Burta

OK I'm back with the first part of my data collection. Here are the top 5 forums by posts so far: Approximated Posts Per Day: Zybez - 9300 Rune Tips - 4600 Sals Realm - 3100 RS Realm - 1400 RS Boards - 1350 **I seemed to mess up RuneHQ tracking, that or they changed their post IDs in between my tracking date and revision date. They no doubt will be in the top 5 in the next revision.

Thanks for the input guys, I'm going to start trying to collect some data from all the major forums now. I'll keep you all posted.

I was planning to do a little study on which are the most popular Runescape related forums. I was just wondering which forums do you guys think I should include in the study other than this site of course?

I'm going to assume that most people didn't read my actual article that I linked to in my original post, it addressed many of the issues and concerns you guys raised. I suppose I should probably qualify myself. I'm actually in my 5th year of university studying Business Management and ECONOMICS, and I have been studying economics for over 7 years now. So I'm not unfamiliar with basic economic principles like "inflation" and the basic rationale of modern online business because I run an online business myself. So I'd appreciate not being treated like an idiot the suggestion I made which you can read in full HERE - is pretty well thought out. OK now to comment on the actual constructive comments made. Firstly the idea of a price war is not rediculous but I think in a practical sense it is impossible for Jagex to lose the price war because everything is working in their favour. For example a RS gold seller needs to play employees to play the game (gold farmers) they need the capital to buy computers for gold farmers to use, and they have the other operational expenses including advertising in what is already a very competitive industry. Now if jagex were to enter the market they would be able to create gold for free, they wouldn't have to advertise or invest capital into computers to harvest gold - in other words they have an unbeatable cost structure and they would be the low cost provider by miles. Secondly Jagex would have no incentive to enter a price war. If Jagex set gold prices at $5/M and black market traders were selling at $3/M people would still buy of Jagex because they are the reliable source of gold and there is no chance of losing your account. Next thing that hasn't been considered in the fact that these black market gold sellers are business men, if the return on investment is in selling runescape gold then they will move to other MMORPGs to make money. What I mean by this is gold farmer don't care what game they play whether it is Runescape, WoW, Everquest or any other MMORPG - they are in it to make money and if there is more money to be made in other games they will move to those games. So by Jagex entering the market they WOULD crush the competition because the black market traders can't compete on the same level as Jagex because Jagex has the low cost structures.

To be completely honest I agree with you 100% I personally think that Jagex is in a position to actually significantly help reduce third world poverty. I'm actually going to do a bit write up about it. I have done a lot of research into this area of Gold selling in MMORPGs and I think the emergence of MMORPG and gold selling actually gives third work countries a serious ability to export produce cost effectively and have the grass roots of the population reap the majority of the returns. By that I mean, say for example, instead of Jagex just creating the money like I mentioned in my above article, what if they setup their own Chinese/Indian/African workshops and had employees work for say $0.50 - $1/hours to make gold by playing the game, and then Jagex just act as the middle man between the players as these establishments. Jagex in my honest opinion has the potential to DRASTICALLY change the lives of thousands upon thousands of people in third world countries if they wanted to. I don't in any way imply that this problem is exclusive to Runescape, if anything Runescape is far from one the worst effected MMORPGs.

OK everyone knows that the black market trade of gold and the indrect problems that it cause (autoers) is a primary concern for Jagex and a problem they have been fighting for ages with very limited success. Now my suggestion isn't really new, but it is slightly modified to reduce the negative results of it's implementation, but it centers around the idea that Jagex should sell gold to undermine the black market gold industry to make it so there is reduced profits for gold sellers reducing their incentive to sell Runescape gold and therefore reducing their desire to use autoers and reduce the game play for other players. I believe if Jagex sold Runescape gold they could not only make more money and in turn reinvest it into the game but they would obviously be servicing a growing proportion of the Runescape community that is willing to buy gold. Though in selling gold I'd like to think that Jagex might be able to set a limit to the amount of gold an individual player could buy in any given month, to not only reduce their own liability but also to promote game play as the primary source of revenue, not to mention preventing playing bankrolling aspects of the game. Jagex might also look at some of the method applied by other MMORPGs to solve the black market problem like the creation of special servers that allowed such trading to take place. My propose suggestion is quite long, but those points above are the basics of it. If you care to read the whole thing the link is below. What do you think? Source:Solving the Runescape Gold Selling Problem

I recently made a post about my thoughts on ways to Solve the Runescape Gold Selling Problem I think it is probably the best solution to the problem, but it evolves around the principle that Jagex sell Runescape gold in an attempt to undermine the black market.

I'm sure Jagex could include a simple disclaimer on a links page where they link to Runescape fan sites absolving them of any responsibility for the damage that occurs on third party sites. To be completely honest Jagex has no responsibility to anyone all Runescape accounts are still owned by them and if any damage was to occur to them there is no way someone could seek compensation for damages. The worst that could happen is bad publicity - which would be lost in the sea of endless complaints about Jagex's customer support.

I have posted a rant here - http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=671057 - about how I don't like the way Jagex badmouth Runescape fan sites, and I was thinking what people thought about Jagex potentially showing support in the form of a link for genuine fan sites that offer good information and services to Runescape players? Source: Jagex Created Runescape Fan Sites

Like?

So what can Jagex do to slow this upward trend of gold selling?

Man I hope that isn't their attitude - that seems like a very hit and miss sort of approach.

I recently made a post on my little Runescape blog site, Runescape Haven, about how I think there is an upward trend of buying gold in the RS community. According to Google trends, the frequency of people searching for gold is increasingly dramatically quicker than the games growth itself, but I'm not really sure why there is an upward trend when Jagex is always advertising about how it is illegal. What do you guys think? Is it maybe because there are more sellers entering the market and therefore more sellers advertising and promoting their services or is the sheer fact that Jagex seems to often mention the idea of buying gold being illegal only go to further aid the exposure of the industry? Source: Upward Trend of Buying Runescape Gold

What site do you run? In the near future I will consider hosting Runescape sites and buying domain names for them if they need and if they are big enough to justify the expenditure. This would be done in exchange for a text link back to my site I imagine.

Yes most forums to a degree do delete posts, but again without all the forum owners giving me admin to all their forums, my ability to see the intricate detail and setup of each different Runescape Forum is always going to be hard, so I'm forced to make some general assumptions, and use the occasional guestimate... :roll:... I generally just figure that most forums will be run and administered much the same as each other. Anyway, this little study seems to have sparked some general interest amongst more than just the Tip It community, but the general Runescape Community (I posted my finding on some of the other forums as well) so I might do a follow up study in a month or twos time, and I'll make it a little more accurate by using post IDs. It will also be interesting to the growth and development over a period of a month.