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25-September-2013 - Runescape Bonds


Drazhor

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except that the last few months have been very lackluster in terms of updates. Divination and BoL kind of flopped, and there's been huge amounts of delays and no update weeks.

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When divination bonus xp becomes active, there could be a large number of rich, lazy/short on time people buying these that the 10% tax becomes worthwhile, plus any other major promos, depending on the numbers in circulation, either way I like that people who have put the time in to get rich can start paying by playing and also the fact of buying solomon items via gp

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I'm not so sure that the price of bonds will stay high enough in terms of RSGP to make it very difficult for the standard RWT'rs to compete. Let's say the price of gp is around $.35/M at the moment. That means a bond can't drop below 14.3M each for them to be worth it.

Considering convenience and safety, bonds can go much lower.

 

 

The biggest RWT sites are run smoother than most businesses with hundreds of thousands, in one case over $2M of trades - without a single report of scamming and with guaranteed delivery times. You underestimate these people.

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Bold move, Jagex. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out in the long term.

 

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The bond system as it is right now is destined to fail. It offers players the ability to buy gold (and membership / other Jagex pay-to-win stuff), but it offers no way for players to SELL gold. This means it will be impossible for bonds to find a long-term equilibrium price. They do not satisfy the solution which is provided by gold trading.

The reason websites are able to sell gold to players is because they also buy gold from players. 99% of the RS Gold websites out there do NOT make their own gold. There is a misconception that these websites are gold farms; they are NOT. Gold farming and gold selling are completely separate businesses. It would be like saying Wal-Mart manufactures all of their own products. These websites buy from players at a lower rate and sell at a higher rate.

Jagex states that 45-50% of the community currently partakes in RWT. Who knows how legitimate this number is, and how it was calculated, but the implied statement is that they wish to provide service to this 45-50% of the population. The fact is, the target customer-base for Jagex is the OTHER 50%, the ones who DO NOT currently buy gold. The portion of the community that already partakes on third party websites, etc. is very unlikely to switch over to buying / selling from Jagex unless the prices are competitive.

Currently, the price for 1 bond is $5 USD. Their value on the Grand Exchange will be determined by supply/demand. They have no utility in-game beyond their membership value. They cannot be redeemed for real world cash (within game rules). Membership costs $8 per month on the site, and a bond provides 14 days of membership. If we count a month as 30 days on average, the value of a bond is (14 / 30 * $8) = $3.73. We see that bonds are already overpriced.

So now, we see that a bond carries $3.73 in value in-game. If we consider current gold prices to be about $0.40/M, then we can assume a player will expect the GE price to be approximately 9.3M for a bond. The bond was originally purchased for $5, so this means the person who originally bought the bond has effectively paid ~$0.54/m or 34% extra just by purchasing a bond.

Now, let's consider the assumption we made in this calculation:

Membership $ and Real Life $ are equivalent

REALITY: People certainly value real $ more than store credit on Runescape.com. This means that the GE price should actually be lower than 9.33M in the long run. Furthermore, the marginal value of a membership to one player falls as quantity increases. A player may want 2-3 Bonds for membership, but they likely don't need 10-20 Bonds for membership. With RL $, the first dollar is as useful as the last dollar.

Now, back to the point that Jagex has not offered a way for players to cash out into RL $. This means there is still a massive hole in the economy. These players who wish to sell gold will have no choice but to undercut Jagex's prices on the Black Market. Jagex can cry all they want, but they even admitted this economy exists and is not going away. So they've made a major mistake by neglecting this portion of that market. By not allowing players to cash out Bonds / GP for RL $, they create a market outside the game.

We will see gold prices drop quite quickly once these updates are implemented. The Black Market will find an equilibrium at a much lower rate for gold than the Bond market. The only players that will continue to buy gold with Bonds are the new customers who were afraid of transacting off-site. This update will only increase the amount of people RWT'ing, and will not stop any off-site activity. It's a complete money-grab in every sense of the term. It offers nothing to combat gold-farming, gold selling or RWT in general.

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^I'm curious where your proof is that gold selling sites do not run the gold farming bots.

 

We have all quite visibly seen in game gold farming bots and gold selling bots and there are gold selling sites.

But never have I ever came across the slightest hint of players selling gold to these sites, it makes no sense.

 

Players would want a much higher markup than the membership fee cost that it takes to run a bot. A player is also liable to play much less and make much less gold than a bot.

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One important factor is simply the value people place on their account. Bond prices will end up being more expensive than gold sellers. A lot of people however would rather pay an extra couple cents per million gold to not risk having their account banned.

 

CCP has been doing this in EVE Online for years at this point. Do some reading on PLEX, which is the EVE-equivilent of bonds.

 

It's essentially a win-win-win-win. Jagex gets ~$10 USD for a month of membership time. Player A gets in-game gold. Player B gets membership time. The economy benefits from having one less gold injection from gold farmers.

 

RWT is impossible to stop. Currently the best method anyone has come up with is the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" method. (Sorry, removal of free trade was a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face).

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^I'm curious where your proof is that gold selling sites do not run the gold farming bots.

 

We have all quite visibly seen in game gold farming bots and gold selling bots and there are gold selling sites.

But never have I ever came across the slightest hint of players selling gold to these sites, it makes no sense.

 

Players would want a much higher markup than the membership fee cost that it takes to run a bot. A player is also liable to play much less and make much less gold than a bot.

He is better qualified to speak about this than most people.

 

A significant portion of RWT is effectively merchanting applied to RSGP - the sites have the patience and connections to collect gp at a slightly lower than market value from players wishing to sell their gp, and then sell it to other players at a higher price, who pay the higher price for the convenience. It doesn't necessarily include or require goldfarming.

Asmodean <3

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^I'm curious where your proof is that gold selling sites do not run the gold farming bots.

 

We have all quite visibly seen in game gold farming bots and gold selling bots and there are gold selling sites.

But never have I ever came across the slightest hint of players selling gold to these sites, it makes no sense.

 

Players would want a much higher markup than the membership fee cost that it takes to run a bot. A player is also liable to play much less and make much less gold than a bot.

 

A player can be infinitely more effective than a bot at making money. Stakers can earn Billions daily. Dicers were making billions daily back at its peak as well. You are comparing apples to oranges. Bots make absolute peanuts when compared to real players. For a Gold-Farming company to see solid returns, they need to be running an insane amount of bots (we're taking hundreds to even thousands). This is an extremely technical business, and requires a very different skill-set than gold buying/selling.

 

Most businesses see no need in setting up a gold farm. They can just buy from the gold farmers themselves, or other players, at the market rate. Unless the company is sure that they can produce gold for a lower cost than on the wholesale market, without compromising resources being used on other areas of the business, there is no reason to gold farm.

 

Bots which advertise gold sites are definitely a different situation. These are certainly owned by the offending sites themselves.

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^I'm curious where your proof is that gold selling sites do not run the gold farming bots.

 

We have all quite visibly seen in game gold farming bots and gold selling bots and there are gold selling sites.

But never have I ever came across the slightest hint of players selling gold to these sites, it makes no sense.

 

Players would want a much higher markup than the membership fee cost that it takes to run a bot. A player is also liable to play much less and make much less gold than a bot.

 

A player can be infinitely more effective than a bot at making money. Stakers can earn Billions daily. Dicers were making billions daily back at its peak as well. You are comparing apples to oranges.

 

Bots which advertise gold sites are definitely a different situation. These are certainly owned by the offending sites themselves.

 

Concidering 1 billion gold is valued at 350 pound. Stakers accounts that make billions a day constantly sell their gold cheaper to gold farmers who sell it for more over time. These guys make 1 weeks average pay in just a day or even a few minutes if they're lucky and risky.

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jonnyharris, on 25 Sept 2013 - 8:19 PM, said:snapback.png

Haha , a question by God of Lego just got read out on the Twitch Stream :)

Did it xD? Where and what did it say

It was a question about not believing the statistic that 40-50% of players have taken part in RWTing. Couldnt tell you how mnay minutes into the stream it was though sorry.

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Isn't staking more or less a net zero sum activity? Other than glitchers I always assumed no one did long term goldfarming via staking and those stakers selling large amounts of gp were more or less cashing out and quitting.

 

Staking is a zero sum game, yes, but this also means there are winners and there are losers. For whatever reason, there are players who tend to win more than they lose. Some of them find an edge through PID (always getting first hit). Some of them just have better bankroll management.

 

Regardless, these players will go on a hot streak, and sell off the winnings. They hold onto enough gold to continue their staking, and they'll sell again once they surpass the amount of gold they need to stake.

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First off, the newspost made me feel sick.

 

I don't believe bond-fuelled RWT will ever match the demand for RSGP, and I think bonds will crash unless their ingame value is boosted somehow.

 

I also think it's a gateway to real RWT. Once you've got a taste of how much easier it makes the game, you'll want more, without the hassle of selling in game items, and go directly to a gold-farming website.

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jonnyharris, on 25 Sept 2013 - 8:19 PM, said:snapback.png

Haha , a question by God of Lego just got read out on the Twitch Stream :)

Did it xD? Where and what did it say

It was a question about not believing the statistic that 40-50% of players have taken part in RWTing. Couldnt tell you how mnay minutes into the stream it was though sorry.

 

Ahh I seee, yes I had mentioned that somewhere. I am still warry about that stat. Most RS players are pretty open about what evil things they do. I've never came across anyone whos RWT'd out of my friends list.

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Isn't staking more or less a net zero sum activity? Other than glitchers I always assumed no one did long term goldfarming via staking and those stakers selling large amounts of gp were more or less cashing out and quitting.

Well, imagine you take a sine wave and cut off the top off each peak - this is the money stakers would sell, the stuff they don't need to rebuild. When they drop below zero, they have to get money elsewhere - bossing, merching, RWTing. Staking is zero-sum, but there are definitely high peaks.

 

 


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So I'm going to runefest, thank you random people with irl money spare who bought these from jagex.

Yes, I paid with rs monies :rolleyes:

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I like that bonds prevent DDoS attacks... :rolleyes: Do you just hold one in your characters hand as a voodoo protection charm or something?

 

Honestly I wouldn't mind so much if Jagex had so much as tagged on a line saying "The extra revenue from selling bonds (& from the permanent closure of our anti-goldfarming division.. :rolleyes:) will help us to make better quality updates". Even if there's ony the tiniest fragment of truth in that sentence, it at least acknowledges they're the ones getting the money (the $40,000-80,000 a day according to their 170B traded daily figure), rather than purporting to be doing this all out of the kindness of their hearts and for the good of the community.

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I'm really fascinated with this picture. I would love to know what the different colours mean. I assume the colours indicate trade volumes, with red being massive amounts of GP and blue being only a couple M? Does anyone else have a different take?

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Now we need a new tool to analyse the analysis.

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