Understanding & Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007

[qeltar]

NOTE: This is a remake of a thread from last night with the same title, which was destroyed by childish complaining and flaming. PLEASE respect the time required to make these articles and threads and try to post reasonable, on-topic comments. Thank you.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007

 

 

 

 

I have just published a special report on the current happenings in the RuneScape economy, which some of you may find an interesting read. My goal in the report is to shed light on what is really happening in the economy, explain the many reasons why the price drops have occurred, andÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ã

[qeltar]

Here are some replies to the (few) actual on-topic responses from the prior thread:

 

 

 

Fredz: Thanks. Yes, the power-leveling using low-level items is a big part of the problem. It's part of why there are far too many items like Sara brews, iron ore and dragonhide sets in the game. The solution is better, high-XP high-level activities, preferably ones that produce in-demand consumables, or that give XP without creating items that must be sold.

 

 

 

berbatovsky: If the term "crash" applies, as you pasted, to "steep double-digit percentage losses" characterized by "panic selling and abrupt, dramatic price declines", then this is a crash, as I said. As for your comments about merchants, they are mostly exaggerated. Very little of what we are seeing now is because of merchants being removed from the picture. In fact, the GE's flaws are ensuring that merchants will be with us for a long time to come.

 

 

 

Ts_Stormrage: The GE fills large buy orders as the sellers put in items. If you saw them in 100's it was just coincidence.

[casthewiz]

Thank You for taking the time for reposting this qeltar.

 

 

 

Oh, and it was quite a good read. Not sure what i'm going to do to make money these days....

[Sy_Accursed]

I have yet to see any form of market "crash"

 

 

 

Yes many items feel as people tried out the GE, but none really crashed IMO.

 

 

 

And for current trends most, if not all, items are now stabilised or going back up a bit as the GE settles into being.

 

 

 

Sure there are many items in the economy that are cheaper than they should be due to being low leveled and gd xp, but hey they were always there, its nothing new.

 

 

 

People are far to preoccupied with finding things happening in the market. If everyone was right it'd be crashing one day and booming the next, but it's not. In over a year not a single major product/resource has changed dramatically in price or had any value leaps. Sure some have changed, but only gradually and even then most have gained or lost 10% value at most in their past 2 years.

 

 

 

Only major changes I see are new items, eg Godswords, falling because their "normal" supply rate has yet to be established.

[qeltar]

I have yet to see any form of market "crash"

 

 

 

 

I have to wonder how well you've looked, then.

 

 

 

The vast majority of the common items transacted in the game are down by over 25%, and some by more than 50%, in just a couple of weeks.

 

 

 

The items that have dropped are across the board -- everything from ores to herbs to potions to seeds to bowstrings to runes to armor and weapons.

 

 

 

That's a crash.

[Sy_Accursed]

admittedly I haven't been able top get on rs much lately.

 

 

 

But with a basic concept of economics I doubt this is a crash, just a fluctuation as people tried out the GE. No different from the huge value crash when construction came out. Give it til mid jan and I am 75% certain all of these items will near enough be back in their usual price range.

 

 

 

A few weeks of items being cheap hardly constitutes a crash, a crash implies the economy is no longer working. Unless everything becomes under 1% of its traditional vlaue and remains there for many months - years it is not a crash.

[qeltar]

A few weeks of items being cheap hardly constitutes a crash, a crash implies the economy is no longer working.

 

 

 

Sorry, but that's not what a crash means at all. Perhaps that definition is why you don't think we just had one.

 

 

 

It simply means a fast, steep drop in prices across a wide variety of market segments.

[shakaz]

What you call a crash many others call a readjustment. It's similar to the housing market now. Smart merchanters started the price rises, stupid greedy merchanters accelerated it, then a mix of others greedily jumped in. The GE pulled the curtain away from the market and opened it up for all to see and to realize that goods were more abundant than previously thought.

 

 

 

I felt this was a more balanced article that looked at a broader range of what's causing the market adjustment but still one sided in your beliefs. It seems you've made your decision and are trying to force the pieces to fit. Yes a good amount of the pieces fit already but you're stretching it on others.

 

 

 

EX. Why is it ridiculous that potions are so low in cost? From your own arguments it's supply mainly causing the drop with a dash of panic thrown in. You've stated that the old market hid all these goods and which caused the prices to be what they were before the GE came out. So what's really ridiculous here, the prices before the GE came out or the prices now? The old prices were based on a severe lack of information and a much more inefficient market, but it's the new prices that are ridiculous?

[icecube]

@Paw_Claw

 

 

 

Economic failure doesn't always follow a Market Crash.

 

 

 

If you look at the definition of a stock market crash you'll see that:

 

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market.

 

 

 

Though there are numerous differences between our economy and real-life, the concept is still the same. Prices dropped significantly when GE came out for many items. Even though our economy is fine (a bit flooded with items), the phenomena still can be called a crash.

 

 

 

Also if you look at the Black Friday (stock crash in 1980's), there was no economic failure afterwards, no second Great Depression.

 

 

 

I think the association of market crashes with the Great Depression gives many people the wrong idea of what it really is.

[qeltar]

Smart merchanters started the price rises, stupid greedy merchanters accelerated it, then a mix of others greedily jumped in.

 

 

The price rises before the GE and the drops after it had very little to do with merchants. There are still plenty of them around anyway.

 

 

I felt this was a more balanced article that looked at a broader range of what's causing the market adjustment but still one sided in your beliefs. It seems you've made your decision and are trying to force the pieces to fit. Yes a good amount of the pieces fit already but you're stretching it on others.

 

 

"Made my decision"? I don't understand what you mean. The article explains what is going on, and specifically avoids claiming whether it is good or bad. In fact, I have mainly argued to open up the GE (remove price controls) and let the market go where it will.

 

 

EX. Why is it ridiculous that potions are so low in cost? From your own arguments it's supply mainly causing the drop with a dash of panic thrown in.

 

 

I called the prices of some potions ridiculous because I believe people are panic dumping them. In some cases they are selling potions for 1/3 of the cost of the components, in huge quantities, just because they fear prices going even lower still. Most of these people will be kicking themselves in a few weeks.

 

 

The old prices were based on a severe lack of information and a much more inefficient market, but it's the new prices that are ridiculous?

 

I already said that I believe that some of the old prices were inflated due to inefficiencies, but some of the new prices have overcorrected, going far below what I would have expected a reasonable correction to be. That's especially true in some areas of Herblore.

[tryto]

I agree with Qeltar's point, and I understand where he is coming from, but luckily in Runescape, we have high Alchemy. This will prevent prices on most items from dropping too much(unless Jagex stops it like they are doing with Rune Meds) or sellers hopefully will stop selling and buyers will snap up the deals. I believe that eventually, the markets will correct themselves. Its just taking longer with the market caps in place.

[Barihawk]

Actually Qeltar, several people have been praying for this kind of deflation over the years. Shiva and I would spend a lot of time at Shiloh discussing possible solutions to the hyper-inflated market.

 

 

 

Case example of hyper-inflation: Santa Hats. Over a period of 4 months they went from 400k to 8 million, and within months after that up to over 25 million gp. Kind of odd behavior from an item that had remained at 200-400k for years. We blamed price manipulation.

 

 

 

Magic training to end all magic training: High Alchemy. A classic case of hyper-inflation. Less items and more money. Considering the items back up the gold's worth, GP became less valuable and prices increased. This was invisible of course, and also manipulated by merchants who simply preached "inflation!" to justify prices.

 

 

 

Shiva and I talked about a grand market like the GE. How using it Jagex could forcefully wrangle the economy (conspiracy-theory all you want, I admit that they DO want to reign the economy in as a way of controlling gold bots).

 

 

 

All these prices coming down are simply expressing the fact that buying and selling is no longer invisible, and Merchants are losing their strangleholds on the market. With the GE all servers are linked, making the Gold vs Backup situation more favorable, with backup items now available in mass quantities, making gold more valuable.

 

 

 

I would not call this a crash, unless you were one of the merchants who were profiting from inflation. For 96% of the Runescape population, this "crash" is one of the better things that could possible happen to the RS economy. The only people who should be concerned are those who have been hording items in order to make more money. In which case I don't care, because greed pays off eventually.

[shakaz]

Smart merchanters started the price rises, stupid greedy merchanters accelerated it, then a mix of others greedily jumped in.

 

 

The price rises before the GE and the drops after it had very little to do with merchants. There are still plenty of them around anyway.

 

 

I felt this was a more balanced article that looked at a broader range of what's causing the market adjustment but still one sided in your beliefs. It seems you've made your decision and are trying to force the pieces to fit. Yes a good amount of the pieces fit already but you're stretching it on others.

 

 

"Made my decision"? I don't understand what you mean. The article explains what is going on, and specifically avoids claiming whether it is good or bad. In fact, I have mainly argued to open up the GE (remove price controls) and let the market go where it will.

 

 

EX. Why is it ridiculous that potions are so low in cost? From your own arguments it's supply mainly causing the drop with a dash of panic thrown in.

 

 

I called the prices of some potions ridiculous because I believe people are panic dumping them. In some cases they are selling potions for 1/3 of the cost of the components, in huge quantities, just because they fear prices going even lower still. Most of these people will be kicking themselves in a few weeks.

 

 

The old prices were based on a severe lack of information and a much more inefficient market, but it's the new prices that are ridiculous?

 

I already said that I believe that some of the old prices were inflated due to inefficiencies, but some of the new prices have overcorrected, going far below what I would have expected a reasonable correction to be. That's especially true in some areas of Herblore.

 

 

 

Only 3 things to say.

 

1. Much better article than the previous one.

 

2. You've been negative against the GE from the get go. This article tames that down severely and offers a much broader dissection of the economy, but having kept up on the GE discussion you still appear to have an ultimate conclusion that the GE is all wrong because it doesn't fit 100% your idea of the perfect market.

 

3. Lastly, as said above, much more reasonable article but you regularly contradict yourself through your analysis and cherry pick the portions of your argument that suit your conclusion. Every response of yours to my post was basically, 'I already said that, it doesnt' apply here, my conclusion is correct.'

[mega_vegeta6]

I took a break this summer, my membership ran out some days around midsummer. At the time the prices had stabled on good prices, or at least most items had(Yews that had been 300 ea for ages dropped to even 220ea once :wink: ). ill list The common fletcher items, also miscellania:

 

(note everything is out of my memory.)

 

 

 

Flax- 100 each in most cases, autoers had dropped forum prices to 90 but still profitable picking them. You get 1,2k each day in misc. so you would easily get that 75k back.

 

Bowstring - They were 180-200 each. Spinnig flax made 100%profit. if you spun all your flax from misc. you made around 110k profit on flax only.

 

Yews- They were 300 each since around i started playing. As said they dropped to 220ea then rose to 250 each.

 

Maple logs - started around 150 each falling until its stabled for half a year on 100 each. you would get around a half thousand each day and the bird nests wich held seeds(i got 4mages and 1spirit from these, and 100 acorns nothing to brag about), Rings(Dueling rings, ring of forging, ring of life if you had the runes to enchant them) and the casual bird egg.

 

Nature runes - 300 each so long i can remember actually.

 

 

 

 

 

Now... while i was f2p i didnt play at all exept for the casual checking on my friends. When i got back somewhere in late october the prices was really messed up.

 

 

 

 

 

Flax - they had dropped to 80-90, i sold 20k flax for 85 each as i knew they was gonna fall even lower.

 

Bowstring - actually i dunno :oops: .

 

Yew logs - 380 each was ridiculous to me. as i knew autoers was the ones gaining on this i kept away from buying anything.

 

Maple logs - they were from 100 each to 60 each in a few months! and i had been saving my maples for a firemaking cape, so i had around 44k maples stashed in bank, for me valued 4,4m but to the rest of the world, around 2,5m.

 

Nature runes - 310 each. i made my own nats cause of the prices.

 

 

 

Now as you see, the price for making yew longs then alching them, makes close to no profit. The hard blow for me was flax prices as they hardly could support the 75k per day fee from misc. and still give me some profit day to day. A month later and along comes the Grand Exchange. "neat, this will be cool. and maybe the price of yew will fall!".

 

 

 

Now you all know what happened,

 

 

 

Flax dropped to 60 each.

 

Bowstring fell a few 10'ths.

 

Yew logs fell to 360 then rose to 380 again.though that is minimum price, the maket value is 401 each.

 

Maple logs Fell to 44 each, and my stack became utterly a waste of possible money in my pocket.

 

Nature runes held a grip around the 300 each but gave up, soon reaching 260 each.

 

 

 

I dont make much moey exept for miscellania. on top of this i lost my trusty cav that makes a 8th of my wealth. making money for me is hopeless as i fail on any kind of moneymaking exept gathering resources. This makes the GE a kind of hate object for me :( .

 

 

 

 

 

Ps.

 

Qeltar, i see you around the runescapes forums alot too :roll: .

[Earth_Poet]

What normally corrects price drops is bargain hunting: buyers who jump in to buy items that have been oversold. In a normal market the draw of such bargains is very great, due to the sharp declines that occur in an oversupplied market. Here, the price limits reduce the incentive for buyers to come in and rebalance the market, because they too see prices going down every day and most figure they are better off to wait.Sellers are unable to move their goods because prices on the GE donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t drop as fast as outside it, and watching the prices go down day after day increases feelings of panic. This leads to frustration and contributes to irrational ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅdumpingÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

[Celestrana]

Actually Qeltar, several people have been praying for this kind of deflation over the years. Shiva and I would spend a lot of time at Shiloh discussing possible solutions to the hyper-inflated market.

 

 

 

Case example of hyper-inflation: Santa Hats. Over a period of 4 months they went from 400k to 8 million, and within months after that up to over 25 million gp. Kind of odd behavior from an item that had remained at 200-400k for years. We blamed price manipulation.

 

 

 

Magic training to end all magic training: High Alchemy. A classic case of hyper-inflation. Less items and more money. Considering the items back up the gold's worth, GP became less valuable and prices increased. This was invisible of course, and also manipulated by merchants who simply preached "inflation!" to justify prices.

 

 

 

Shiva and I talked about a grand market like the GE. How using it Jagex could forcefully wrangle the economy (conspiracy-theory all you want, I admit that they DO want to reign the economy in as a way of controlling gold bots).

 

 

 

All these prices coming down are simply expressing the fact that buying and selling is no longer invisible, and Merchants are losing their strangleholds on the market. With the GE all servers are linked, making the Gold vs Backup situation more favorable, with backup items now available in mass quantities, making gold more valuable.

 

 

 

I would not call this a crash, unless you were one of the merchants who were profiting from inflation. For 96% of the Runescape population, this "crash" is one of the better things that could possible happen to the RS economy. The only people who should be concerned are those who have been hording items in order to make more money. In which case I don't care, because greed pays off eventually.

 

 

 

God bless the Grand Exchange! I totally agree that it was the middle-men and middle-women that grossly inflated and manipulated the actual worth of items. I'm glad the GE is making the lives of many people easier when it comes to buying resources for skilling.

[RU_Insane]

NOTE: This is a remake of a thread from last night with the same title, which was destroyed by childish complaining and flaming. PLEASE respect the time required to make these articles and threads and try to post reasonable, on-topic comments. Thank you.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007

 

 

 

 

I have just published a special report on the current happenings in the RuneScape economy, which some of you may find an interesting read. My goal in the report is to shed light on what is really happening in the economy, explain the many reasons why the price drops have occurred, andÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ã

[qeltar]

Thanks for the comments everyone. A few replies.

 

 

 

tryto: The problem is that most items in the game are not tied to high alch values, because Jagex has set alch values far from their real market value. The ones where high alch values come into play are the minority.

 

 

 

Barihawk: You make some valid points, but really go too far in saying that this is good for everyone but merchants. It has had a major negative impact on skillers as well, especially ones who were trying to raise skills without taking a big financial hit.

 

 

 

jp7725: Being independent in terms of skills means that the market prices are not terribly important. Some people do play this way, though they are becoming increasingly rare.

 

 

 

Geekguy: Thanks for your kind words. :P Um, if you don't see a market crash, it's because you don't WANT to see a market crash. Your criticism of my preview is valid -- that's what happens when you make predictions. I compounded the problem here because I was using the word 'crash' there to refer to the ECONOMY as a whole, which certainly has not crashed, even though market prices did.

[deep_pain]

I think it's just a matter of adapting, a lot of the more common items were always this cheap or cheaper if you were a merchant.

 

 

 

For example natures (or gems or laws, lobs, shark, str pots or ores etc etc), people would go onto f2p buy natures in dribs and drabs from f2p'ers in varrock w1 at silly prices.. say 150 or 200ea then sell on members for 300+ea, you'd see them all the time. Now these people can sell directly to the exchange there is no need for the middle man and prices have found their more realistic level.

 

 

 

A lot of items that were easily available were often bought by merchants at prices much lower than the GE price today and sold at prices much higher than ge today because merchants know they can make a profit buying 100 or 200 at a time, when people working on skills or whatver want 1k.. 10k or 100k at a time and didnt want the bother of looking around, the prices are just balancing somewhere in between now.

 

 

 

A lot of items have stayed around the same price.. law runes pop into my head for one.

 

 

 

The price crash shouldn't effect anyone too much, you can see how low my non-combats are, but I've found making money far easier in the past few days than I ever did before off of my non-combat skills.

 

 

 

I also merchanted a couple of items I couldn't refuse. I have stopped doing this now as it was getting repetative and I'm not a GP junkie, more a PK junkie (thus why such bad non-combats). I dont want to ruin it for anyone else who might still be doing it, but basically there is an item on the exchange that if you buy it, do something to it that takes less than 10 seconds you can sell it for 40k more than you bought it, the unmodified version was easy to buy and the modified version sold like hotcakes. I made over 4m in less than 20 mins when I first found it.

 

 

 

The item is still proitable I think tho maybe more people hav realised this now. I'm sure a few more people would have found it since. There were quite a few other things I made a quick profit on too, either buying off the exchange and selling outside or buying off and selling on. As I say I am not a merchant, I don't see a pont in having more money than I need because the only stats I work on are combat and cooking.

 

 

 

G.E. is an amazing update, I've been wanting simular for years now to save time and hassle and so I dont have to go on w2.

 

 

 

If merchants are unable to adapt I question the fact they were ever merchants, they maybe stumbled across something that made a profit and stuck with it, because to me part of being a merchant is market adaptability. If they're unable to adapt to the market, they are not merchants.

 

 

 

If as you say the whole market is crashing, well for the average player that makes no difference. The main problem in the real world when the markets crash is the fact people have debts, banks have debts, companies have debts, even those in profit often need liquid cash, runescapers shouldn't really have debts, there are no interest rates.

 

 

 

If all prices on the market drops, well what does it mattter? people will make less money, but items will cost less.. no big worry.

 

 

 

One question I have do you think Jagex have capped bottom prices on some items, there are a few things that seem to have stopped at exactly the old price of nats below their high alc value, yet you can still buy them really easily at bottom price for days now.

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

 

 

sorry for such a long post

 

 

 

and excuse the typos, they are mainly due to my keyboard batteries running out, as you can see they are nearly all missing letters, so please no learn how to type/spell posts :P

[TheAncient]

NOTE: This is a remake of a thread from last night with the same title, which was destroyed by childish complaining and flaming. PLEASE respect the time required to make these articles and threads and try to post reasonable, on-topic comments. Thank you.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

TruthScape Special Reports - Understanding and Surviving the RuneScape Market Crash of 2007

 

 

 

 

I have just published a special report on the current happenings in the RuneScape economy, which some of you may find an interesting read. My goal in the report is to shed light on what is really happening in the economy, explain the many reasons why the price drops have occurred, andÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ã

[berbatovsky]

Sorry for the de-rail of your last thread Qeltar is was not my intention.

 

 

 

I still think merchant cabals lead to the inflated price we saw before the GE, you underestimate what these guys were doing and how many of them there were, on the forums its the same 100 or so people selling stuff ( like 100 people selling herbs, 100 different people selling pots and so on) they circulate offers for hundreds of thousands of goods and slowly resell at a profit, no way were nats worth 300 based on demand, they are one of the most common slayer drops, quick to make and quick to buy, so why were they 300each when law runes were the same but considerably rarer? Because merchants were constantly circulating bids, mostly between each other, creating a false view of what was going on. If you wanted to buy nats for 280/290 each you COULDN'T on the forums because that was merchant land, but on world 1/2 the banks around all the servers you could. The GE removed this inefficiency and people can now buy for the TRUE value for a VERY common item.

 

 

 

I still don't think heres been a crash even of prices because I have only seen a few things that have dropped 10% or more in a couple of days(has anyone got information pertaining to this or a link to any? Because I can't even remember the old price ranges for things like super energy pots).

[TheAncient]

Sorry for the de-rail of your last thread Qeltar is was not my intention.

 

 

 

I still think merchant cabals lead to the inflated price we saw before the GE, you underestimate what these guys were doing and how many of them there were, on the forums its the same 100 or so people selling stuff ( like 100 people selling herbs, 100 different people selling pots and so on) they circulate offers for hundreds of thousands of goods and slowly resell at a profit, no way were nats worth 300 based on demand, they are one of the most common slayer drops, quick to make and quick to buy, so why were they 300each when law runes were the same but considerably rarer? Because merchants were constantly circulating bids, mostly between each other, creating a false view of what was going on. If you wanted to buy nats for 280/290 each you COULDN'T on the forums because that was merchant land, but on world 1/2 the banks around all the servers you could. The GE removed this inefficiency and people can now buy for the TRUE value for a VERY common item.

 

 

 

I still don't think heres been a crash even of prices because I have only seen a few things that have dropped 10% or more in a couple of days(has anyone got information pertaining to this or a link to any? Because I can't even remember the old price ranges for things like super energy pots).

 

 

 

I highly doubt that there used to be this stratified merchanting class that owned the materials markets. Materials were simply too inflexible in price and too plentiful to be manipulated on a big scale by a few people, if even a few hundred people.

 

 

 

The market was fundamentally flawed, which caused price inflation. Qeltar's article agrees with this idea.

[berbatovsky]

Sorry for the de-rail of your last thread Qeltar is was not my intention.

 

 

 

I still think merchant cabals lead to the inflated price we saw before the GE, you underestimate what these guys were doing and how many of them there were, on the forums its the same 100 or so people selling stuff ( like 100 people selling herbs, 100 different people selling pots and so on) they circulate offers for hundreds of thousands of goods and slowly resell at a profit, no way were nats worth 300 based on demand, they are one of the most common slayer drops, quick to make and quick to buy, so why were they 300each when law runes were the same but considerably rarer? Because merchants were constantly circulating bids, mostly between each other, creating a false view of what was going on. If you wanted to buy nats for 280/290 each you COULDN'T on the forums because that was merchant land, but on world 1/2 the banks around all the servers you could. The GE removed this inefficiency and people can now buy for the TRUE value for a VERY common item.

 

 

 

I still don't think heres been a crash even of prices because I have only seen a few things that have dropped 10% or more in a couple of days(has anyone got information pertaining to this or a link to any? Because I can't even remember the old price ranges for things like super energy pots).

 

 

 

I highly doubt that there used to be this stratified merchanting class that owned the materials markets. Materials were simply too inflexible in price and too plentiful to be manipulated on a big scale by a few people, if even a few hundred people.

 

 

 

The market was fundamentally flawed, which caused price inflation. Qeltar's article agrees with this idea.

 

 

 

Look at the forums for a couple of days, the same names pop up over and over.When you have say 500k of an item a day being sold and 200k comes from one person you can safely say that manipulation is not only possible but probable. And it is just plain fact that merchants bought low(from banks) and sold high (on forums) it doesn't even matter if they were organised or not (my feeling is they were) the same principal applies.

[qeltar]

 

no way were nats worth 300 based on demand, they are one of the most common slayer drops, quick to make and quick to buy, so why were they 300each when law runes were the same but considerably rarer?

 

 

First, if nats weren't worth 300 based on demand, nobody would have bought them for 300. Simple as that.

 

 

 

Second, nats are *not* common slayer drops -- they are far less common as drops than deaths and bloods, for example.

 

 

 

Third, laws were usually over 300.

 

 

Because merchants were constantly circulating bids, mostly between each other, creating a false view of what was going on. If you wanted to buy nats for 280/290 each you COULDN'T on the forums because that was merchant land, but on world 1/2 the banks around all the servers you could. The GE removed this inefficiency and people can now buy for the TRUE value for a VERY common item.

 

 

The efficiency issue is valid, but has nothing to do with price manipulation. Merchants charged more because it took time for them to accumulate smaller quantities of items, and people were willing to pay more to buy 10k or 20k of nats at once rather than buying them 50 or 100 at a time.

 

 

I still don't think heres been a crash even of prices because I have only seen a few things that have dropped 10% or more in a couple of days(has anyone got information pertaining to this or a link to any? Because I can't even remember the old price ranges for things like super energy pots).

 

 

 

If you can't remember the old prices then how can you say there hasn't been a crash? That doesn't make any sense at all.

 

 

 

I do remember the old prices and so do most others, and the crash in prices is very real. Just a few examples:

 

 

 

Super energy pots: used to be 1.5k to 2k each; I have bought them as cheap as 500.

 

 

 

Snapdragon seeds: before, up to 40k each, now 25k or so.

 

 

 

Sara brews: I've bought them as low as 1.1k each; no joke.

 

 

 

Ranarrs and prayer pots: Down at least 30% if not more.

 

 

 

Coal: used to be 190-200, dipped down into the 150s before recovering.

 

 

 

Iron ore: down from 100-110 to 70 or so.

 

 

 

Maple logs: down from 60-70 to 40.

 

 

 

Sharks: down from 900 or so to 650 or thereabouts.

 

 

 

There are HUNDREDS of other examples.

 

And it is just plain fact that merchants bought low(from banks) and sold high (on forums) it doesn't even matter if they were organised or not (my feeling is they were) the same principal applies.

 

 

That's not price manipulation, it's arbitrage.

[RU_Insane]

Thanks for the comments everyone. A few replies.

 

 

 

tryto: The problem is that most items in the game are not tied to high alch values, because Jagex has set alch values far from their real market value. The ones where high alch values come into play are the minority.

 

 

 

Barihawk: You make some valid points, but really go too far in saying that this is good for everyone but merchants. It has had a major negative impact on skillers as well, especially ones who were trying to raise skills without taking a big financial hit.

 

 

 

jp7725: Being independent in terms of skills means that the market prices are not terribly important. Some people do play this way, though they are becoming increasingly rare.

 

 

 

Geekguy: Thanks for your kind words. :P Um, if you don't see a market crash, it's because you don't WANT to see a market crash. Your criticism of my preview is valid -- that's what happens when you make predictions. I compounded the problem here because I was using the word 'crash' there to refer to the ECONOMY as a whole, which certainly has not crashed, even though market prices did.

 

 

 

OK, sorry for my rudeness earlier. But if the market is crashing, don't you think there is a way to get the prices back up? IMO, I believe this might get sorted out anyway. The market outside of GE has merchants buying low, and selling high, because the economy hasn't crashed, when you think about it that way. Maybe I should merchant in an effort to save the market? :P