Don't Fall For Scare Tactics...

{Yes, I know there is another thread about the 'Bonds' update, but this is a different approach}

I woke up this morning and saw the Bonds video and chuckled to myself about what a crock it was, and figured the educated people of Sythe would see right through the bullshit marketing. To my surprise, a lot of people panicked and thought it would actually affect RWT at all.

If you haven't seen the video, here it is.

Spoiler: Bonds Video

So, let's summarize the video, which is entirely a red herring fallacy for Jagex marketing. The bulk of the video casts a halo over Jagex as having reset trillions of GP, massacred bots, etc, and how badly they affected the economy and how this update will 'fix' it. This is called a red herring - it has nothing to do with the bonds update at all, simply a straw man argument: they want the viewer to believe that because problems were listed at the forefront of the video, that what is being introduced after somehow alleviates those problems.

So, we go on to the point of the video: Jagex is introducing membership that can be traded safely in game. This has nothing to do with goldfarming or goldselling, just membership (and runecoins, spins, the like). Jagex is simply attempting to take the PIN buying market and making it a guaranteed safe trade. PIN trading has been going on since they were introduced, I can't even remember the last time I didn't pay for membership with RSGP. So what has changed? Nothing. The entire lead in about goldfarming is COMPLETELY unrelated to membership purchase options.

Anyone with a brain can outright refute this statement because Bonds are only a transfer of wealth from one player to another. There is no sink involved at all, Jagex has (for all practical purposes) and unlimited amount of GP, why would they want to reclaim GP that they already 'own' in exchange for potential revenue? Jagex is still receiving real cash money for membership.

The update reduces down to simply having players being able to purchase PIN's that they can transfer in game. Nothing to do with gold buying/selling AT ALL, just making PIN trading a safer market.

 

I agree completely this is just a scare tactic as rspleasent said himself, there is no way for the player to buy-out so the market aint going anywhere.

 

I only just looked at the news article, and I'm a bit confused myself. I don't understand how this could destroy the RWT market. If I understand correctly, Jagex has allowed players to RWT through Jagex. The player can buy bonds from Jagex and trade those bonds to other players for rsgp. Thus, players no longer need to use places like Sythe, PA, china stores, etc. to buy gp.

However, is this not just simply adding another store to the market? I think we can assume that if there is a high enough demand for bonds, many players will choose to purchase the gp directly from Jagex with the method I highlighted above. To compete, other stores (us) would simply charge slightly less than the price Jagex is charging with bonds. Eventually this market would reach an equilibrium, and all stores would be able to trade yes? The clever gold buyer would still come to us because we offer the cheaper gold.

Am I missing something obvious? What is Jagex on about? I don't see how this is bad news for us at all. This could raise the price of gp because of the gold sink. (There is a 10% cost of bond fee to trade a bond more than once.)

 

Exactly, the thing is, this still doesn't allow people to buy GP directly from Jagex, it just allows people to trade membership, which was already possible through PIN sales. It is completely unrelated to the GP market except where it concerns upgrades.

 

It is essentially buying gp from Jagex.

Player A buys a bond from Jagex for irl.
Player A sells bond to player B for rs gp.
Player A has now bought gp for irl.

No gp has been created. Jagex is just using bonds to act as a middle man of sorts. But Jagex gets all the irl.

 

Pretty much, and there is no way for them to cash out except to RWT?

 

What if say someone had stock for upgrades? Most people were (doesn't matter if i leak now) purchasing upgrades from www.pcgamesupply.com and then re-selling for gp. The reason people did this is because no matter where you are in the world you could purchase an upgrade card for $7.99 which would allow you to purchase RS3GP/07GP for roughly 35m/3.5m per $7.99 depending on how much you were buying gold for... Now say you had pre-purchased stock, right now 2 bonds can be exchanged for an upgrade, 2 bonds are like 14m which in todays market is like $3.00, so jagex just killed of nearly $5 per pre-bought upgrade...... Also now they won't let bots slide therefore this is technically a huge blow on upgrade exchanges + gold farming (considering they are hitting bots now harder then before)

 

Player A buys membership PIN for irl
Player A sells PIN to player B for rsgp
Player A has now bought gp for irl.

Nothing has changed. Bonds are just an in game tradable of PINs.

 

Yes but read what I wrote on how it affects those with stock already.... They might just dump considering the loss they already have...

 

There is an almost entirely copy paste replica of the OP's post on the RS official forums. I hope it wasn't the OP himself who posted it, because that would be REALLY stupid.

http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/forums.ws?345,346,481,65163852

 

This is similar to to what happened in TERA. They allowed people to purchase game time that could be traded in the form of an item. This will affect rwt, but by how much, we will have to wait and see. I don't understand why people say that this will not affect rwt at all.

Players can buy bonds for $XX.XX
Market demand will make the price for bonds XXX GP
Thus, $XX.XX will buy XXX GP.

It is safer to trade bonds, when compared to buy and selling mills.

Now this is why bonds don't matter, Merchants selling mills want irl money, not bonds. They could accept bonds, but then they would have to compete with pin sellers for sales. I assume that pin sellers are still going to have an upper hand if jagex doesn't price the 14 membership bonds at right amount.

So that leaves regular everyday runescape players to buy bonds with their hard farmed gp. I doubt that will make a dent in the millions of gp moving around through rwt.

 

In the end, Jagex still isn't selling GP for IRL money. Because of this, it won't affect RWT markets.

 

I agree it won't affect RWT markets. The only money sink involved is making the bond tradeable, which costs GP relative to a certain percentage of the bonds GE price. This gp disappears from the game after, thus the money sink claim from Jagex. I believe that if you buy a bond off of GE, it is untradeable, thus forcing users to pay gp (money sink), if they want to make it tradeable.

But as far as RWT, it does little, especially since the $$ rates for bonds are exorbitant compared to blackmarket gp prices.

 

Well it will all depend on how much the bonds will be worth in rsgp.

Also jagex wont cut out the game cards etc as they make IRL sales to shops like ASDA etc etc. So they will price them accordingly to that

 

Well, The only market pretty much that will get affected by this is the membership sales market.

 

Once again, Jagex is indirectly selling gold

 

No they aren't. They are selling membership.

 

I think there is a good chance that it will make the upgrade market a lot more competitive.

Player market drives price of bonds down. Bonds become cheaper than pins. People buy gold to buy bonds.

In theory it will boost gold sales. It might also drive down gold prices by devaluing gold though.

Also to enlighten you a bit. The reason they want to pull money out of the economy through a money sink (read: destroying gold) is to bring item values down closer to what they should be. You see goldfarming pumps more gold into the game, and it is like the government printing more money. The more money circulating the more the prices of items will inflate artificially because of the money supply. You see this throws off the natural equilibrium of the economy by lowering the actual purchasing power of a single gold piece. They're in an attempt to please the player base. It's all econ 101 stuff. Why is this a good thing on both sides? Going back to econ 101: the less gold in the economy the more that gold is worth, as long as there is a demand for that gold in the market. Thus people get more per mill value in their gold.

They're trying to devalue gold so that you can't profit from the business of gold farming.

 

They are giving people the ability to buy membership for gold which indirectly means someone can buy gold for a membership.

 

But why do that? What does Jagex gain from doing this? Do they think it will make them more money?

Unless people hoard bonds and don't use them, Jagex actually loses money.