In the first of four posts on making GP with the GE, I will outline some effective trading strategies (Fundamental, technical and speculative), and in the last I will debunk some of the poor strategies (like buy outs for example). If, after you are done reading fee free to post any questions you may have. There is also a forum over at The Grand Exchange (Thegrandexchange.com) where you can register and ask specific questions about trading and the various methods I will outline here.

Part I – Fundamental Trading

First off, I will start by saying that fundy trading is the easiest and fastest way to make money off the GE. It is fairly straightforward, and is based on real stock trading methods. The kind of trade you do also determines which items you will trade.

There are three prerequisites for items to determine if they are a good thing to buy as a fundy trade. They are:

1. The item must be traded in high volume (Anything in the top 100 most traded items list is good)

2. The item needs to be used up in the process of skilling (People use them up in large quantities)

3. The price graph must be relatively straight (little volatility)

The goal with a fundamental trade is a 5% profit. In general, buying at 2.5% below med and selling at 2.5% above will accomplish that. Done on a consistent basis, you will see your money double every 14 trades. (See the rule of 72 for further study of the reasons for that).

Why high volume? You need lots of buyers and sellers. Items like gold leaf, for example, are used in the ‘value chain’ of making gilded items in construction, but there are so few traded on the GE that it is nearly impossible to make money off them. Teak planks on the other hand are traded in huge volumes, as well as being used far more frequently in skilling.

Finally, why a straight line? You don’t want to choose an item that might jump down after you purchase it. Coal is another example. It is used up in large quantities, and is the 19th most traded item, with 97 million chunks of coal trading hands yesterday. With a 4 hour limit of 10k coal, it is impossible to manipulate, as it is not a matter of purchasing power or GP at that point. You would need a clan 20,000 members strong buying and selling 10k coal each to even make a dent in the price, and no one has anywhere near those numbers, not to mention all of the coal miners would keep pumping cheap coal into the GE to offset any attempted price increase.

An example of value chain for Rune Essence: Rune ess is mined, air runes are crafted, water blast is used to kill an NPC. The final product is a drop that you can either bank or sell (or leave on the ground). Either way the ess is converted and finally used up in the process. Why does it remain flat? As rune crafters skill, they buy rune ess when it is cheap and mine it when it is expensive, keeping the price relatively stable.

As a beginner, once you go through the initial work of finding some items, you can continue to trade them without constant checking of the prices in the GE, making fundy trading ideal for those who either don’t have the time or the inclination to check the market regularly. 90% Of my trades are fundy trades, as I can pull a 5% profit in 5-6 hours. That beats the pants off the return you would get with a buyout clan that only makes 5% every time the GE updates (26-30 hours).

Recently I was trading some unstrung magic bows in for cash at the Grand Exchange and I over heard a fellow member of the fine Runescape game speaking about getting a name change. I inquired as to what he meant exactly and he went on to explain that JaGex is considering implimenting a system which will allow for players to change their in-game-name. Now, we won’t be able to change the name we use to log in… but our character name will be able to be changed.

I am very interested to see how this will play out – considering that many of the popular names are either already taken/banned there may not be much room to move in terms of acquiring a new and unique name. However I am sure that somebody will find a way around this somehow.

Veritas Odium Parit

11

What the scenario mentioned above is called is a Merchanting Clan, or a group of investors who invest in the same thing. Many merchanting clans have millions in the market (a few clans are expected to have close to a billion) meaning that they can either crash the price of an item, or catapult it. With the exception of price-locked items due to Jagex updates, this usually works. Most merchanting clans make the Clan Name the item to buy, and say when to sell it. The only downside is that when the item is sold, the market is often flooded with so many orders that many investors cannot sell it, or lose lots of money. 

With a merchanting clan, your  prospects for making money are greatly increased. Usually, the price will increase. However, make sure you sell before the “Dump ” order comes in, or you’ll be caught in a stampede of selling. If you are interested in a clan, try “efd923″. The item to buy is posted in the Clan Name, and the clan is reasonably large. Try looking around for other clans too, and diversify your investments. But be warned: Merchant clans are NOT for the long-term; on the contrary, they usually employ a buy-one-day, sell-three-days-later technique. Forget to sell your items, and you’ll probably be left with huge profit loss when everybody in the clan does.

The Prayer Beast

They are one of the most lethal killers out there, the G Maul Prayer Beast.  Before the G Maul spec nerf, they were really lethal, but still they are pretty powerful, and are starting to make a come back.

Required Skills

• Str: 50
• Att: 50
• Def: 0
• Prayer: 31

Those are the minimums you will need to be a serious threat in PvP fighting.  Minimums to wield the G Maul are 50 att and str, keep def at zero to minimize your combat lvl, and prayer at 31 for Ultimate Str.

Outfit:

1. Iron Full
2. Cape – 600gp
3. Amulet of Strength
4. Granite Maul – 130k
5. Explorer’s Ring – Lumby Achievement Diaries
6. Monk Robe Top – Prayer Guild (535gp from GE)
7. Anti-Dragon shield – King of Lumby (289gp from the GE)
8. Monk Robe Bottom – Prayer Guild (485 from the GE)
9. Safety Gloves – Stronghold of Player Safety
10. Fighting Boots – Stronghold of Security

Total outfit cost:

About 150k.  If you want to spend the time, pick up the free stuff, but it is all pretty cheap.

Inventory:

PK food and  Zammy Brews.  At the cost of <250 per dose, they offer the str and att bonus of Super pots at 1/10 the price, and prayer bonus.  They do have an HP and def penalty, but at 1 def, it doesn’t matter so gobble a fish to heal up after every shot.

Carry a rune scimmy.  Twice as fast, and hits higher than a maul.  Wound them, then pull out the maul and Quick Smash ‘em to death.

Turbo Tip:

It is easier to buy the materials for Zammy Brews and ask for an assist than it is to buy them.

Now, its been almost a month since the full edition of High Detail has come into play and i must say. Its amazing. For once, i will fully say that jagex has pleased a great deal of the RuneScape community. The real thing that impresses me is that they managed to do all of this with java. So such a great looking game loads up fully in your web browser and requires absolutely no installation. That’s simply awesome. So lets go ahead and break down some of the main things that RuneScape HD has introduced.

Full Screen Mode

This is arguably the coolest and long expected feature for RuneScape. Sure, it requires players to subscribe to RuneScape. But seriously, this is the type of game-play that is worth the 6 dollars a month. ( Yes, i know its 5 right now, but they will be increasing it to 6 soon, if not already. ). Below is a screenshot of the new full screen interface.

At the top right corner, you can see the new RuneScape Map. It has a few enhancements too, they’ve added a few useful things on the side such as your HP, Prayer points, run meter, and summoning skill. This should be alot more efficient then having your skill menu open! Plus, it looks 10x cooler. Lastly, they even built in the world map which you can directly use within the game now.

As you can see, the whole interface has gotten a face-lift. The chat area is pretty similar to the old interface, but it is now transparent, and in my opinion, it feels alot faster and smoother than the old chat. Plus, you can view older messages and fit more messages into that box. The private message category on the other hand hasn’t received much attention from jagex, you can still recieve messages ontop of the chat box or within the chat box. I guess that really seems like the easiest way to go about it, but it would have been nice if they added a separate tab for private. So above the chatbox, they would have a public/private toggle. Maybe they plan to introduce this in the future.

The other tools that we are used to toggling, such as the friends list have gone onto the corner on the right hand side. Most of the interfaces will be easy to learn, such as in the screenshot, the friends list pretty much looks identical to what you have become used to. The length of the actual row depends on the size of your screen i believe, because on my screen that whole row was on one line instead of 2 as dipicted on the screenshot. They’ve also left one of the boxes empty, so as an educated guess, i think they plan to add something there soon .

Graphics Update:

Well, this is probably the most obvious thing about this update. No one can now say, “RUNESCAPES GRAPHICS SUCK! WHAT A $#$ GAME”, yeah we’ve all heard that from at least one negative runescape player. But guess what? Now you can tell them about RuneScape HD .

All the textures have been revamped, even the movement of the characters has been improved. No more will you see those nasty box like character movements, the characters actually walk and run more realistically. In overall, everything from monsters, all the way down to trees has been redone graphically, without a single sacrafice to performance.

Final Thoughts:

Theres not really much to say other than the fact that this was probably the result of all those RuneScape 3 rumors from previous years. Boy, we’ve gotten far from RuneScape Classic haven’t we? Cheers to Jagex and the whole RuneScape community.

Now go whip up some HD.

In a small unknown town a young computer nerd sat and waited for his teacher to arrive to class. What another kid in this young, future Runescape addict’s class said next, would be the birth of an addiction causing loss of time, life, money, and energy.

“Runescape is so cool. I reached level 15 yesterday.”

“Level 15? My mom could reach that in 5 minutes” K13, the nerd, was overhearing a conversation similar to the one above. He had no idea that the fact that he was eavesdropping on his classmates conversation, would have such a huge impact of his computer gaming life.

Him being the conversation joining person he was, asked, “What is Runescape?”

“A cool game where you fight and drink beer!”

“That game sounds…interesting, how and where do you play?” Asked young little K13.

“www.runescape.com, just sign up and start playing.”

So as most people would, he tried to play the game. He wasn’t really in to MMOs at the time, so he didn’t really get the point. At this point the game had no addicting effects on his life and later left the game at level 11.

About 6 months later it all came back to him. He was bored on a Saturday in the middle of summer and decided to revisit the game to pass the time. He started a brand new account and when he did, he was a full on addict. 10, 20, 30, then 40, he was leveling fast and working on the skills that could get his gear on a role. Getting tantrums when someone tried to make him leave the game. Questing and grinding for 10 hours, seemed like 10 minutes and he couldn’t get enough. His goal was to reach level 99 and to be able to pk in the wilderness. Unfortunately he never killed anyone in the wilderness and quit the game at level 47.

During his journey in the game, he had many hardships. At many times playing for 5,6,7 hours a day. Late into the night, and long into the day he kept on playing. He dealt with 2 Chinese black market dealers, -$40 bank accounts (that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old kid), and a lot of heartache (I will go into detailes about all of these things, all linked together in 1st person… I hope).

Chinese black market dealer 1- One day I decided to buy some Runescape gold because some person kept spamming me on Instant Messenger. I paid the money and was told to meet at the east bank in Varrock. All was well and I later sold half of the gold to my friend that also played the game.

Chinese black market dealer 2 (and the bank account thing) – This one was a little more intense. Chinese black market dealer number two was from a website called buybuy or something similar. I saw that they could off for a decent price, so as most buyers would I tried it out. I paid using PayPal, but for some reason it went through my bank account. I didn’t have enough money in my account so when it tried to make the payment my bank charged me 20 dollars (which I didn’t have). When PayPal charged my account again in an attempt to make the payment there were still (because of the negative balance). Now with an $(40.00) balance, he found out the payment didn’t go through. I demanded my gold either way and they didn’t know the payment hadn’t gone through. When they found out they were MAD. They demanded that I pay them asap or they would take action. After I did pay them, They still bugged me! so while telling them to leave me alone on IM one day and they made creepy comments (that my brother found, not me). Eventually I got the funds back from my bank and in the end, all was fine, but it was not worth all the troubles I had.

Runescape is an addicting game with dangerous qualities. As we know, Runescape can be played free of charge. Because of this it is a dwelling land for pedophiles and rapists alike. If you tell some one you are 10 (figuratively) they usually say they are 10 also. In fact, a good friend of mine got a ‘girlfriend’ on Runescape and was told he was talking to someone his own age. I talked to her on my account and she told me was divorced and had 4 kids. Although I am incredibly against these qualities of the game I will always play a little bit. I rid myself of all the addictions related to playing the game and have kept it that way for quite a while. My story might not be as intense as yours but I believe that 500+ hours I have spent on the game was time badly and well wasted. Sorry if I made a mistake in this post. It is my first one on TRB.

2001

I started playing Runescape classic (on a really bad computer with a dial-up connection) when I was 14 years old and just entered high school, this was right around the time Christmas crackers were dropped (December 2001). I had no clue what was happening that day and some guy gave me 2 partyhats, which I dropped after a while because they took bank space. My classmates introduced me to this game and about everyone in my class started playing. It was all just fun and new for me, I had never played a MMORPG before and was only used to games like red alert. I started doing some quests with my classmates and got addicted pretty fast. And after my mom saw the phone bill for that month she wasn’t very happy. Luckily we got cable pretty fast.

2002

I was still very noobish, because all I did was a few quests and training a bit on cows, I figured I needed to get myself some money. The Runescape world was still very small back then and members or f2p didn’t exist yet. So I spent a few days picking up bronze scimitar’s in Rimmington (the house with the bronze pickaxe), and sold them to the general store on the other side of the road for a few GP. After a while I could finally afford my black long sword from the sword shop I had seen in Varrock, sadly I died in a cave when I started training with it and lost it pretty fast after. Luckily one of my classmates that had been playing for a while longer could give me a Mithril (which I used to think was rune) one very easy. Once I had my mithril armor I spent most of my days getting my combat up and doing quests, it didn’t take me to long to do all quests besides dragon slayer. Which had the reputation of being a hard quest (this is a time way before there were any rune smithers). After training up till about level 80 I finally took the courage to do dragon slayer and finished it pretty easily.

After I was done with all the random stuff I started working on two skills in particular, woodcutting and Firemaking . You would mostly train woodcutting and Firemaking at the same time since you took a full inventory to a forest (Draynor forest) and you would automatically drop the logs you cut, u just used your tinderbox on the logs that fell on the ground (you couldn’t burn any logs besides normal logs). The only other way to train it was with someone else dropping lines of normal logs and you walking after them lighting the logs. I was finally done with Firemaking somewhere December 2002 and was 3^rd to get 99 Firemaking and 7^th to 99 woodcutting a little later.

2003

After this I started PK’ing a lot with 2 friends that lived in the same street as me. We starting making tactics like luring in the lower wilderness around the castle above Edgeville by having one of us pick up runes without armor to lure people in attacking him. When It had worked one would close all doors in the castle and the other logged in next to the one fake collecting runes. As far as I know hardly anyone PKed in the higher level wilderness at that time and the person with the highest combat level was far from maxing out since combat training was only about 30k an hour max. At this time I created a pure and trained him to like 60 att, def and like 80 str. But we got bored with the PK’ing after a few months and I decided to go back to my main and train his combat up some more.

This is a time I remember pretty well because I spent days and night in that one area never having to leave since the spiders I trained on didn’t hit that hard. I think it was about 25-30k an hour training on the spiders in Underground Passage. I remember there was a really ugly spider called Balrog in there that was just a tiny level 3 spider with increased size. I also was in this cave when Scythe’s were dropped (not sure where I was when bunny ears were dropped, but I have those as well). After getting my combat up to about 100 (pretty high for that time, halfway 2003). I spent a lot of time training agility at the wilderness course and got it up to about 82 (pretty high for that time).

After I got enough of agility (August 2003) I set my eyes on a new goal, rank 1 Firemaking. I quit Firemaking right at 99 and I am not quite sure what XP the rank 1 (jamie2002) had when I started going for rank 1 but I remember him being ahead about 10mil XP. But when I started Firemaking so did he and this turned out to become a long battle lasting several months, I finally overtook him around December 2003 (A year after I got 99). We had around 38-40m XP back then and the discussion about RS2 and the BETA were starting up. While I was still trying to get further ahead of Jamie I heard “dropfishing” was removed and bought a ton of feathers and started “dropfishing” right away, I got it to about 93 in a really short time (was about 120k/hour).

2004

Runescape 2 was launched and I had to change my way of Firemaking, not sure what was the best way yet I started cutting willows in Draynor and burning them when my inventory was full. I did this till about 60m experience and if I remember correct I was first to get 60m XP in a skill. But when I thought I was far enough ahead I stopped doing Firemaking and started doing some random skills, not really focusing on something. I remember woodcutting and fletching a lot though. But I wasn’t doing the fasted methods back then (I think I cut inventory’s of maple and fletched them to unstrung bows.

2005

I was doing all quests when they came out and making guides for some as well, then when slayer was released I spent a while doing that and making the guide for it. But after that was done I got bored with Runescape and quit for a little while until I heard about farming coming out and you could get seeds already by thieving the master farmer, so I spent a few weeks thieving the master farmer in Draynor. When farming came out I jumped right in it and made the farming guide and got to rank 7 farming, but when I ran out of good seeds I quit again.

2006

In my quitting period which lasted for a few months I did check hiscores every now and then and when I saw “Leronea” getting closer and heard “Xxx Neo Xxx7” was after my rank I decided to sell my blue partyhat for 200 mil GP and I bought enough yew logs for 200Mil Firemaking XP (I had 60m XP at this time). From December 2005 till end May 2006 I spent doing about 1m Firemaking every day. When I was finally done with this construction had come out (may 18^th) and I decided to start doing that by cutting oak logs outside my house portal in Rimmington and let the butler plank them then build oak dining tables. I did this till I was 87 construction.

Then I decided to get 99 thieving on knights in Ardougne which was about 100k XP an hour (Pyramid Plunder wasn’t out yet). And when I finally got it I heard about Pest Control being really fast combat experience and since I had been 108 combat for ages I thought it was time to get this up. With about 120k XP an hour it turned about to be really easy to max my combat stats (I did a lot of Pest Control each day, because there were a lot of rumors about it getting nerved soon and huge complaints on the forums about it). I think I ended up with about 123/124 combat and maxed out range (planned on doing magic later by alching the bodies from crafting).

After selling my blue partyhat for 200m Firemaking XP and losing my red partyhat because of my own stupidity, I still had a lot of them left and they were worth huge amounts at that time so I decided to sell one for 99 Prayer and 99 Smithing. I made a alter in my house and got 99 prayer in a few days, after that I bought enough bars for 99 Smithing and got that a few weeks later. After this I spent ages trying to get 99 fishing on monkfish, I didn’t play a lot at that time and the experience was really slow but I managed to get it 99 mid September 2006.

After this I decided to downgrade one of my partyhats (I am not sure which color because this were all one day decisions) to buy 99 crafting and I bought a lot of blue leathers and crafted them to bodies and got 99 crafting mid October, I was planning on alching the bodies but decided that was stupid and sold the bodies and went back to Pest Control and got 99 Magic in a few days (I got 99 Crafting and Magic on the same day because I waited a little with the last few XP from Crafting so I could get them together). After this I quit till January 2007.

2007

I was slowly picking back up in January by doing a few skills at the same time Farming, Herblore, Hunter and Agility. I had to work and learn at a company for school but since there wasn’t a lot of work to do I did a lot of Agility and Hunter there. But slowly I got more addicted again and was doing a few hours of agility every day and combining that with doing 2 farm runs every day, 10 Magic trees, 4 Palm trees and 1 Calquat (Since Partyhats were still pretty high at this time I sold one of my party hats and bought enough seeds for 99 farming at once, which was I think about 200m in total) every day for a pretty long period. A Month after starting again I got 99 Agility on 4 February, I started with 94.

Right after my Agility was finished I jumped to Hunter which was 91 and I was still doing Farm rounds daily, my level was about 93 when I started Hunter. It took me about 2 weeks to get 91-99 Hunter, not sure how much I did every day but I was playing quite a lot again. After this I bought enough oak planks for 99 Construction and did Oak dungeon doors for a week and a half and got 99 Construction late February. Having done Farming rounds for the entire period of hunter and construction I got Farming from 93 to 97.

With march starting I was getting pretty bored with Runescape and my Work/Learn project for school was almost over, but I wanted to finish Farming so I decided to do a bit of mining while waiting for my trees to grow I got 90 to 93 mining and 98 + 99 Farming. After my Farming party on 10 March I quit again till mid May.

After taking a nice 2 month brake I wasn’t quite sure what to do yet, but I wanted to get Herblore 99 for a while now. I was planning on paying for this with Runecrafting so I sold a low party hat and bought enough pure essence for level 99 Runecrafting. Starting out with 82 Runecrafting I still had a very long way to go, I wanted to start off with fast free laws W66 till 91 (Double Nats). But when I finally reached 91 Runecrafting mid June I realized there was a double nat crafting company which was a lot faster than running yourself.

So I sold all my pure essence and decided to buy 90 to 99 Herblore before getting 99 Runecrafting, but I wanted to get this real fast so I no-lived Herblore for a week. First off course I had to buy the supplies, I decided to do Saradomin brews and bought a lot of watered vials a whole lot of toadflax and crushed nests. This was well before GE so a lot of spamming on the Runescape forums and buying in small amounts. I Reached 99 Herblore about a week after I started and was ready to do the last bit of Runecrafting. Since it was vacation I nolifed badly and managed to get 91 – 97 Runecrafting (in just a little over 2 week) before I went on Vacation for a month on 10 July.

After my vacation I was still going to the beach and such so I didn’t have a lot of time for Runescape but in august I managed to get 98 and 99 Runecrafting. After this I was planning on getting 99 Mining but after just one level I decided it was not worth wasting my life like this so I quit for well over 3 months and didn’t get any levels in September, October or November. In December I heard about Summoning coming and I wanted to start playing again and because I had a few weeks off I decided to start again and this time I really wanted to get mining over with and got 99 Mining on 29 December.

2008

January 2008 I had just finished my Mining and Summoning was coming soon and since I was really low slayer (75) and all other skills were maxed out there wasn’t much to do then the skill I had hated like forever because it was really slow and I didn’t really like training combat skills since I was maxed. So till Summoning came out I did the easy slayer levels and when Summoning came on 15 January I had 82 Slayer. But very soon I realized that Slayer and Summoning were pretty easy to combine and I was pretty happy.

So with Summoning out there was new interest for me in doing Slayer, doing research on which tasks were the best for which charms and collecting loads of charms kept me interested. As well as the news of the second batch of monsters coming. When that finally came 31 March I was already 95 Slayer and trying very hard to sell my Yellow Partyhat. When I finally managed to sell that I was trying to buy a lot of Seconds in GE, but so was everyone else so that didn’t go to fast. When I had a few Summoning levels banked I got them and reached 91 Summoning on 20^th of April. Still doing slayer mostly I got 98 Slayer on 26 April.

I didn’t do that much slayer in April and wanted to max as fast as possible and finally be done with this game, so I got 98 to 99 Slayer in 9 days on 4 May. With the charms from my last Slayer levels I was able to get 93 Summoning. After this I went to Waterbirth island to barrage Rock Lobsters for my last charms and got 99 Summoning on 13^th may. I am currently doing a bit of Fletching, Cooking and I might do some thieving later on but I am not sure what the future brings for me. I am not really feeling like putting much effort into getting a few ranks. Wasting this much time on a game is kind of sad but playing even more while done, I am not sure.

The End

1. The Knowledge Database

This helpful database is more than just that. It is Jagex own self-structured fansite, giving their players all the information they could possible need, all in a convenient location on RuneScape.com – awesome deal for everyone, right? But let’s look at the reasoning behind this. Would Jagex really spend their time amassing all of this knowledge into one place so that their players would have a more enjoyable (and easier, which is a key part too… but I’ll get to that later) gaming experience? This is how Jagex introduced the update:

“The aim of this update is to provide better support for our players, so that if you’re stuck or just need some friendly advice, you can quickly get the help you need rather than asking Customer Support or hoping someone is talking about it on the forums.”

(News Archives – March 13, 2008)

That seems a bit contradictory to the follow up posts by Jagex Moderators on the forums saying that the intention of the K-Base was to “protect players from malicious third-party websites”.

2. The Grand Exchange Database

Being a staff member on a separate tipsite, it is not often that you will hear me singing praise of our “competition”, but there is not denying the incredible work that Ben (Goten) and the rest of the Zybez staff did when they compiled their famous market price guide. The introduction of the Grand Exchange Database is a direct stab at that project, and furthermore it seems that Jagex has gone out of their way to make it as inconvenient as possible to extract data from their databases. I have truthfully no idea why a readable format of the data has not been released, as was done with the hiscores – although that was yet another example of Jagex only helping out tipsites indirectly because they couldn’t stop it and they would prefer to save bandwidth. Is it not ironic when Jagex finds it necessary to begin each news post with something along the lines of “We did this in response to player feedback”? Read on:

“Many of you asked for the ability to view graphs of market values and track item prices as they rise and fall. Well, this week we introduce the Grand Exchange Database Beta, which does exactly that!”

(News Archives – April 15, 2008)

3. QuestHelp

QuestHelp, in summary, is Jagex taking a primary role of fansites and attempting to render it obsolete. I feel that is all I must say for this one; does it really seem necessary to make a half-ass attempt at quest guides that simply comes off as the creators of the game making the game itself easier? What is their incentive to lower the required IQ for the game? Well, the younger crowd is taking over RuneScape now, and Jagex is doing nothing to stop it (although they only recommend the game for those ages 13 or older). Why would they want to prevent potential customers from playing? As long as they are paying, it doesn’t matter what age they might be. Getting back to QuestHelp, however, it is nothing more than Jagex realizing that tipsites are having a negative impact on some of their players. Once again, they have taken steps to make RuneScape.com another contender in the tipsite world, and cleverly disguise it as being “for the players”:

We know […] that simply resorting to looking up the entire solution can take all the fun out of the quest and often results in you seeing more solution than you wanted to see. This can leave you with the feeling that you didn’t really solve bits you could have done.

(News Archives – May 10, 2006)

But well done, Jagex. You have succeeded in being the first case I have ever seen where a beta version of a feature has lasted 2 years without receiving any changes whatsoever.

The list goes on. If you look at the way they redid the forums, or how they have modeled the hierarchy of their own website, you will see the same patterns. Only once, excluding content in the Knowledge Base, has Jagex truly recognized the fan site community in a public way. It resulted in the second largest riot to ever grace the likes of RuneScape (For the record, that puts it in a close second place to the wilderness and trade updates; aka “The Day RuneScape Died”). Yes, you guessed it. The riot I am speaking of was the one resulting from Jagex’s changes to rules 7 & 9 – the rules regarding third party software, and specifically clients.

On January 2^nd, 2007 Jagex “extended rule 7 to make it clear that it DOES now include third party RuneScape clients/world switchers” (News Archives), meaning that all runescape clients other than the official one were outlawed, as they provided an “unfair advantage” – to use Jagex’s favorite phrase. Once again let’s investigate their reasoning/justification for this radical change:

“When RuneScape fansites are distributing programs which are then used to discuss breaking the rules or result in their own users being scammed, it’s clear that our rules need revision! We don’t want to be unnecessarily restrictive, but we obviously also have to balance that with protecting our users.”

(News Archives – January 2, 2007)

…A classic example of Jagex cutting of the nose to spite the face. If your users are losing their accounts and passwords due to third-party software, sure, some action may be warranted, but severing one of your major lifelines has never been a good choice for Jagex, and they never seem to learn. When at first the update was met with incredulous pleas for withdrawing the new rules, Jagex quietly inserted another paragraph into their news announcement:

“We have done this for two main reasons: a) The sheer number of users losing their account/password to programs which pretend to be one thing but actually steal their password; b) Problems with some of these programs including extremely unsafe chat channels where large amounts of scamming go on, and users encourage each other to try to break the rules.” (News Archives – January 2, 2007)

So Jagex is now pointing the center of blame at the security issue, and has seemingly forgotten their original claim that the reason was that programs such as SwiftSwitch provided players with an “unfair advantage”. In fact, Mod Burgess on the forums would go on to say that IRC is “unmoderated” and “promotes rule-breaking” – a statement that could almost be no further from the truth. This may come as a shock to Jagex, but RuneScape players get scammed in RuneScape. If you want to fix that problem, fix your game… remove trading or something if you have to hahaha… (wait a minute…).

Anyways, now that I have discussed what Jagex has said in response to these updates, let’s look more at what some players said when those changes were made. (Quotes all taken from the RuneCrypt forums – original posters may not still hold these opinions)

“Runescape is evolving more and more into a communist state. The chat filter is already oppressive and now even things that aren’t directly part of the game are being questioned and controlled.

I could quite easily live without SS, I survived without it for a LONG time and only recently started using it. What I disagree with is the freedom of choice that’s being taken away yet again.”

(Agent Yuri)

“Banning SS because it provides a thriving clan community a source of communication, and because Jagex failed to satisfy their customers, is stupid. Jagex you were well aware of SS already, you also made numerous promises to make a clan communication system and you did NOT do that.

Jagex, you backstabbed your customers with a false promise, then you turned a safe client that was acceptable into some taboo thing that will now get you banned. SS is safe and better.

Jagex, you failed to do the obvious, and instead took the only decent means of communicating through clans over RS away from us.

May as well ban in-game trading, I mean scams happen in trades too?”

(X Sam Sam X)

The topic of freedom came up on multiple occasions during those debates and discussions, and then continued as Jagex gave Player Moderators the green light to mute any protestors. You may not come from America, but the freedoms of speech and assembly are somewhat basic rights, especially in such a “politically correct” game.

To make it easy for you to see, I have collected gathered some statistics from RuneCrypt’s user databases and public polls.

• 1 in 4 members stay active on the fansite after retiring from RuneScape.
• 1 in 8 active members changed their status from P2P to F2P, or changed it to “Retired” after the changes to rules 7 & 9
• 1 in 3 active members uses some sort of third party software while playing RuneScape.

What can we learn from this data? 1. Fansites keep players in the RuneScape community when RS itself can’t. 2. Updates targeted at fansites are generally unpopular, and result in Jagex losing members. 3. Players don’t listen to Jagex’s advice, and prefer to use third-party software.

But if there is a Jagex employee reading this article, take this as a plea. Regardless of what I just said, I believe that 98% of the decisions made by Jagex are spot on. The company as a whole has fully deserved the awards it has won, and RuneScape will forever be an MMORPG that can’t be mimicked. It is vastly different from any other game I have ever played, and I think that the 98% of good choices could be increased to 99% if more trust was put in the hands of the players, and in turn to the fansites. When it comes down to it, the upper level of the fansite community is administered by at most 25 people working their asses off to serve the most loyal fans – would it be asking too much to give us a break now and then? RuneScape wouldn’t be RuneScape without it’s players and fans. Jagex is simply shooting themselves in the foot by trying to protect their players from the big, bad tipsites who are run by… their players.

Hello everyone, I’m ThirdEyeOpen (Most know me by other names but I am choosing to remain anonymous while posting on this blog). Here is an article I have written to share with you all regarding Runescape’s cheating scene. I’m currently retired from Runescape however I spent a total of 5 years playing the game on and off, mostly focusing on the darker side of the game which is cheating. This article details all the intricacies of Runescape and cheating and what really goes on behind the scenes, I assure you that it will surprise you.

Imagine this – Thousands of dollars are instantly wired to your bank account through some complicated anonymous online payment system you have worked out with your main buyer, it would have been a lot more but most of your product was confiscated earlier in the night. Your security wasn’t tight enough, they busted some of your guys… but only because the bastards have been spying on you.

You probably think I’m talking about some sort of organized crime ring, and in a sense your right. Calling it crime might be a little bit of a stretch, but we were definitely organized, and we were definitely pissing a large gaming corporation named Jagex Ltd. off. Welcome to the Runescape cheating scene – the real one. Think that’s a little bit too dramatic? Keep reading.

Ask your average 12-year-old flax-picking dragon-slaying Runescape adventurer about their conception of in game cheating, and you’ll most likely receive some sort of vague response regarding people who use auto-bots to get ahead. For the greater majority of what we call the “cheating community”, that is true. At face value, everything seems reasonably innocent; most of the kids just use simple autoing programs or pathetic scam techniques in some lame attempt to accelerate their progress within the game, and in the end it’s just a game… so they get banned from the game, or they get away with it, and that’s that. Right? It’s just a game….

The thing you’ve got to realize about video games is the more advanced they become the more closely they begin to emulate reality, I mean that is the point after all… trying to emulate reality as closely as our technology allows in some sort of fun and entertaining way. The introduction of Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMORPG) was an incredibly innovative leap in video game technology, it uses our advances in communication technology to effectively emulate a reasonably functional social atmosphere while still managing to keep the players entertained and focused. This is an amazing thing; you can now create and maintain social relationships that are almost as good as the ones in real life while sitting in front of your computer playing a game. The other thing that has come with the introduction of MMORPGs is the ability to consistently add new content to the game, essentially making it so the game never ends, providing the gamer with a space that he may participate in for incredibly long periods of time. So I mean when your in this space for extended periods of time, and there’s this intricate social atmosphere, and it’s entertaining and all that jazz, and as familiarity grows it starts to become more and more like real life, becoming a second life in some sense. In moderation, this is ok, however some people reach the point where they actually prefer the virtual reality to their day-to-day life, and it becomes an escape of sorts, which, as far as I’m concerned, is comparable to the same mentality our society uses against drug addicts.

This is no longer a game. To some people, this is an acceptable reality. As such the imaginary things in this game start to attain a real life value – the more games emulate reality the more influence they have in our actual reality. So now we’ve got this problem where people are assigning real life monetary value to these entirely intangible game objects such as high level characters and the virtual money within the game, and this is where our problem begins.

Some kid discovers that some other kid who enjoys the game a whole lot more than him will pay him $20 in real life for some of his virtual currency inside the game world, which he has attained by simply playing the game. Everything is still marginally innocent at this point, generally it would be impossible for any player to make a decent wage attaining and selling virtual currency assuming they are playing the game as it is intended to be played. This is where the cheating community comes in. Kids see this real life value vested within the game so they create and use programs which are designed to play the game for them with the intent of obtaining mass amounts of virtual currency which they can sell for real money at a minimal expense of their time since these programs are doing all the work. Naturally the gaming company frowns upon this and makes it against the rules to exchange the virtual goods for real life objects and justify it using some rather vague intellectual property laws, which state that since they created the game all of the data within the game belongs to them and is not to be exchanged for profit among players. Consequently, because there is still a relatively large amount of profit invested in this the cheating communities are forced “underground” and a black market manifests for the exchange of gold.

A Black market. Seriously. The thing to remember is that for the most part, we’re dealing with kids here… The average age of a Runescape player is probably about 10-13 with a few 14-18 year olds and a handful of adults as well. So these kids on these black market sites are facilitating these shady exchanges over virtual currency, and in the same way that the video game emulates reality, these off site black markets begin to emulate reality. It turns into a primitive version of any real black market, such as things for drugs and child pornography, except it’s inhabited mostly with teenagers with the slightly older ones running the show instead of adults. Organized Crime Pre-School.

So that’s where I come in, I was one of those older teenagers who was sort of running part of the show. Most people tended to stick to the traditional auto-bot method of obtaining mass amounts of virtual currency. Some hardcore hacking also occurred but it was very rare and mostly obsolete by the time I entered the scene. I was able to create a new form of cheating which involved the discovery and exploitation of natural flaws within the Runescape game engine, this ability came from my extensive understanding of the game engine as I played the game rather excessively from the age 11-15 until I made the transition from a regular player to a cheater. At first, I simply used my skills to advance my character within the game, however when my main character was banned I got a little more devious in my intent and began finding exploits with real life profit in mind. At the time I was 15 and experiencing some serious problems in my personal life, and as a result I had to ride my bike 5 miles to the public library every day to search for exploits on Runescape. I recruited some old friends of mine to help me, many of which proved to be invaluable accomplices throughout the rest of my Runescape cheating career. Our first major breakthrough occurred when we found an exploit that allowed us to do many amazing things, the most important of which involving the ability to rapidly duplicate an item (glory amulet) that could be sold for a relatively large amount of virtual currency. Needless to say we got a little overexcited, and a group of about six of us began a round the clock operation to obtain as much money as possible. This ended up being a very stupid idea, as the game maintains an economy and market that function much like the market in the real world…. we ended up flooding the market with an excessive amount of this item, resulting in it’s value being reduced by about 50%, which as far as I know has not fully recovered to this day, two years later. Within two days Jagex had become aware of the problem and we all woke up one morning to find our accounts disabled. Fortunately, we still had some bartering room, as Jagex had no clue how the exploit was preformed and needed information. What ensued was an online interrogation of sorts that resulted in one of my friends accounts being spared in trade for the exploit while the other five accounts remained banned (the reasoning behind this was very personal and complicated, but it was my own choice). Having been arrested and interrogated before in real life, I can say that it was very similar in some ways, which makes this whole thing rather amusing. I felt pretty bad about getting all of my friends accounts banned, so in an effort to make things up with them, I decided we should form an organized group so we could really get back at Jagex. A website was created where we would share information about our projects with the general public and encouraged other Runescape players to find their own exploits using information we provided. Within a week we had 200 members. A sort of hierarchy began to form, I was at the top along with the founding members right under me… we had certain people assigned to certain things, one friend of mine was assigned to maintaining the bulk of the website, another assigned to assisting me in the main exploitation discovery, etc. We found several more extreme exploits within the course of a year, and we got more and more careful and organized about it as we went.

I turned out to be quite the business man; I began selling the gold we made on the largest Runescape black market site and ended up becoming the number one gold seller for a period of time. The whole thing was kind of pathetic. At first I would sell small quantities to individual buyers, and I’ve got to tell you it was like dealing with 12 year old heroin junkies. About 75% of the people who contacted me were simply trying to rip me off using obvious scam techniques while hiding behind the internet’s wall of anonymity, and most of the legitimate buyers were simply pathetic. I had some customers who would spend $500 on virtual currency simply for personal use, it was ridiculous and perhaps the most disgusting waste of money I have ever seen, I felt like I was dealing with junkies… I even had to talk to a few parents who were buying this stuff for their kids, which was absurd. Eventually as it became increasingly difficult for me to hold onto virtual currency for long periods of time without getting banned I had to sell the gold cheaply in bulk to resellers, who simply made their money by buying the currency and reselling it to individuals for more. This sort of hierarchy is ridiculously similar to the way drug dealing works. Eventually I became a moderator on the black market site which allowed me to maintain connections with several other powerful figures within the cheating scene. I would maintain a list of who owed me favors and this sort of thing and it came to the point where I was practically like a kiddie mob boss, without the violence of course.

Our setup lasted for a good while; it turned into a game of playing hide-and-seek with Jagex. They would always be attempting to ban our accounts and find our exploits to fix them and we would always be taking new security precautions and all these sorts of things, finding quick ways to sell mass amounts of gold and the like…. There would be some nights where I would make $1,000 in a matter of hours, and I mean going through the whole process of attaining the gold, finding a buyer for all of it, and selling it and getting it into my bank account, and that’s only counting the gold that made it through. It was not uncommon for us to have accounts containing 500M-1.5Billion banned before we could sell the gold. It got to the point where we actually caught multiple Jagex employees spying on us inside the game. The bigger we got the more the drama escalated, and it was like being part of some epic mafia movie or something… it was all very entertaining for us, and I know Jagex had a few laughs over it as well despite all the trouble we caused them. Eventually Jagex said enough was enough and after ignoring multiple lawsuit threats from them and subverting multiple attempts to have our website shutdown, I finally had a legal invoice Fedexed to my front door telling me I had to shut down my site or they would sue me, with which I decided to comply. In the end, we had 3,000 members on our site, well over 100 Runescape accounts banned (at least 50 over level 110) for exploitation and gold trafficking, and had managed to accumulate a total of perhaps $50,000 between our senior members, about $10,000 of which I took home personally.

In retrospect, the sociological ramifications of all this are what interest me the most. I still can’t get over the type of realistic environments that were being created and participated in by all these kids, and how similar everything was to the real world. It was like someone had taken the world and scaled it down into a virtual playground for kids, with the good, and the bad all perfectly intact, and Jagex as the ultimate authority equivalent to government. I’ve kept up with many of my old connections from the cheating scene and it’s interesting to see the direction that many of them have gone in (including myself!). Some got involved with credit card and PayPal fraud and money laundering, some got involved with online black market drug trade, and at least one probably got involved with homosexual porn sites, haha. Granted plenty of them also went in successful directions as well, such as attending prominent universities and running legitimate websites and such. Just keep in mind we’re still talking about people who are mostly under 20; I’m only 17 at the time of writing this. It’s really easy to see how the Runescape cheating scene could lead to more serious things, I have it on very good authority that the same types of anonymous online payment methods we used for Runescape gold transactions are the same ones used by real life criminals for money laundering, stolen PayPal accounts, drug exchange,and the like…. and apparently the communities in those circles are very similar in nature as well. Another thing worth mentioning is that the Runescape cheating community is essentially run by a very small group of people (most of which were extremely intelligent and often very mature for their age), the rest of it seems to be composed of wanna-be Runescape thugs that don’t really do anything significant other than participate in the gold exchange and auto-bot programs.

As of now, I do not regret anything… it was perhaps some of the most fun I could ever imagine having online; I learned so many valuable life skills in the process, and met so many people who will probably still be friends for years to come. I feel that my actions were no more immoral than the actions of Jagex which have caused so many kids to become hopelessly addicted to their game, much like many others MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, anyone?)… I have personally seen people’s lives significantly hindered by these types of games, and between the ages of 11 and 14 for me, mine was one of them. I encourage everyone who reads this article to evaluate the deep concepts that these sorts of games hold and how it applies to you, as a player. There is nothing wrong with playing games and there is nothing wrong with cheating in games, it is human nature to strive to be the best, and cheating is just one of the many ways that aspect manifests itself. It’s really easy for everyone to paint a black and white picture of good vs. evil in these scenarios, and I’m supposed to end this paper with some spiel going into how you shouldn’t really cheat in Runescape, but the fact of the matter is, people who cheat will cheat, and they’ll find any way they can to do it. So just take the information in this article for what it is and think about how it pertains to you, because, fun and games aside, all of this stuff is much more serious than it seems….

RuneScape Accounts can be purchased here

Some images from my career (Click to see full size):