^ i think will stay roughly about the same

Three things made this happen. One, the grand exchange was added, which let prices react more to demand. The removal of bots reduced the supply of raw materials. Lastly, skillcapes were introduced, which made a great increase of people wanting 99s. Runescape has become much more combat based, with skilling more of a chore/money sink.

I believe "it" happened after the release of skill capes. Before this, one would have 99 in skills that one enjoyed. After the release of skill capes, 99s were a measure of "power" or a way to determine the better player. Players started wanting 99s in as many skills as they could attain and "buyable" skills were the main targets. Skills such as: Cooking achieved less profits.

 

 

 

Now fast forward a bit and there is more and more players all the time. Most buyable skills were still making profits but the profits were diminishing. Still there was much profit.

 

 

 

Finally the grand exchange is thrown into the picture. Players now used the grand exchange to simplify the process of obtaining items for 99s.

 

 

 

Nowadays to achieve a 99 is a simple process:

 

1.I want 99 cooking

 

2. buys 60k sharks

 

3. Grindfest

 

 

 

All in all, skilling became non-profiitable when everything became easier: grand exchange, cook x etc.

yes the bots made flax,lobsters,yews,mages, and a whole lot of other raw materials cheap

if you ask me (don't flame me for this) I think that the RS economy went in the crapper when classic PKing was removed because...

 

 

 

First off the pkers, f2p and p2p alike were in constant need of food, a product that requires two skills fishing and or cooking

 

Then when the prices of food would go down and so cooking just becomes a way to spend money

 

 

 

Then many pkers would need runes, and the only way to get them would be to buy them but because many pkers couldn't be bothered with making their own runes high level runecrafters became important for maintaining the economy because mages who wanted to get the edge in battle would grind high alchemy which requires massive amounts of nature runes

 

 

 

then the miners, whos role, although marginal was required for maintaining the arrow/fletching industry and to a lesser extent the armor/smithing industry was invalueable in keeping the economy afloat

 

 

 

and herblore, you could be a rich man if you made super sets and sold at the right spot but if nobody's pking there is almost no need for potions and if theres no pking there is a greatly smaller need for arrows and top notch armor and no need for high level mages and so runecrafters arn't making as much money and with no pking cooking just became a prestige skill with almost no use whatsoever

 

 

 

all in all pking was sort of keeping the economy afloat because of its massive need for consumeable resources which the powerful pkers couldn't be bothered to gather or make

 

 

 

 

 

...and skillcapes didn't help either