what is counted as price manipulating and what is it?

[needmore]

Question 1: Getting a few friends to buy the same item in huge

 

amounts = price manipulating???

 

 

 

Question 2: Below:

 

Based on my past experiences, when i put an offer for 100mil worth of a particular item, i manage to get less than a quarter of that particular item in 24 hours (due to the g.e limit), then the price of that item wont raise a lot on the next day.

 

 

 

I guess the price of that item will only raise a lot only if that item is sold in huge amounts. This means that the price change of the g.e is based on actual trades through the g.e, but not the offer that i made. In order to raise the price much more, many people or a few rich players must buy the same item at the same time. Is this statement true???-which leads to price manipulating or merchanting(some says its just a form of merchanting).

[davidium]

it will be hard to draw the line between price manipulating and merchanting...but surprisingly Jagex seems to be against both in the recent posts that the mods made.

 

 

 

generally yea what you stated will be considered as price manipulating but in the same way when someone with loads of money buys up a single item to he can be considered to be price manipulating too. someone with 2.1 billion buying up an item will be more effective than 10 people with 100 million each buying up an item right? since 10 X 100 million = 1 billion which is slightly less than half of 2.1 billion (for the mathematically impaired)

 

 

 

so since we can now say that a single player should be considered as price manipulating where should we draw the line? when a player buys up 10, 000 of the item? 1 billion gp worth of that item? or 1% of the total quantity of that item in the game? so you see here we have 3 different ways to determine it: quantity of item, how much gp is spent on buying up the item and even what is the total percentage quantity of the item that was bought up in comparison with the total amount of that item in the game.

 

 

 

and how will we be able to differentiate investors from manipulators? which manipulator is going to openly admit to jagex that they are price manipulating?

 

 

 

basically it will be exceedingly difficult and challenging for jagex to come up with a good solution to this problem of price manipulation which is why they chose the easiest way out like they have done time and again: impose quantity limits across the board, affecting every innocent by-stander with their actions :-w

[romu000]

You are maybe aware some player accounts have that many money in cash they could cover you and your friends with it.

 

 

 

When some of those players becomes groups and start wisely merchanting some items, they can buy all is put into GE.

 

Moreover, each one have his 'court' of less rich players and even followers who are told to do the same... making the price moving even faster.

 

The firsts stop at a point then call their friends who continue the effect : rising price. That way the first have bought at really min price anybody can't get... and their 'army' continue. And the friends of those friends do it on a third step...

 

 

 

At a moment, when GE price update (they time it quite well) for this item and reach a price, the demand is still ok since the 3rd group and 'you and friends' also surf on the raise.

 

This is the moment the first and second groups all sell in the same time. Anonymous and 3rd groups continue buying when previous makes profits.

 

 

 

Now, since some players forced the price to move and made it move the oposite way, this activity is called price manipulation and has nothing to do with the way market would had gone.

 

I explained a raise situation but they also can make a price dropping.

 

 

 

Conclusion : you and friend also interfere on price move. But you don't manipulate the price until you sell... and since you won't start (but follow) the price curve change, you don't manipulate yourself the price... you simply take advantage of a limited situation. Many people do what you do and some makes decent money.

 

Price manipulation involve massive coordination and then leaders.

 

 

 

Last GE limitation was a 'tap on the noze' for them so slow them down and let GE and price follow a more natural road you still can exploit.

[cat666]

The difference between merchanting and price manipulation is infact very very small.

 

 

 

The average merchanter isn't rich enough to manipulate prices. It's a case of buy 10k yew logs, wait until they rise then sell for a profit. 10k yew logs isn't effecting the community. Now think if you had endless mountains of cash. You could easily buy 50mil yew logs to make more profit. This is still merchanting, but has the effect of price manipulation. If you and your friends clubbed togehter to buy up all stock then that is price manipulation.

 

 

 

Price manipulation is very hard to prove, and this is probably the reason why Jagex have not made a rule against it.

 

 

 

It is also worth pointing out that most merchanters are not guilty of price manipulation, the sheer volume of money needed excludes a good percentage of the population and yet again it's the select few who ruin the game for everyone else.

[obfuscator]

well if you and your freinds end up changing the price by your merchanting, then that is price manipulation

[cat666]

well if you and your freinds end up changing the price by your merchanting, then that is price manipulation

 

 

 

Like I said it's a very thin line.

 

 

 

There is nothing wrong in you telling your mates which items to buy to make profit on. However if you're all rich and are doing it intently then it's wrong. How you differenciate between the two though is open to interpetation and isn't easy to prove.