I agreed with a lot of your scores although I think you seriously underrated Tarn's Lair. The reward is great for power training, and the Terror Dogs are not nearly as bad as you make them out to be. I've done several clan trips down there, where a team of 4-8 of us go to kill those, and we get at least 1-2 granite helms a person as well as hundreds of nice runes, and quite a few alchs. It's nearly as good as ice trolls if you have a team of at least 2-3.

 

 

 

Also, while Zilyana is the most difficult GWD by conventional methods, she is the one boss where there is always an extremely easy method way to defeat her, I.E. Red Chinchompas on Starlight. Even now I guarantee there are some hidden methods to kill her that aren't publicly known.

 

 

 

Other than that, I found it hard to disagree with a lot of your rankings.

Well, I don't agree with you. I think RS should have a higher grade, since it's still a great game.

I can't argue with a lot of those articles. I don't have the time, understandably, to read every single one of them, but the ones I read were well thought out and analytical.

 

 

 

There is still one major concern I have though, and it's most noticeable with your comments about the GE; you still seem to see the game through the eyes purely of a Western, democratic Capitalism-supporting man. If that's what you feel is best for the game, then that's a perfectly valid view. When you use words like "draconian" to describe their centralised control of the RS market, it becomes a problem for me personally though.

 

 

 

At points like that, your politics seem to cloud your judgement slightly. You almost seem to imply Jagex are absolutely 100% completely out of their minds and wrong for wanting to control prices. However, there are a great many of us that feel the price controls are actually good and encourage selling on the Exchange. For instance, there was a deadlock just before the Exchange where yew log sellers are selling way too high for fletchers to afford. The GE in effect forces cashflow in the market, and I can't really see that as a bad thing personally.

 

 

 

Yes, the GE has its faults and I was one of the first to make my feelings known about it. But nowhere has Jagex stated its game represents the real-world's free market, and you shouldn't write with the presumption that's how the game should be.

 

 

 

Apart from that though, like I said, I can't disagree with most of the content. :)

Well, I don't agree with you. I think RS should have a higher grade, since it's still a great game.

He was basing his report card on what Jagex has done this year not on what it has done in the past.

Ginger Warrior, my support of a free market is for several reasons.

 

 

 

1. Jagex *claims* that this is what *they* want. Here's a direct quote:

 

 

The prices items sell at are therefore not set by Jagex but by the players themselves! We are keen to keep a player-driven economy, so the prices are worked out using the supply and demand rules above. We will only intervene as a last resort, and only if we think price manipulation is going on, although the system has lots of safeguards to prevent that.

 

 

So I am holding their feet to the fire on this. If they really don't want a free market, then they should be honest and say so.

 

 

 

2. Free markets work. Centrally planned markets fail. This is due to simple economic principles and human nature, and has always been true since trading began.

 

 

 

3. Practicality: the GE as currently implemented doesn't let me buy and sell items I want to buy and sell.

 

 

 

4. Adaptability: the current price restrictions mean that every time the game changes, item values will change and we won't be able to buy or sell those items.

 

 

 

5. Fairness: having price restrictions is unfair to people who want to buy and sell for what they consider the value of items to be.

 

 

 

6. Freedom matters.

 

 

 

7. The dynamic nature of the RS economy is a good aspect of the game. Centrally-controlled markets are boring as hell.

 

 

 

8. Restricted markets stifle creativity, by providing a disincentive to those who would choose to develop new uses for products, or new services to help others.

Yes, like I said. You're perfectly allowed to have that opinion. But when you name a website with a name like "TruthScape", most people expect it to be impartial, and at points, it's clear there's an almost-partisan bias to it.

 

 

 

I don't mean to be overly critical because the articles you write are deeply analytical, a great read and mostly consist of strong justified arguments, believe me. That's just a small criticism I have of them.

GW, I am not impartial and never claimed to be. I do try to separate my attempts at fact-based reporting from my opinion pieces, but I am (obviously) very opinionated and will not try to hide that fact.

 

 

 

If there are any good arguments against free markets, I haven't seen them. A certain degree of limitations to prevent abuse is fine, but the current system doesn't work properly. It stifles trade, destroys incentives, makes creativity unworthwhile, and dumbs the game down.

 

 

 

For God's sake, this morning I went to the GE and I couldn't even buy *water runes*. How much more basic can you get than that? How can an exchange be considered anything but dysfunctional when even basics can't be purchased due to idiotic price ceilings?

 

 

 

This is *exactly* what I predicted would happen in an article published the very day the GE came out, and another one after the 3k trade limit was announced.

As an English man, I am part of the western civilization where freedom does indeed matter, however at the same time, England being England.... we are very used to almost totally freedom within preset boundaries, I know in the British economy there are allot of restrictions of the sale of alot of goods interms of price as well as other things.... and so the new Runescape economy is more exadurated copy of what exists in the real world....

 

 

 

 

 

However when I read about the restrictions at first i considered them to be far to constricting, and defiantly a major restriction.... now there are some clear aspects and prices that need tweaking (I personally think you exadurate when you mention 100's of items) but over all I have come round to the GE restrictions as there are... and feel that the restrictions are not as restricting as I would have thought... Seems fine (to me) now.

 

 

 

 

 

-----

 

 

 

 

 

getting off the GE topic, and coming back to another report, I actually don't agree with your praise of the party hall update.

 

 

 

I don't think they did enough testing with large numbers of people...

 

 

 

It seems when there is a large drop, and every banker allows free teleports directly there around 1/3rd of the server suddenly piles into the party hall overloading the server.

 

 

 

 

 

I know alot of people who are just kicked out of the world with no "connection lost" message... just because the servers are not able to cope with the amount of traffic.

 

 

 

It's like the heart of the old world 2, with everybody running around... I would personally say this can be fixed by stopping the free teleports, or making the advertising area smaller.... but I would currently give it a rating of C-

I'm afraid I have to say something similar with Bobbington in regards to Castle Wars. TBH, I detest it now.

 

 

 

Castle Wars at the beginning of the year was a strategic minigame generally mature and able characters played. Now it's a cesspool of PKers, and you have to wait a whole minute before starting a game because the sheer weight of all the data will kick you out otherwise.

 

 

 

Castle Wars should never have been given two worlds; one at most. I liked the small 10ish vs. 10ish games; your strategic ability actually made the game fun and your presence worthwhile. It should also have been taken into consideration in regards to PvP wilderness combat being destroyed, and an alternative released before PvP combat was removed.

 

 

 

As for the GE, I'm not completely on Jagex's side and I agree when you say it could be improved. It's a feature that's long been needed to cope with the speed of the RS economy; a poorly moderated (no offence bobbington - you all do a great job but the RSOF simply has too much traffic) forums could never suffice.

 

 

 

However, there shouldn't be a completely free market. Scamming was rife and to make a complete reversal would play into the RWT hand's, just when we think they're dead. Instead, the prices of ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ5% should only be advisory, and real restriction should be something along the lines of ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ50% for incredibly cheap items, with that percentage getting lower as the value of items increases (to about ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ5% again for something like a full dragon set).

A*

 

 

 

The RWTs took a huge blow, F2P got a nice lot of updates and summoning is well on its way. I'm extremely happy :D

 

As for the GE, I'm not completely on Jagex's side and I agree when you say it could be improved. It's a feature that's long been needed to cope with the speed of the RS economy; a poorly moderated (no offence bobbington - you all do a great job but the RSOF simply has too much traffic) forums could never suffice.

 

 

 

 

Interms of the forums for the GE... it is obvious that the current thread is not working, which is (i guess) why they are introducing the whole forum for it.... Now I don't know anything more than you do about how this forum will work, and i assume that as it has it's own Jagex team dedicated to it that the forums moderators will have very little to do there other than the standard getting rid of spam and very obvious attempts at price manipulations.

 

 

 

 

 

I would guess it to be a slow (ish) moving forum, with the speed of a normal day in Future updates (it that scale means anything to anybody? :P).

 

 

 

I am under no illusions that the current systems to keep prices accurate are adequate..... but I am sure it will work out just fine and dandy :)

I'm afraid I have to say something similar with Bobbington in regards to Castle Wars. TBH, I detest it now.

 

 

 

[ ... ]

 

 

 

Castle Wars should never have been given two worlds; one at most. I liked the small 10ish vs. 10ish games; your strategic ability actually made the game fun and your presence worthwhile. It should also have been taken into consideration in regards to PvP wilderness combat being destroyed, and an alternative released before PvP combat was removed.

 

 

 

I agree with this assessment. The PvP mini-games in RuneScape are not working as they should and need at least 6 months, if not a year or more, of dedicated review and work. They certainly do not act, in my view as a replacement for the game-play that was removed.

 

 

 

As long as Jagex is willing to continue to admit that and work on the problems I believe they should at least be given the opportunity to improve things. After all the weeks of condemnation by those who'd already made the decision to leave for other 'virtual worlds' has achieved none of their goals in terms of roll-back.

 

 

 

That may sound harsh coming from me, but I'm allowed as a player and paying member to offer my honest feedback, on what I feel are improvements that need to be made to features.

 

 

 

As for the GE, I'm not completely on Jagex's side and I agree when you say it could be improved. It's a feature that's long been needed to cope with the speed of the RS economy; a poorly moderated (no offence bobbington - you all do a great job but the RSOF simply has too much traffic) forums could never suffice.

 

 

 

I think by Jagex's admission it isn't working as it should.

 

 

 

While it's certainly not ideal (far from it it's borderline unworkable with too many items) it's genuine feedback from players like yourself, Qeltar and many other players besides who will ensure things are modified so that they do as Jagex wishes for us to feel as a 'full replacement'.

 

 

 

I'm not quite convinced that the G.E. should replace all person to person trades, certainly not for proven and experienced players. However that's an entirely different rant I'm assisting other player's with on the RSOF.

 

 

 

Instead, the prices of ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ5% should only be advisory, and real restriction should be something along the lines of ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ50% for incredibly cheap items, with that percentage getting lower as the value of items increases (to about ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâñ5% again for something like a full dragon set).

 

 

 

I actually agree with this to a limited extent.

 

 

 

For the cheapest Items under a certain amounts the limits should not apply to Custom Pricing button. Players should be able to set their own custom prices for these items, but obviously not to ridiculous levels.

 

 

 

Why? Well anyone who reads the posts by Blizzard GMs on the W.o.W forums (they don't have volunteer moderators; they do have MVPs though) have no sympathy for those who wish to RMTing (they don't call it RWTing) and will ban all associated accounts if sighted on their forums or in the game.

 

 

 

When Jagex says it was discussing with experts in the Industry it sounds distinctly like there's been a conclave of developers from all the Major MMOs at recent E3s (Electronic Entertainment Expo). There is some evidence for reason to believe they've been collaborating on their efforts to either take over role of RMT (like Sony's attempt in EverQuest II RMT exchange) or else take distinct measures to push illegal traders out of games. Regardless, game developers obviously see such illegal traders as unwelcome guests in the games they maintain and develop.

 

 

 

Gold-spam as it's referred to in W.o.W has been a severe and controversial problem on their forums of late with threads full of any posters needed to be placated by Blizzard's latest attempts to eliminate this menace from their games. Sadly, this has meant a further and comparably severe limitations to their Free Accounts, virtually disabling most of the major features, and communication abilities. Free Accounts on W.o.W aren't even allowed to trade on their trade exchanges.

 

 

 

Back to the idea of improvements for the G.E. though...

 

 

 

I believe the price matching process of the G.E. though already takes care of obvious attempts to set an unusual price on items to by-pass anonymous trades in the following fashion:

 

 

 

When an item is priced for sale (to sell):

 

- It's matched against existing buy offers, at or above offered prices.

 

- Later buy offers are matched against it, at or below offered prices.

 

 

 

When an item is priced for purchase (to buy):

 

- It's matched against existing sell offers at or below offered prices.

 

- Later sell offers are matched against it at or above offered prices.

 

 

 

This is how if we place our offers later and we can get change if there were matches that give us the better deal. This probably cleans out a lot of items from the system that are within going price ranges.

 

 

 

Apparently what had occurred in the earlier versions of W.o.W auction houses was there was deliberate over-pricing or under pricing items of items, and other delivery exploits had generated surprisingly familiar proclamations on the "Horsemen of the apocalypse". Though RuneScape and W.o.W are very different games (I'm not really sure it's productive at all to make comparisons) the common fight against cheats and RWT fraudsters in both games, have generated understandable resistance in their respective player populations.

 

 

 

As deliberate over/under pricing of items in order target delivery for RWT has been largely defeated by features in the G.E. which in my view should give enough scope to allowing larger price ranges for Custom Pricing.

 

 

 

On a sliding scale doesn't seem to me to open any dangerous gaps that would allow RWTers operational room.

 

 

 

I feel the following model (maybe not these exact amounts or levels but something similar could work):

 

 

 

Item Values - Custom Price Ranges

< 100 GP                 +/- 100%

< 1,000 GP             +/- 75%

< 10,000 GP          +/- 25%

< 100,000 GP       +/- 15%

< 1,000,000 GP   +/- 10%

< 1,000,000 GP  +/- 7.5%

> 10,000,000 GP +/- 5%

 

 

 

Personally, I also wonder if the Quick Price buttons should be replaced or modified by something better.

 

 

 

As well, Jagex has already announced there will be initially no price ranges on new items when they are released, at least for the first week or so. Hopefully, the pricing of new items will be more appropriate for that reason.

 

 

 

Obviously as they've sought to make a permanent G.E. forum it shows they're prepared to dedicate a new team to assisting with players watching the markets. This does sound like a good idea for transparency since if there ever is any manipulation or dodgy activity occurring on the G.E. players are likely to highlight it here and help fix problems.

 

 

 

There are real-life analogies to this in consumer price watch-dogs and ombudsmen, and anti-trust authorities that combat gross attempts to control markets by big players. The recent successful prosecution of a major world-wide Airline group (including many major airlines) for massive manipulation with the fuel surcharges since 9/11 are an example of this.

 

 

 

Hopefully the basic rules of this G.E. forum will be written by Jagex to allow enough freedom to debate and discuss such problems respectfully, while ensuring that that forum itself isn't simply dominated by a few groups. I'd encourage all players to take the opportunity to have a say to ensure that it works in the interest of all players. I can see it becoming the most hotly debated forum. Though as Bobbington says we've heard nothing more than any other player out there about it, other than what's been given to us all in the main news posts on the RuneScape site.

 

 

 

In the end the G.E. can never be a real-life market, since the goals of producers and processors and consumers, in a MMO are different to those in a real market. In real markets there is no way X.P. earned from processing item is a major price factor :P

 

 

 

The bottom-line should be to ensure that what occurs enables players to have 'fun', since in the end RuneScape is an entertainment product for players enjoyment, and not a job or means of earning an income.

 

 

 

The role of all players, including those who wish to play the market can be a positive and educational one, will ensure we can all player our part in putting back the liquidity that seems to be lacking at the moment in many items. Some items though can't be made liquid if they don't have a use, or value in game-play; that issue can only be solved by us giving feedback to Content Developers on improving the useful of all items in our game-play.

 

 

 

Some items however it seems are going to remain an enigma (despite some asking for their removal and this be a perfect opportunity for it Jagex didn't do that) and will continue to have a value that belies the rules for normal or even useless items (post quest).

 

 

 

Regards,

 

 

 

Fey

 

 

 

---

 

p.s. Sorry Qeltar I haven't had time to respond to your 'newspost' about your yearly update review. I've got pressing real-life commitments that have priority over my 'scaping I'm afraid. It's either best I offer a proper response or none at all.

 

 

 

It seems like you're getting more than enough feedback so my 2 GP isn't really going to add much ;)