The Runescape Economy
Entry posted by Merch Gwyar
3438 views
Before I start, a huge shout out here to H Alger. He tracked down Teacuptime and gave him some Sara Brews for me, which Teacuptime duly delivered. ;) I am very touched by all of these gifts, though it really isn't necessary. They are very gratefully received, but I will be able to source my supplies for myself in time. I don't want to be sponging off everyone else's hard work. At this moment in time, my Nomad pwning supplies are: 700 ruby bolts (e); 102 Sara Brews (4); 21 super restores (4); 1 super restore (2); and 200 ordinary restore potions. In short, I could have at least a couple of attempts right now. I want to leave it though until I have mega supplies of Sara Brews and super restores. It's too frustrating to have a couple of attempts and then have to stop for a few days to replenish my supplies. My plan is to wait until I can seriously go for it time after time after time, until his backside is truly kicked. Thank you again to everyone who has been sending things. You're all very lovely. Now onto the business of this blog entry.
A lot of my thoughts just recently have turned to the Runescape economy. I think that it fascinates me so much because I don't understand economics in general and therefore it's a great opportunity to learn something new. Despite my lack of understanding, the economy affects us so deeply inside the game. Even though I attempt to be self-sufficient, it's still there at the back of my mind. For example, I looted a snapdragon seed from an impling the other day. That snapdragon seed was always going to be planted up Trollheim, then harvested to be turned into super restores. The super restores were always going to be put into my bank for future use. The economy should have had nothing to do with that, yet I still checked the price of the seed (93k) and then the price of the herbs once I'd harvested (155k). At the back of my mind, potential earnings bubbled up and sank. Many people could consider that I received those super restores free, with an extra bonus of xp. I tend to see it as costing me whatever I could have sold them for. I'm not convinced that my perception here is the healthy one. :(
Since June 2008, I've been buying items for my treasure chest, in my POH. This means that I've kept a baseline amount of 1m in my bank, but anything over that has gone on buying things that will immediately be stashed away never to see the light of day again. This has kept me poor, but has also given me an hitherto mostly ignored insight into inflation in the game. The ranger boots used to be 7m, they are now 14m; things like that. In recent months, I've been reading Sparhawke's blog and I've learned how to flip. I also have Egghebrecht and The RS Economist feeding me items to flip or information on the greater issues within the game's economy. Finally, I had a relative stung by the mint cake crash. All of these things have fuelled my desire to learn more about what's happening out there. This is a task made more difficult by the fact that I need a running jump to even start thinking about mathematics and market forces.
There is undoubtedly a lot of spare gold coins sloshing around the Runescape economy as a whole. I've read some quite rabid rants on the RSOF pointing the finger in various directions. Chief amongst these are:
a) The introduction of statuettes into PKing, which provide a greater revenue than the losses incurred by other players being pwned;
b) The existence of the 26k and 76k tricks, which heightened further the number of statuettes being gained and traded in for money;
c) The loss/reduction of the bots meaning that a mass of cheap labour disappeared, taking with them vast quantities of raw goods (ore, essence etc). As actual players were now collecting these, the supply went down considerably, while the price for which people were prepared to sell went up;
d) The merchanting clans... to be honest, I'm struggling here to understand how they've inflated the economy, as they are basically pyramid schemes that ensure that the vast majority of members will lose money. I'm sure that the answer here is somewhere within what Zach was trying to impress upon me about following the money. If money is simply changing hands, then it's still in the game and still in circulation. It's only losing money if that money is somehow taken out of the game;
e) The 'rares' market in W2 and its cousin the 'mint cake bubble'. As the rich become the mega-rich, then they have the personal funds to totally buy out certain markets. Hence the prices of things like party hats become so high as to be unbuyable. They demand more money for things, which causes players to work harder to accumulate junk (perhaps the stock piles which they were left holding after a merchanting clan dumped too early on them), which then becomes currency and... oh! I'm lost. Here is where my mind seems to go up against a brick wall of Economy and leaves me floundering somewhat;
f) High alching creates money from thin air. If essence is also mined and crafted into the required nature runes, then this money literally is from thin air. People have been alching for years and all that money has built up;
g) The GE price caps. I've heard conflicting views on this. Some people say that the caps have destroyed the market. Their existence means that items continue to be sold player to player in the trading worlds and therefore the street prices can fluctuate drastically. This is bad. Other people say that the caps are saving the economy. This is good;
h) The lack of effective money sinks. In the past, PKing used to take a lot of money out of the game, as people died frequently in their armour and had to replace it. Skills like Construction were added as money sinks, but they have failed. I'm level 84 and I'm in the top 9000 players in that skill. That means that only 9000 people, out of a game with 8m accounts, have forked out the money that I have. Even fewer have thrown away the millions required to reach 99. Similarly, as the price of dragon bones has risen, then fewer people train prayer. Runescape players, on the whole, do not like throwing away their cash. They hoard and stockpile items until they find a bargain.
Those are the main places where people seemed to be placing the blame.
I've been revisiting historical periods, like the Weimer Republic, where hyperinflation meant that people needed wheelbarrows to carry the cash necessary to buy a loaf of bread. I've been haunting Wikipedia, looking up precisely what words like hyperinflation and inflation generally mean. They all look very familiar. I was particularly struck by the realities of hyperinflation, where the governments attempt to stem it with price controls (GE anyone?), whilst printing money to cope with the spiralling costs of everything (drops, high alching, raw materials etc), resulting in a devaluing of the currency leading directly to people putting their trust in assets (like those items in my treasure chest?) and ignoring the usual flow of hard cash in order to barter with goods (mint cakes and junk trading). I was also looking at the causes of hyperinflation. This often occurs after a war, as in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Germany etc. While it may not look like we've been at war in Runescape, we most certainly have. We went to war on real world trading. I've drawn direct parallels here between the loss of mineral rich areas and means of production, after the Versailles Treaty, which so crippled the Weimar Republic, and the loss of the bots in Runescape, which has had an almost identical effect on the Runescape economy. The Germans in the 1920s were wallpapering their walls with marks; the modern Runescape equivalent would be to melt down down mint cakes to make a huge chocolate fountain in the middle of Varrock.
I didn't think that the Runescape economy affected me too much, except as general background noise. With all of this information buzzing around my head though, I've looked to my gameplay. I'm no great merchanter and I have no real awareness of market forces, so this, I think, would be the chronicle of many players. Those who are just reacting without considering the bigger pictures or trying to predict the future of their assets. I've found that I need more money. I had two things factored in here: unsuccessfully fighting Nomad nearly bankrupted me (was Nomad a money sink? He's cost a lot of players a lot of money); and my desire to buy ranger boots.
The former caused me to stop, take stock and then think about how I can create the supplies without spending so much money. If it was a money sink, therefore, it was temporary. It was a short, sharp shock to the economy, but the long term might even be detrimental. Why? Because if I defeat Nomad on my first attempt with all of these 'free' supplies, then what am I likely to do next? Flood the market with excess supplies, because they are all things that are currently selling at a premium and I have acquired the knowledge of sourcing them cheaply/free. Give a woman a Sara Brew and she will be good for one fight; give a woman the knowledge of sourcing her own Sara Brews and she will not only be good for life, but will also swamp an already saturated market with goods.
The ranger boots are in a different class. I've watched them shoot up from 7m to 14m in a short period of time. I momentarily watched them go to 18m, but then they settled back to 13m-15m and have stayed put. A year ago, I would have had to save up 7m. It would have taken time, but I would have got there eventually. The same could be said about 14m, you just double the time. But the damage comes in watching how quickly it rises. If I wait too long, will I have to save up 21m? That causes a low level panic, so I looked for other means to make money faster. Thus it is that, after 3 years of playing, I've finally been dabbling in merchanting. I've been flipping items and raking off the profit. I've also taken advice on managing my kingdom, which is a facet of the game that I've ignored for years. Merchanting has seen my initial investment of 1m grow into 12m over only a couple of months. Meanwhile, look at my second foray into Miscellania:
That represents two days outlay at 75k each and there was also a clue scroll, which netted me a blue elegant skirt and a studded leather body worth around 68k. In short, I just made about 1.1m after spending 150k. It's printing money!
I've also looked at my hoarding practices. With inflation having taken law and death runes over the 400gp each mark, I'm loathe to cash in mine now for much less. This had led to me still runecrafting, but stockpiling the resultant runes in my bank until the price is right. I'm guessing that I'm not alone in that. This means that the supply is becoming a little more scarce (until the runecrafting update caused a flux in the opposite direction, of course), but also means that one day, when I'm desperate, I'm going to flood the market with 1000s of runes.
I'm not quite sure what the solutions are. Zach suggested that everyone in game dump half of their money. Teacuptime came up with a wonderful idea about an auction room. I came up with the next holiday event giving us all party hats, so that the only way that you could tell that one was an original was to store it in a player owned house (with an update to facilitate that), hence loads of people would train Construction. You can see now why Zach and Teacuptime are seen as better sources of economic advice than I am. ;) I have heard a lot of people hoping and praying to their Gods that the next skill will be a money sink, but Andrew Gower's last Q&A said that it wouldn't be. I guess that we wait and see.
Simple's counter-argument is here: Economics.
10 Comments
Recommended Comments