blackrazor

olahcan (it looks better backwards) I guess all rares could be made untradable, although I don't see the problem with the way things are currently. Wild & free market were removed by Jagex over RWT, which was causing credit-card chargebacks & penalties to Jagex (from paid accounts made with fraudulant cards) that was threatening to ruin the entire business model for Jagex. So it was kill RWT at any cost or risk closing down Runescape entirely. You certainly cannot make the same argument for rares in this current GE controlled market. As for deleting rares and replacing them with market value gold, that only benefits the merchants. Those players who bought or earned a rare to hold it for sentimental reasons as part of their collections will be hurt, and for little real gain by the community. A gold influx would affect prices of other items, too (as already mentioned). Also mentioned before (and I agree), not all players mind seeing rares on players other than their own. Some recognize that it is a method to acknowledge time spent in the game, actually being present for the past events (for the untradables, anyways). I particularly disliked your pumpkin idea: that they would be deleted and could be repicked by players with a certain level in farming skill. I've been a f2p for life, even before the paid service was introduced. Why should players such as I lose our pumpkins with no way to regain them ourselves? Seems like replacing one form of scarcity with another. Me personally, I would rather things stay as they are now regarding rares. It's one of the only things left of real value in the game, that a free player can have, if he was there back far enough. Even the shiniest new member who wasn't there when bunny ears were given out, can't get one now. It's the very last aspect of the game where: TIME >> $$. Please don't suggest to take that away. The only change I would support is a move to make the current tradables into untradables, with a proper warning period that would allow them to move out of the hands of merchants, and into the hands of true collectors and party-goers. At least no new gold would be created, and well, merchanting has its risks, right? That's my two cents.

I'm a 1240 skill-total pure-f2p, and yes I know it's not enough to make the list. I've been playing since November 2001. I used to be in the top10 when this list was brand new (or some previous incarnation of it on the old Scapeboard with the same idea). Then I was in the top 30s as it grew. Top 100s after a while. I kind of lost track and never noticed the point where I was bumped off of it entirely. Still, this is a fun list to have and kudos for maintaining it. Now, why am I posting, since I obviously no longer make the list and really nobody wants to read the paragraph I posted above? Well, I have a question. Why is this list no longer stickied, and instead we have some odd nearly-empty f2p list of "Tipiters only" in the sticky section? Yes, I know this is Tip.it, but it seems a bit odd to try and maintain a Tipit-only f2p list in lieu of a more global one. So I'm curious about how this change came to be. Thanks.

Well, I'm a dad with 4 kids, a wife, dog, 2 cats, house, and a car about which to worry, so if some eccentric person offered me 1 million dollars for my account, well then, they can have it. I'm a bit sentimental about this game and my time spent on it, but not 1 million dollars worth of sentimental. On the other hand, if someone hijacked my account for ransom, I wouldn't even spend the price of postage to get it back. We're held hostage in our lives by forces beyond our control often enough already. I assume my account is secure, but if I'm wrong, then I'll chalk it up to yet another of life's lessons and move on.

There's been a lot of great speculation here. It's been a fun read. I'd like to add, that Jagex isn't a traditional business model; they are very different from traditional companies (ex: SOE). They didn't get into this business as a bunch of "suits" solely to earn money for their investors. It started as a labour of love and curiosity by two quirky Gower brothers and some of their pals, and morphed into some freakishly successful thing. This is both a bad and good thing. Runescape, as the brainchild of successful creator/entreprenneurs, doesn't conform to other popular games or stick to a standard marketing mold. Instead, it goes its own way, marches to the beat of its own drum. That can be lots of fun, for both players and designers. But this also means that if the Gowers have an unhealthy obsession with nit-picky rules and RWT, then it may be reflected in the game, as well. Even if it's to a point that isn't profitable or even fun to honest players. It's their baby. Remember that. Okay, now for my predictions: 1) GE. They are going to make this as easy to use as possible. No fees to use, I am predicting. It may even be a standard part of the character interface, so that you can use it any time, instead of having to travel to specific NPCs. The main benefit of the GE for Jagex will be savings on customer support costs, from less claims against scammers in player-to-player trades, and a developing database of true cash values of every item in the game. It's hard to get that true cash value from player-to-player trades, since bartering, scamming, lending, and gifting will skew the results. In order to thwart RWT, Jagex may do any of these for the GE: a) Make trades anonymous, so if someone puts ashes for 5M, the person on the other end of the RWT (buying the ashes) won't know for sure that he is giving his 5M to the correct player. B) Make trades only variable in the most significant digit. So, you could sell ashes for 1M, or 2M, or 9M, or 20M ... but not 1,000,312 gp, so you wouldn't be able to uniquely identify it with trailing insignificant digits (the 312gp part in the above example). c) Once enough data is collected, make all trades "locked in" within an acceptable price range. This would replace (B) as a more effective control, once the raw data is in place. For example, if through data collection, coal is determined to have an average price of 192 gp, then you would allow it vary up or down by 20% of that value. A new average would be recalculated regularly, so that normal, large-scale market trends would be allowed. 2) Drop trades (and drops upon deaths) a) I think that items will be made to vanish upon log out. That should kill mule-based drop trading and pure-twinking, but not RWT much. B) You won't be able to drop gp, or if you can, it will be limited to small amounts, like 500 gp. c) You won't be able to drop any item or pile worth more than 50K (the value will be taken from the GE data collection) Jagex will put a positive spin on this, as cracking down on twinking pures, and also as more flexible rules allowing you to keep more of your items and gold when you die. If you think about it, these limits won't affect drop parties, much. It's mostly addy and runite finished products, and assorted other cheap things that are dropped at most events. 3) Player-to-player (direct) trading Once the GE raw data is available, each side of a trade will be given a certain cash value (based on GE average values), and you won't be able to have it vary by more than 5K or 5%, whichever is larger. Jagex may also limit trades to 5 trades every hour, or something like that. Yes, this will totally kill generous acts of friendship, family and friends helping each other, etc. It will also stop not only RWT, but many common scams, trust trades, etc. Jagex will put a positive spin on this, claiming that they need to cut the customer service load from scam complaints, so that they can serve the rest of our needs better and faster. And make the game safer, with less players angry about scams. === Well those are my predictions. That's all they are. Nothing more. Have fun. :) Please don't think that I approve of these ideas; they are only my predictions, nothing more. I think that the Jagex culture has an unhealthy obsession with nit-picky rules and punishing cheaters (even at everyone else's expense), and that this is how it might play out. That is all.

I would put forward the economic hypothesis (not originally mine) that the source of profit lies in the inefficiency of supply and / or demand (and time). Put simply, it is easier to make a merchanting profit, when buying or selling is a pain, and a merchant takes the time and develops the skills to overcome that barrier. The GE will probably reduce inefficiency, by bringing all the servers together into one global market and allowing for selling while your character is off doing other things. This should help reduce inefficiencies in selling & buying (larger markets, more variety, more choice of competing deals) and also reduce inefficiencies in time (selling while doing other in-game activities or even while offline). This means that prices will tend to cluster into a narrow (more efficient) margin of bid and ask, making merchanting (reselling) a less viable proposition. For high volume items, such as "crafted goods" (I use this term loosely, i.e.: plates, kites, bows, amulets, etc.), the price will likely wind up near the high-alch or npc price. These items tend to be "over-produced" as by-products of the very nature of RS's leveling game, and with high liquidity, high efficiency markets, their pricing should reflect that. Some people will need these products for personal use or high-alching, but generally in quantities far lower than production. Raw & consumable materials, i.e. runes, essense, logs, high-quality food, ores, coal, gems, feathers, perhaps arrows?, etc., will likely see a price drop, but NOT down to high-alch or npc prices. These are produced in large quantities, but are also consumed in large quantities as part of the leveling game. They will achieve a stabilized price, with a narrow bid & ask (regardless of quantity), so merchanting these will make less sense once the GE is established. They will still be purchased for leveling, and also as a hedge against the "gold piece". Scarce items (barrows, whips, dragon armors & weapons, trimmed items, etc.) will also see a price drop, but still well above high-alch or npc prices. These items are in scarce supply, but over time they become less scarce, as more enter the market than leave it. Of course, this is partially offset by new players entering the game and demanding these scarce items. Thus over time, prices will drop on these items, but slowly. Rare items should rise in price, because there is zero new supply. These slowly trickle out of the game, while the player population (and demand) continues to grow and / or churn. These price trends would exist without the GE, but they should be amplified and accelerated by the GE's efficiency. Equally important, the bid and ask on items should shrink dramatically, making it much harder to "turn a quick buck" on a resell. The best investment will be in investments that follow (relatively) predictable market changes over time. For example, if one assumes that holiday rares will only get rarer, then even with a narrow bid / ask margin at one point in time, the price should still trend upwards over time. This will make rarers an even better investment when the GE is enabled (better, because there will be fewer alternative good investments with the GE in place), further helping these items to inflate. In conclusion, I think the GE will "standardize" prices to a narrow bid /ask, making it harder to turn quick profits by jumping servers, changing locations, or coming on at different times of the week. In short, less short-term merchanting. Price trends will move faster towards their current trends. Crafted goods should drop to near high-alch, consumables should drop a bit or hold steady, scarce goods will tend to drop (but more slowly), and rares should inflate.

Where have all the generous people gone? Indeed! @Andrew: I guess you figured that it was generous enough of you to merely offer to take their hides (and time, profit/hr, crafting xp/hr), instead of also taking their combat xp, prayer xp too? Well, I suppose you're entitled to your point of view, but perhaps true generousity in this case, would have been to put yourself in the dragonslayers' shoes, before ever opening your mouth. Why are they down there? How could you make their RS experience more fun, as well? With that in mind, you could have offered them 10K for the 4 hides. Leave it up to them if they wish to reward your generous cash offer with free hides, or not. Afterall, generosity is meant to be given freely, not taken by force of persuasion or arms. If they refuse to trade at all, or insist on extorting your black dragon armor in return, then take your 4 kills, and begone. Or stay and train, as you wish. But please, for the love of god, realize that generosity and respect are two way streets. Give some out, and maybe it'll warm their hearts, as well. Maybe it won't, but at least you'll have been the better person for having tried. @Paw Claw I understand your point totally. Sometimes it feels better to bestow a boon on those who at least try to exercise self-sufficiency. They may fail, because they lack skill or ability, but not owing to a lack of effort.

A while back, it was very common for people on my friends list to pm me, telling me they had been hacked, and if I could please give them some addy or rune items, or a "couple hundred k", or a rune pick, just so they could get back on their feet again. If the people on my friend's list were being honest, and were a representative sample, then really about 1/2 to 2/3 of the RS population gets "hacked" or "share-hacked". Somehow, I doubt that; but either way, I just didn't care.

Shield of Arrav ... It's just easier to buy the parts than deal with some of the silly 'scapers out there. But then, that's not really doing the quest, is it?

Over time: many uncuts (incl. diamonds), nats, cosmics, and one disk of returning.

There is no simple answer to this, as people can (and will) find ever more interesting reasons to go off on one another. Some people believe that it's rude to attack a monster that is already under attack. (It's even a rule in some Asian MMOs, like Ragnarok Online, not to attack another player's monsters nor to pick up their drops.) Personally, I believe that multi areas are FFA (free for all), and everyone should be free to whack at whatever unfortunate critters spawn there. Beliefs held by others are a hard (impossible?) thing to change. If you train in multi areas, this particular misunderstanding will continue to happen from time to time. My advice is to either grow a thick skin to it, or just train in non-multi areas. Although, even in non-multi, you can be called a "hog" "spawn-camper" "spawn-stealer" "autoclick-hacker", etc. if you wind up getting more than your "fair" (what other over-judgemental players consider fair) share of the kills. In short, people are people. And with the anonymity of the internet, they just tend to act even "people-ier".

Well, the 200M xp limit (and the 2B gp limit) is more of a progamming limit that Jagex imposed on themselves, when deciding the range of integers to use for the game. They could change it at any time, rendering this whole topic moot. Conversely, I have heard plenty of talk and rumour that Jagex might increase skills past level 99. So many imponderables.

I love articles like this, that question what goes into making a successful MMO. I'll touch on a few, from the original article, and from some of the replies. Plus I'll add a couple of my own. 1) Most important is the critical mass in an online community. Critical mass = huge. RS has 30K to 200+K online concurrently, all the time, 24/7. There is always someone to interact with. For better or worse, you are never alone. And that does seem to satisfy some basic human need. Even if the community has undesirable elements. Critical mass is achieved in a few ways: a) The basic game is free, and the free players can and do interact with the paying ones. Nice synergy there. B) The entire game plays together in one truly massive planet-wide server, across all nationalities and borders. All the 100+ or so worlds are merely channels that you can freely switch between. Contrast this with other MMOs of even much smaller populations that still choose to subdivide their game into multiple servers which avatars cannot cross. c) The game is platform independant, runs in a browser, on a computer with relatively modest specs. It has no huge client download and no CD. In short, it's fast & easy to get up and running. There are a minimum of barriers to entry. d) The game is updated regularly and the member's option is reasonably well priced, compared to the alternatives. The ad sponsored version has no time limit. Both the member's and non-member's versions are well integrated into a complete whole. All in all, a well thought out design. e) The overall design philosphy: K.I.S.S. Heck, it works. The system is simple. Anyone can be up and playing in minutes, no complicated builds or game mechanics to break your head over. And if you don't like killing monsters, there are plenty of other skills that you can do, instead. f) Reliability. The servers are always up. None of this 5 hour maintenance, or multi-day downtime (or constant d/c) so common with other MMOs. The servers go down for about 5 minutes, once a week, for the weekly update. All other maintenance is handled seemlessly in the background. Even if a cluster of world channels should go down, there are always plenty of alternate worlds for players to switch, and the overall game remains running. g) Avatars with any effort put into them aren't usually deleted from the server, despite claims to the contrary. You can leave for months, and then come back to pick right up where you left off. 2) Runescape seems more of a "world" than a "game". Instead of game-like quests and levels being the primary motivators, runescape is more economy and skills based. One feature of RS, is the enormous quantity of raw materials needed to advance many skills. More raw materials than most players would ever wish to collect on their own. There is a huge commodities-based economy that built up to satisfy this skilling desire within the game. This add lots of depth to the playing experience. Another economic metagame is the accumulation of holiday rares, either for enjoyment, pompous display, or investment. These two main economic drivers (skills & rares) often interact, for even more fun and profit. 3) There is a lot to do. Quests. Skills. Mini-games. Pking. Staking. Pure builds. Merchanting. POH. Holiday events. Cabbage picking. Player-run events (bronze wildy battles, marriages, etc.). With the size of the game, multiplied by the size of the community, the stuff to do here just boggles the mind. It's a lot like real life that way. If you're the sort of person that usually keeps busy in the real world, you'll have no trouble finding stuff to keep you occupied in the RS world, IMO. 4) The "fantasy fiction effect". I hear claims that folks are partial to swords, spells, and dragons. I personally doubt this. Any immersive world has the potential to capture a large user base. It just needs to appeal on a basic, powerful level. In their own fields of entertainment, Neopets, Pokemon, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, Dracula and Harry Potter all did quite well without being traditional medieval fantasy franchises. Of course, WoW, Everquest, Ultima Online, LOTR, Tolkien, and D&D also did very well, but there is plenty of room for lots of other successful competing fantasy themes, too.

General work ethic and peddling skills. The most amusing one being as follows: People will pay their life savings for worthless trash, as long as it is rare enough, and lends enough status to their minds.

(1240-7) / 15 = 82.2 (f2p)

@Willysp: Why do you think (in your case, I use this term loosely) advertisers pay Jagex to show their banners? Charity, perhaps? A love of the Java programming community? No. They pay, because they want their products exposed to as many targetted, happy, mind-numbed consumers as possible. That's you and me, folks. The advertiser wants lots of happy people viewing their ads. The advertiser pays Jagex. Jagex wants to make the advertiser happy. The best way to do this is to give f2p enough goodies, that they come in large numbers, pay attention to their screens, and are happy and properly numbed. (Of course, not too many goodies, so as not to subvert Jagex's own member's services ... why stop at one cash cow, when you can have two. I understand, and accept this perfectly.) To recap: Advertisers don't pay in order for Jagex to give them free levels and rune items. They pay for players to see their ads. Lots of players. As many as possible. If advertisers were to have a say on where their money goes, they would want Jagex to give more to free players, in order to attract more of them, and to keep them attentively watching those banners. See spot run.