It took me a year to get it....

[nerdboyxxx]

lol now I know what that means :P XD

 

 

 

good luck on your goals, not easy getting 99 in skills and stuff :P

 

 

 

Your sig is hilarious by the way :thumbsup:

 

 

 

Way oversized though, not that I'll tell! Make sure you have it saved on your comp so you don't lose it, in case a mod finds it ;)

 

 

 

:) thx yeah its pretty good. I have is saved on photobucket so in case I lose it I still have a copy :P I might make it my desktop background.

[Psycho_Robot]

Neü avatar!

[Witherslick]

I just got the joke too!

[Psycho_Robot]

 

 

 

Your sig should read "...more than flesh..." ;)

[Psycho_Robot]

Updated with the first level in quite a while, 78 crafting!

[cowmaster187]

i must say all of the tv shows you listed on your first post i like as well. invader zim

 

 

 

good luck on your other goals and ... gratz.. on the lvl

 

 

 

~~~legoman187~~~

[Psycho_Robot]

i must say all of the tv shows you listed on your first post i like as well. invader zim

 

 

 

good luck on your other goals and ... gratz.. on the lvl

 

 

 

~~~legoman187~~~

 

 

 

Invader Zim indeed!

 

 

 

88 magic!

 

 

 

[cowmaster187]

i also noticed that you like the hitchhikers guide books and calvin and hobbes. i too like them expescially hitchhikers guide

 

 

 

~~~legoman187~~

[Psycho_Robot]

My project has been put on hold... I bought 2.5k gold bars and emeralds, crafted emerald bracelets, alched them, then went to buy more... I was confronted by this...

 

 

 

Price of Cut Sapphire

 

 

Price of Cut Emerald

 

 

Price of Cut Ruby

 

 

Price of Cut Diamond

 

 

 

 

#-o :wall:

 

 

 

Merchant clan? Jagex helping players figure out the price they want to pay? Whatever it is nothing is profitable anymore except sapphire bracelets, but I want to get more xp than I would making those... I need to wait... :(

[cowmaster187]

Oh My God :o :o :shock: :shock:

 

 

 

that is amazing price change

 

 

 

i hope it comes back down

 

 

 

~~~legoman187~~~

[bluehooloovo]

I freaking hate merchanters... Now what am I going to buy when my silver runs out? I want to get higher crafting than you. :cry: At least the sapphs are heading down.

 

 

 

Oh, well, late grats on 88 magic. :)

[Psycho_Robot]

I freaking hate merchanters... Now what am I going to buy when my silver runs out? I want to get higher crafting than you. :cry: At least the sapphs are heading down.

 

 

 

Oh, well, late grats on 88 magic. :)

 

 

 

Thanks! I think I'll train slayer while I wait for the prices to go back to normal

[Psycho_Robot]

Well this is juuust great...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just when they were about to go back to their normal prices, they started going up again :wall:

 

 

 

While waiting for the prices to go back down, I was training slayer, and I hoped I would get to start crafting again, but looks like that just isn't going to happen any time soon #-o

 

 

 

In the mean time I've uploaded some good clue scroll rewards I got and a couple more outfits.

[Psycho_Robot]

Its been six months since the initial manipulation started, and it shows no signs of stopping, either on its own or with help from Jagex. With the release of the 180 day price graphs, I'm able to see just how bad things are:

 

 

 

[hide=Prices]

 

 

 

[/hide]

 

 

 

Jagex has shown no interest in doing something to combat this obvious manipulation of prices. In fact, in the "Merchanting Clans - Discussion" thread on the RSOF (QFC:74-75-963-59124148), after 50 pages of posts supporting the dissolution and even banning of price manipulation clans, Mod John H posted this:

 

 

 

[hide=Mod John H's post]Hey everyone,

 

 

 

I promised to stop back in and post again. Been super-busy here (as always ;)) but at last, here I am. :)

 

 

 

This is obviously something that a lot of you feel super-strongly about. I'd like to clarify a few things.

 

 

 

I know some people think that Jagex is ignorant and/or under-informed about this situation. Not true. We've had eyes on this issue from the very top of the company downwards. The info in the "Merchanting clans and you" thread was all vetted and approved by Mod Mark, who is our Senior Game Designer. We also have a lot of back-end visibility on exactly what's happening in the Grand Exchange.

 

 

 

Basically, Grand Exchange price manipulation is not as serious a problem as some people think it is. Most people probably don't even notice it's happening, and all effects are temporary. It doesn't have any harmful effects on the overall economy, because it doesn't cause any wealth to be created or destroyed - only redistributed.

 

 

 

We know there will be players who aren't involved in any kind of merchanting/price manipulation at all. They want to buy a particular item (for a quest etc) on the GE, but when they get there, they find that it's much more expensive than they were expecting because it's been manipulated upwards by a price manipulation/merchanting clan.

 

 

 

The player then has a choice to make. They can either choose to pay the market price, or they can choose not to.

 

 

 

Remember that no-one is obliged to buy anything, ever. All items can either be made by the player or obtained from drops. Obviously this requires a certain amount of prior time investment in production or combat skills, respectively. The ability to buy items is convenient for players who have not yet invested, or don't wish to invest, that time.

 

 

 

If a player does want to buy something, they are still not obliged to purchase at prices they don't want to pay. If they want something badly enough right now, then it's their choice if they pay a price higher than the one they'd like.

 

 

 

What goes up must come down, and artificially inflated prices will crash. The crash usually takes prices down to a point below where they started, too. But you don't often see people complaining that the item they wanted to buy was too cheap. ;)

 

 

 

And of course, one of the beauties of RuneScape is its open-endedness. The player is free to do something else. So if people do end up waiting a week or so for the inevitable crash, then it's not like their entire progress through the game is halted in the mean time.

 

 

 

Moreover, out of all the thousands and thousands of items in the game, only certain ones are even possible to manipulate. It's a sort of "perfect storm" of factors, including the price range, quantity in circulation and so on. The vast majority of items are not manipulable, and of the few hundred that are, it's only practical for the clans to have any measurable effect on a dozen or two at a time. So for any given item at any given time, the likelihood that it is currently being manipulated is very low.

 

 

 

It would probably be possible to change the game mechanics so that price manipulation just wouldn't work. But we'd have to be incredibly careful, because we would risk breaking every other trade that currently goes through the GE with no problems at all. Essentially, it would take a non-trivial amount of work to address something that is not a major problem.

 

 

 

That's all game-mechanics stuff. There are still some other related issues.

 

 

 

A lot of these merchanting clans promise to help their members make huge profits, when really the leaders have no intention of helping anyone. They just want to get rich themselves, and they've worked out that if they can get enough people to push prices up, they can then cream profits off the top. The leaders make money, everyone else in the clan loses money.

 

 

 

Some people view this as a definite scam, and that's understandable. These clan leaders are lying to their members, after all.

 

 

 

But although that's true in principle, there are obvious difficulties in trying to make this a punishable scamming offence. There would be such a massive time delay between the false promise and the lossy outcome - at least days, probably weeks - that it would be next-to-impossible to link them together. Again, for any individual case, we could probably make these links with enough effort - but it would be incredibly time-consuming, which would take our resources away from other, frankly more important areas of player support. And in any case, all trades are entirely voluntary. No-one has to buy anything, even if someone else is telling them to. That's why the informational sticky makes it so clear that you should never risk anything you aren't prepared to lose.

 

 

 

There's also the problem that everyone knows the clan leaders will dump before they say they will. The disreputable clan leaders are telling their members "we'll let you into the inner circle and tell you when the real dump date is, if you will advertise the name of our clan in-game for a certain amount of time" (usually non-stop for many hours).

 

 

 

Gullible, greedy players then end up using autotypers (which is against the rules, as everyone knows) and spamming the screen, causing inconvenience for everyone around. In practice, of course, the leaders don't really have any way to know who's spamming their clan details, or how much, and they certainly don't have any intention of letting the spammers into the inner circle. All they want is to get their clan name out there so that there'll be a steady stream of new blood, ready to lose their money so the clan leaders can profit.

 

 

 

In short, as we've said many times before, if you join a merchanting clan you are much more likely to lose money than to make a profit. It's your own responsibility, but you've been warned.

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

-JH[/hide]

 

 

 

The thread is currently nearing 80 pages and no further replies have been made. I've underlined the most frustrating, and quite frankly, insulting passage. It shows just how little Jagex has been paying attention to this whole mess. If Jagex feels like this now, chances are they aren't ever going to change their stance. Because of this abysmal reaction to what is obviously a large crisis, my frustration with Jagex has reached its zenith. I have canceled my subscription and have retired from RuneScape, probably forever, although if Jagex gets their act together, I might come back. I hope they do, I still want that crafting cape.

[silver_wits]

I can't believe I just read that...

[Psycho_Robot]

So since i quit I decided to start using my blog as a review of updates. I can't review all of them since i can't play through quests, for instance, but I'll do my best.

[Psycho_Robot]

New review up, although its not a review of an update but rather of the notification of future Q&A sessions. I found some of the language interesting:

 

[hide=Future Q and A Sessions - October 16th 2009]

 

Quoting directly from the update post...

 

We got a lot out of the recent Q&A sessions so we’ve decided to hold 2-3 per year, with the next one to be held in January 2010.

 

So, if you have any questions, save them till January 2010, and they might be answered, and if not you can try again a few months later![/hide]

[Toshiba]

You just made me Lawl at work because of that story. Hilarious...

 

Good luck man, especially on Runecrafting.

[Psycho_Robot]

You just made me Lawl at work because of that story. Hilarious...

 

Good luck man, especially on Runecrafting.

 

i won't be training RC anymore, I quit.

 

Review of the new diary up:

 

[hide=Ardougne Achievement Diary - October 20th 2009]

 

5/10

 

I didn't do the diary, but looking over the rewards, they seem fairly worthwhile. I like the way the cape looks, although as more and more pieces come out, and in light of how Jagex said the achievement diary will have a effect when the whole set is worn, I can't help but wonder if Jagex realizes how hideous the whole set looks together. The cape gives fairly good stats, which is more than can be said for any of the other pieces of equipment, which are 100% useless for actual combat equipment, since they're only as good as adamant equipment. It was nice seeing that, like the Varrock diary, the Ardougne diary gave us the option to redirect an inconvenient teleport location to a more worthwhile location.

 

One reward I do have a problem with, however, is the teleport to Ardougne farm. Why oh why on earth would Jagex limit it to just one per day?? The Lumbridge/Draynor BEGINNER diary gives you the ability to teleport to the Falador farm unlimited times per day, so why limit this cape's teleport so harshly? In light of this stupidly low daily limit, I honestly cannot foresee anyone making use of it. Why? Well, I've done a lot of farming, and I know that players like to have one inventory set up and use it over and over. Since farmers can do allotment runs every 2 hours or so, they will exhaust the cape's teleport on their first run and after that it will be useless. Its more hassle to change your inventory setup to take this cape along with you, then changing it back for your next run, than this one teleport is worth. Simply put, its not worth pissing around with the cape wondering if you can do another teleport yet.

 

That segues nicely into the next section, the elite tasks. First problem: they were disproportionately high. 93 Summoning? 91 Smithing? And for what? The ability to teleport to Ardougne farm with the cape unlimited times per day and four 50k xp lamps for any skill over level 85. By the time you're level 85 in a skill, 50k xp is NOTHING. Even if you used all 4 lamps on one skill that you had just got to level 85, you'd only get about 60% of the way to the next level. Second problem: They are a completely unsatisfactory answer to a desperate need in RuneScape, high level content. Getting 93 summoning and 91 smithing is a lot of work, and if the only way Jagex can make think to make it worthwhile is to slap some arbitrarily high level requirements on some achievement diary tasks and failing to make the rewards worth the effort, then having high skills will remain pretty much useless.[/hide]

[Danno385]

Lol. Your silly. You still have the "I quit" section up. You now play and pay for not only your own membership, but also another.

 

I <3 you, so silly freak.

[silver_wits]

*laughs* um... *laughs some more* uh *laughs again*

[Psycho_Robot]

While I pay for membership, I don't train any skills or do any quests, or keep current on any new content. Pretty much all I do is mess around at castle wars. My dissatisfaction with Jagex is not so much, nor is my pride so strong, that I will refuse to pay for something that's still fun. I suppose I should update the first post, but really I don't care much.

[Danno385]

Nice attitude. Yeah you seem to have 2 things to do on RS: Play CW and play with me and Silva.

 

Hmmm. I should go check out runescapions.