offline and won't receive your PMs, regardless of whether he's on your friends list ? Plus, I think the pm-ing is a bad idea. Take me for example: Sending unsollicited pms nagging me will go unanswered AND you'll get a quick trip to my ignore list. Leaving you in the dark as to whether I'm a bot or not. If I PM back telling them to shut up, I'd be acknowledging them, and that's about as bad as replying to spam. "Ignore" is the keyword here.

I'm on it too It was a fun game, and yes we did gang up on him :-)

Regardless of the circumstances (and yes, always listen to both sides before crying foul), this brings up the point that companies like this may be tempted to ban higher accounts after ppl spent lots of money on them (if members), just to have to start over again and pay more money. This, coupled with the increasing importance of mmorpgs in the lives of the players, always makes me wonder whether a neutral commission or non-profit org should be set up to help players in their "communication" with these companies in the event of disputes. (eg. "account sharing" vs. "i was on a friends' computer"), lest these companies gain too much power over peoples lives. After all, RS is a virtual dictatorship; the company has the last word.

I agree; because people want them and more and more money is made and traded for them, the gp currency is the victim of inflation; the faster prices rise for these items, the worse the inflation will get. I remember Germany after WWI, there was a moment where people were being payed twice a day, because money devaluated so quickly that the morning's pay was only worth half by the evening. Imagine paying millions and millions for bread, and billions the next day. Runaway inflation is not a good thing; there must be checks and balances on the amount of money in the RS economy at any one time. Since there are more and more players making money, and especially with these rares costing more and more, there has to be a means to drain the excess gp out of the economy. Personally, I was thinking along the lines of a shop where phats and other rares can be bought, but at their high prices of millions of gp. That would be a good moneydrain to keep the amount of gp in the community stable and to allow phats to maintain their status as statussymbol.

I'm 25 and I like to play RS when I have time to relax a bit. It's nice to know there are some older players out there, because the generation gap with all these kids who never knew a world without the internet is huge :-) With regard to the 12 year olds who act like it, just do what everyone does with annoying children: ignore them :-)