Bank of RuneScape; Leaked Update?

[Failed Acct]

I think the effects to the economy would be pretty self explanatory.

[Kimberly]

If it is a quest, I can only imagine how the Wise Old Man will play into it, after his most recent robbery of the Draynor bank. Don't he and the woman from that one quest say they're planning something bigger now?

 

Eh.

 

I'm trying so hard to stay positive.

[Ezkaton]

You're doing better than most at it Kim.

 

My mind is edging towards the worst case scenario. I just hope to God that they unleash it upon the game and get rid of SoF or something. That they cut out all the bullshit and just start saying "It's a fair cop, you nicked me - we're gona sell RS gold through this".

 

Then again... Ports were coming out? Something to do with them? The one faint glimmer of hope that I'm clinging to but know will be snatched from my hands.

 

 

If it is microtransactions though... Hello Runestory. The economy would probably collapse and the game left to rot.

[Donnie]

I think the effects to the economy would be pretty self explanatory.

 

time is money. People value something like party hats because of the insane time commitments it takes to get it.

 

Factoring out inflation entirely I compared it to the Federal Reserve for this reason.

 

 

The price of items is directly correlated to what they are worth in the real world. A party hat is worth 200m xp in a buyable perhaps. So buying a party hat has a time save value of 100's of hours, as a result valued at US minimum wage its worth $500+ as a lower bound.

 

What a Jagex owned GP shop would cause: An upper bound on what gold is worth.

 

In the abstract this isn't so bad, but imagine a major gold sink. Where the player gold market would revalue enough gold for 200m xp in a buyable skill to be worth 200 hours of work in the real world, the Jagex shop could prevent that supply/demand meeting causing things to go haywire. I think gp could be considered worthless after a certain point and something as bad as junk trading can emerge again.

 

 

Claims Im making in this argument:

 

- Real world value of gold determines game value. This shouldn't be controversial because there is a level of meeting on things that cost more time to get will be valued more in the real world then things easily gotten which will be cheap ingame/outside.

- A price sink with static Jagex gold pricing will cause a market meltdown felt throughout the game beyond the ability of RWTers to generate a profit

- Every incentive is for Jagex to further deflate the price of gold to reap more profit off it.

 

 

 

Edit: sorry if this is horribly written I am running on next to no sleep, the tl;dr for this is Jagex owned gold shops will cause an economic fiasco throughout the game

 

 

Edit:Edit: I open this to all the amateur economist lurkers/posters to make their predictions on the total market effects of a Jagex gold shop

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

The reason why we're all assuming microtransactions is because they're advertising "The bank of RuneScape." We already have 'normal' in-game banks, so what other kind of bank is there other than one for microtransactions/buying gold? Sure, maybe you could think of other ones if you really try, but some kind of RWT gold bank is the most obvious answer.

 

To play Devil's Advocate - The Bank of RuneScape is the canonical name of the banking system in-game. Perhaps it's a revamp to the banking system instead?

 

</optimism>

[Alg]

I'm trying so hard to stay positive.

If it's microtransactions, I'd bet it involves selling bankspace/storage rather than actual GP. I'm hoping it's the ability to convert RSGP into Solomon/Yelps/Loyalty credits if it has anything to do with those three.

 

Or as Makoto is speculating, an upgrade to the bank system. Better item/cash loans between players/friends (Or even a contest, as the Facebook sticker suggests)?

[Randox]

The other type of bank you could have, and one I used to want, is one that can give you a loan. My idea was that you could put up items, or maybe your poh as collateral on a loan, and just like in real life, you get mney now and have to pay it back with interest, or the bank takes your collateral (assume that the collateral is like 150% the value of the loan, so that it is very much in your interest to pay it back). Then I realized that all this would do is cause rampant inflation.

 

But it is a possibility that they could add something like that as well.

 

 

As a side note, I was playing around with some math not long ago trying to figure out how much money is sold into this game every year by the RWT companies (my result was the volume would be in the low trillions). This making money more available to people has already caused inflation. We didn't noticed because it didn't happen all at once, but we are very much suffering from some level of inflation in at least some markets because of the rampant buying and selling of gold for real world money. Now, the good thing with this is that its just a redistribution of wealth, not a creation of new money from thin air, however it is still making cash more availaable artificially.

 

My point is, that a microtransaction gold shop would probably not do as much damage to the economy as people think it will (though more on this 'think' in a second), because much of the business will be the people who are already buying gold, plus the people who only don't because of a fear of prosecution (a number steadily getting smaller). Now, more gold in the game will have an effect, since more of it will enter general circulation rather than being vaccummed up by the gold sellers and resold right back to the buyers, which means the inflation will spread to more markets in time. The real danger though are the people panicking because they think prices will go through the roof, because they will cause exactly that to happen (and make Jagex extra money by forcing people to buy even more gold).

 

My point being, as cheep a tactic as it is, and while it wont be good for the game, it might not be as bad as we think. It will come down to how many extra people get on board (they must be expecting a lot of extra people to start buying gold, since at the current rates you'd be lucky to bring in an extra million a year vs the nearly 100 million they make on membership fees), and how much people panic and drive the market up artifically (people like to panic, so expect some good old panic inflation). However, all is not lost for those who don't get on board. Becuase the extra money would be in general circulation, rather than being recirculated before it gets to the average joe, the people selling things like raw materials will also get more money for their goods, which should help compensate for everything else being more expensive too. So it shouldn't drive everyone into poverty, just those that don't produce sellable goods.

[Alg]

The difference between existing RWT and Jagex selling gold is that existing RWT doesn't add gold to the game. It transfers the wealth rather than creating it.

 

That said, I would be in favor of it without question if it sold the gold/resources of banned accounts.

[Hedgehog]

I think the effects to the economy would be pretty self explanatory.

 

time is money. People value something like party hats because of the insane time commitments it takes to get it.

 

Factoring out inflation entirely I compared it to the Federal Reserve for this reason.

 

 

The price of items is directly correlated to what they are worth in the real world. A party hat is worth 200m xp in a buyable perhaps. So buying a party hat has a time save value of 100's of hours, as a result valued at US minimum wage its worth $500+ as a lower bound.

 

What a Jagex owned GP shop would cause: An upper bound on what gold is worth.

 

In the abstract this isn't so bad, but imagine a major gold sink. Where the player gold market would revalue enough gold for 200m xp in a buyable skill to be worth 200 hours of work in the real world, the Jagex shop could prevent that supply/demand meeting causing things to go haywire. I think gp could be considered worthless after a certain point and something as bad as junk trading can emerge again.

 

 

Claims Im making in this argument:

 

- Real world value of gold determines game value. This shouldn't be controversial because there is a level of meeting on things that cost more time to get will be valued more in the real world then things easily gotten which will be cheap ingame/outside.

- A price sink with static Jagex gold pricing will cause a market meltdown felt throughout the game beyond the ability of RWTers to generate a profit

- Every incentive is for Jagex to further deflate the price of gold to reap more profit off it.

 

 

 

Edit: sorry if this is horribly written I am running on next to no sleep, the tl;dr for this is Jagex owned gold shops will cause an economic fiasco throughout the game

 

 

Edit:Edit: I open this to all the amateur economist lurkers/posters to make their predictions on the total market effects of a Jagex gold shop

Phats aren't worth time, at least not how you described it. By purchasing a party hat, you do not cost yourself 200m herblore, since it's immediately resellable. It's just a way to hold cash. It does cost time in other ways, though. You lose time making money, organizing a trade, etc.

 

Personally, I don't think a Jagex-owned coin shop would be that devastating. Frankly, most people would still buy from gold farmers. They can sell gold cheaper than Jagex can, and the risk a player faces when illegally buying gp is tiny compared to the time/money saved.

 

The main issue with legalized rwt is that the money is just created. No time nor resources are lost in the process, which causes inflation, and lots of it. Jagex would need to hire Ben Bernanke to keep the economy regulated.

[Yoko Kurama]

I think it's entirely possible that this might be another micro-transaction venture on the part of Jagex. That's all that's being said it; people are merely discussing that it is possible, not that it will happen or that it is certain. So I don't understand if there's anything at all knee-jerk or irrational about this at all. Given Jagex's turn as of late and track record, one would have to be a delusional fool to discount the mere possibility of this. People are perfectly justified in this speculation. After all, it seems that these days all we get are constant reminders to spend money on Jagex's micro-transaction shops; and it isn't something they release once in a while, or once a month, or once every few weeks or even once a week, it's several times a week that we are constantly bombarded with bullshit reminders to buy their bullshit. In fact, in game, for a while we were given the option to turn off the log-in reminders, only for them to ungraciously take it away; now we are only allowed to make the log-in advertisement go away for 5 days. That is Runescape's day-to-day operations; not actual content but this.

 

If it is them actually selling money up front, I won't be surprised in the least. That would also explain why they targeted a few RWT'ers recently(after letting them off the hook for so long), naturally, one wants to eliminate one's competition to make the ride smooth.

 

LIke I said, people only speculated that micro-transactions might be what this might *possibly* be; it isn't the only possibility. It could be a genuine update, maybe an update to the existing banks, perhaps more items, a loaning/lending system or something. I certainly acknowledge those possibilities as well and I certainly hope it is the latter possibilities which end up occurring rather than the former micro-transaction possibilities.

[Donnie]

Jagex would need to hire Ben Bernanke to keep the economy regulated.

 

Selling phats GE limit + 500m junk!

[stevepole]

What if it's a new system that replicates something like Diablo 3's auction house in RS?

[Sinkhan]

Does anyone else think this could possibly be fake just because of how awfully laid out/edited the image is?

 

EDIT: I CALLED IT

[Jeff Delu]

Maybe this isn't a place for jagex to sell gold to players, but a place for players to sell gold to players to phase out 3rd party rwt sites. This being the case I'm not sure how I would feel about it. On the one hand it could add incentive to playing the game, but on the other hand it just makes rwt easier for those who want to buy success in game and it makes staking and other forms of gambling more about real life currency.

[Saradomin_Mage]

 

On a more optimistic note, I'd like to believe it's not going to be microtransactions because of that "share with your friends on Facebook" think at the bottom. I honestly don't believe that Jagex is that thick-skinned, pushing a new MT programme and then trying to have you sell it to your friends.

 

I'd like to think that this is going to be along the lines of a quest like Sy mentioned. However, the level of detail in the concept art scares me, and I'm not sure if that silhouette is going to be a major plot figure or another Yelps/Solomon-style guy.

[JeRambo]

Does anyone else think this could possibly be fake just because of how awfully laid out/edited the image is?

This. Lol.

[ilovecuttingyews]

As a side note, I was playing around with some math not long ago trying to figure out how much money is sold into this game every year by the RWT companies (my result was the volume would be in the low trillions).

 

As far as I know, Jagex has only ever said once how much they confiscate from RWTers in their Jagex versus RWT DevDiary.

During 2006, we banned bot and real-world trader accounts carrying RuneScape gold and items worth over 200 billion gp. During 2007, so far, we've banned over 525 billion, which has a real-world value of over $2.6 million US - that's an increase of over 250%. At that rate of growth, we'd be looking at banning over 8 trillion gp in 2010 - that's 8,000 billion gp - which has a real-world value of over $40 million US. It's an almost unbelievably high number, but it hammers home the sheer size of the problem we are facing and why we have to take action against it.

I don't know the exact inflation rate, but I'd say since GP is 1/10th the price it was back in 06, your estimate in the low trillions per year is close. Though, that is what Jagex finds and bans, much more gets through.

[Stev]

Does anyone else think this could possibly be fake just because of how awfully laid out/edited the image is?

This. Lol.

Because Jagex and their 0 antialiasing, standard detail teaser images are sooo well known for their phenomenal quality. :P.

 

Oh Cherry-poo.

[Donnie]

Does anyone else think this could possibly be fake just because of how awfully laid out/edited the image is?

This. Lol.

 

regardless of whether or not its real, the common feeling is if its not coming in this update it will be coming in the future

[decebal]

... What's with the flame coming out of the Kharidian building?

[wolfmon56]

As a side note, I was playing around with some math not long ago trying to figure out how much money is sold into this game every year by the RWT companies (my result was the volume would be in the low trillions).

 

As far as I know, Jagex has only ever said once how much they confiscate from RWTers in their Jagex versus RWT DevDiary.

During 2006, we banned bot and real-world trader accounts carrying RuneScape gold and items worth over 200 billion gp. During 2007, so far, we've banned over 525 billion, which has a real-world value of over $2.6 million US - that's an increase of over 250%. At that rate of growth, we'd be looking at banning over 8 trillion gp in 2010 - that's 8,000 billion gp - which has a real-world value of over $40 million US. It's an almost unbelievably high number, but it hammers home the sheer size of the problem we are facing and why we have to take action against it.

I don't know the exact inflation rate, but I'd say since GP is 1/10th the price it was back in 06, your estimate in the low trillions per year is close. Though, that is what Jagex finds and bans, much more gets through.

 

 

~$4.95/mil? I don't think it was ever that much, but then again all I did was pk East drags back then. lol

[Thus]

Why does that look like something out of terrible fanart submission? Maybe it was a joke.

[Pinata]

As a side note, I was playing around with some math not long ago trying to figure out how much money is sold into this game every year by the RWT companies (my result was the volume would be in the low trillions).

 

As far as I know, Jagex has only ever said once how much they confiscate from RWTers in their Jagex versus RWT DevDiary.

During 2006, we banned bot and real-world trader accounts carrying RuneScape gold and items worth over 200 billion gp. During 2007, so far, we've banned over 525 billion, which has a real-world value of over $2.6 million US - that's an increase of over 250%. At that rate of growth, we'd be looking at banning over 8 trillion gp in 2010 - that's 8,000 billion gp - which has a real-world value of over $40 million US. It's an almost unbelievably high number, but it hammers home the sheer size of the problem we are facing and why we have to take action against it.

I don't know the exact inflation rate, but I'd say since GP is 1/10th the price it was back in 06, your estimate in the low trillions per year is close. Though, that is what Jagex finds and bans, much more gets through.

 

 

~$4.95/mil? I don't think it was ever that much, but then again all I did was pk East drags back then. lol

4.95$ sounds right. For back then anyways.

 

I doubt bank of runescape will be microtransactions, just doesn't give off that vibe. To me anyways.

[Tari]

I made an account just to post in this thread.

 

http://runescape.wik...rated_pet_house

http://runescape.wik...ician/locations

On Musicians, CTRL+F "Al Kharid" and "Varrock"

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys are being trolled by someone. If you need reassurance, just look at the above two links.

 

As for the link in the OP itself, keep in mind that it came from a wiki.

 

This should hopefully end the doomsaying in regards to this image.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

I made an account just to post in this thread.

 

http://runescape.wik...rated_pet_house

http://runescape.wik...ician/locations

On Musicians, CTRL+F "Al Kharid" and "Varrock"

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys are being trolled by someone. If you need reassurance, just look at the above two links.

 

This should hopefully end the doomsaying in regards to this image.

 

Perhaps, but it doesn't explain the building.