In the name of the game: Runescape PAYERS come LAST ?

10th December 2007 was a very sad day for me. It marked the beginning of the end of the last three years of my life. I have been playing Runescape ("RS") - for almost 3 years (which translates to a total of USD 180 in subscription fees). I am not embarassed to admit that the sole reason I got hooked to this game is its proximate simulation of the real world's economy. You may ask what is so real about an online game: RS has a whole economy on its own, very much like any country's economy. Every player has to work on their skills to level and in the course of it, obtain armors, rare items and gold points (or GP, the RS currency) as rewards for killing monster or other players. Arguably, the fastest way to make GP is through merchanting.

There are two kinds of merchants. The first kind makes items to sell to other players for GP. The second one buys items from players to resell them to other players. The latter is similar to retailers who purchase items in bulk from wholesalers and selling to consumers. I belong to the wholesaler category because I have quite respectable levels for all skills offered by RS. My main customers are the lower level middle man. I often advertise my items in the official RS market forums and it has proved itself to be an efficient way of selling my items for several years. With the GP I earn, I am able to buy other items which I need to increase my levels to make more money. I usually buy bow strings, pure ess and more recently, I spent millions of GP on seeds to help me increase my farming skill.

Multi-player, not solitaire.

My cousin and uncle are RS members too (thanks to my cousin, who got my uncle hooked to this game). Their levels are considerably lower level than mine, hence, I give them items or GP to help them level their skills. There have been times when I have had to give them a full new set of armor when they lose their old one after being killed by a monster or another player. Family aside, I have also been practising giving away gifts to my player friends (whom I met in RS) for their birthdays and around the holidays. The gifts which I get from them in return will very much depend on their level ---the higher the level, the more generous the gifts.

Helping friends and family is unfair trading?

There are over a few dozen articles written on the RS economy. There are rare items which RS does not produce anymore (such as santa / party hats) but remains tradeable among players. These items are considered extremely rare, very much like a Da Vinci painting. Authors of those articles speculate how high it could go in a couple of years time as the value prior to the updates were 40 million gp each. There are also numerous websites that post and update current market value of tradeable items. This is how BIG the Runescape economy is. These articles are not only well written, but they are even comparable to major financial and stock market articles. This in itself reinforces the reality that an online game is capable of mimicing close proximate simulation of a real world economy! And like any real world economy, you can find the good, the bad and yes, even the ugly players in this game. Many a player got scammed or cheated, as have I. But I find this part of the learning curve, and harmless for anyone to learn our lessons. If there was a safe place for naive children to learn a lesson, this game would have been it.

Because of this, RS economy attracted a lot gold farmers and real world traders. These are the people who would either spend all their time to make GP by developing "bots" or programmes which continuosly mine, fish, chop wood etc to make the GP by selling these items to other players. Thereafter, they sell the GP to other players in exchange for REAL money - USD, Euros, Yen, you name it. They also create their own websites, or even sell them on eBay. They are the BAD guys and no reasonable player would disagree that they have to be eliminated.

However, based on the recent posts in Jagex forums, the players differ from Jagex in respect of the means to achieve that objective.

The death of a free economy?

On 10th December, Jagex (the company that developed and owns RS) updated the game by removing "unbalanced trade" i.e you cannot give away items or gp without getting equivalent value of item/gp in return (with +/- 3,000gp). A decent full armor (barrows) would cost between 2.5mil gp to 10 mil gp. 3,000 gp in RS world is so small that a player will not even bother to stoop/click to pick em off the ground. That is not all as Jagex has also removed the wildy - which is the only place where players can kill other players and keep whatever items the dead player has on them. And how do they keep tab of the "fair" price? They invented the Grand Exchange ("GE") where all prices are intitially fixed by Jagex and subsequently will be based on supply and demand of players. After several weeks, the prices are still way out of line compare to pre-GE days, and a lot of items have less than 50% of their original value. Before the 10th Dec update, players had a choice as to whether to use GE to trade, if they don't like the prices there, they can still trade off GE. Now, players can't do that anymore. With the 3,000 gp margin per trade, there is no point in doing that anymore. You have to make 333.33 trades in order to earn 1 mil GP of margin - no reasonable player would do that. According to Jagex, this will eliminate RWTs.

Was it necessary for Jagex to take such a drastic step? Do they not know that by removing these 2 features, they change the whole game? It is similar to a buyer going to a shop to buy a Motorola V8 mobile phone and the shopowner tells you to buy a Nokia instead because they don't have Motorola in stock. I am not saying that Nokia is in any way inferior to Motorola, it is just not the same. People who like Motorola phones will not buy Nokia and vice versa. They are 2 different types of consumers. In other words, the existing RS players will hate the updates and Jagex will have to wait for "new" subscribers to get hooked enough to subscribe (and pay for) the "new" game. There is a high likelihood that Jagex will lose a lot of revenue for the next few months (if not years) and it will take them a long time to build the customer base that they currently enjoy.

Their say.

Jagex has posted their reasons on their site. It appears to me that Jagex's concern is the additional USD 40 million that they would NOT have made by 2010 because the gold sellers didn't give them a cut. The question is where do the players stand? Jagex keep saying it is for the best and that they have tried all means to minimise any adverse effect the updates have on players. Have they really? Jagex said they have consulted professionals and after almost 2 years, Jagex claimed that this is the ONLY solution to RWTs. From what I can read, teenagers and kids have, through their various posts in the forums, came up with far more decent ideas than what Jagex and their competent team have implemented. Based on my rough estimation, Jagex would have at least a subscription base of 1 million players, who will religously pay USD 5 per month - that is USD 60 mil p.a. Jagex should focus on what they have now instead of making the war against RWTs their ONLY priority, and not at the expense of their paying players.

Our say.

As there are so many posts in Jagex forums offering suggestions and solutions to the RWT problems without having these recent updates (and I sincerely hope Jagex reads them), I will not repeat them here. What I will write about is my prediction of what would these updates do and whether it will wipe out RWTs in total (as claimed by Jagex):

1) After the GE update, prices of items have fallen drastically compared to pre-GE days - a lot of items are trading below 50%. Given that it is no longer possible to trade outside of the GE system, everyone would have to dump their items in GE for sale, which will depress the prices even more. If the prices fall to 10% of their original value, the purchasing power of 100,000 gp would be equivalent to 1 mil gp prior to the update (there is no inflation in RS:)). As such, one would have to trade 33.33 times only (100,000 gp)to get gp equivalent to the purchasing power of the current 1 mil gp. Instead of just having 1 character trading 1 mil gp (or in the future 100,000 gp), RWTs will create 34 accounts to do simultaneous trades with the buyer. And because each RWTs will have to create 34 accounts for each player (according to Jagex, these are normally non-paying members), Jagex will have a hard time trying to monitor RWTs. And because each trade involve such a small amount (cannot exceed 3,000 gp), it will make it even HARDER for Jagex to prove that these trades are in fact conducted by RWTs.

2) Instead of selling gp, RWTs will probably be thinking of selling accounts, which presumably will fetch a higher value since it comes with pre-existing level of skills, in addition to the gp in its account. As Jagex do not require owner's identity to be verified when the account is created, technically, the RWTs could transfer the account without Jagex even being aware of it (especially for RWTs who paid for the initial subscription in cash).

3) Majority of the existing paying members are into merchanting and pking (by the way, pkers are usually the consumers of items). In addition, majority of the players are adults, and some even have the whole family playing (grandparents, parents, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters). These players are not into playing a safe and lame game. They know that it is just a game and whatever they gain or lose in the game makes the game intriguing. With the recent updates, Jagex will lose a lot of these existing players and it may take months (if not years) for them to replace the current number of players they are about to lose. Drawing on my earlier analogy of mobile phones, Jagex has basically changed the game from a Motorola phone to a Nokia phone and hence, need to recruit "Nokia" players from scratch - which is not a very wise thing to do.

Instead of dealing with the security issues that RWTs post, Jagex chose to see this as a game content issue. The former is what a competent businessman will see, and the latter, well, is what a programmer would see. I hope Jagex would be bought over by a competent businessman rather than to see an excellent online game being ruined by its creator.

"Is it Legally Permissible ?"

Have you ever wondered what are the most frequently asked questions posed to any corporate legal counsel? It would probably be "can we do this?" It's not that they are asking you what they cannot do but rather what they CAN do.

Most corporate counsels do not have the opportunity to go into "cant's" simply because the client normally wants a "Yes, you can" solution to the query at hand. However, lawyers are normally prudent enough to cover their back sides by responding in such a manner that does not imply they are suggesting any particular course of action, but rather, is a mere expression of their legal opinion as to whether that particular course of action is "legally permissible", based on the facts and circumstances.

Most corporate counsels that I have spoken to express their concerns on not being given the opportunity to articulate the boundaries of the legality of certain actions. Management is usually too impatient to listen to the "DON'Ts". The irony of the situation, as expressed by certain corporate counsels, is that one wouldn't thoroughly understand the "DOs" unless one is able to comprehend the "DON'Ts".

Imagine, if you ask for direction to get from Point A to Point B, instead of having the patience to listen to the basis on which a particular route is recommended, management would simply like to know which is the fastest, cheapest and best route to take from Point A to B. The suggested route is based upon particular set of information and facts. If those information or facts vary, so will the preferred route. Most management that I have seen or read about, would blindly follow the suggested route from Point A to B, without considering whether circumstances have changed. And if something goes wrong, you know whose fault that will be.

We don't have to look far. Arthur Andersen is a classic example. When the partner shredded those incriminating emails and documents, he defended himself by saying that he did so upon the legal advice of the firm's legal counsel. The legal counsel, whom has, prior to that, sent a general email to everyone in the firm, reminding them to comply with the documentation policy. That email was not a specific legal advice rendered to that particular partner. In fact, if one were to read their documentation policy, I believe it will not say "destroy documents if you know they are incriminating...before they are discovered".

Can one destroy those emails and documents? If this question were to be asked, the answer will vary depending on how much facts the legal counsel knows. One of my friend who happens to be a corporate counsel bestowed upon me his wisdom, "If someone ask me that question and I have to be polite in my response, without probing for additional information, I would simply respond that it is legally permissible to do so if......" According to him, some management would seek further clarification and ask "what if the situation is like this". Others would merely be satisfied with the answer and interpret it to their own liking (by coincidence or otherwise, the interpretation will usually assist their situation).