OMMs of 2014

The year is closing in very quickly and before we know it the year 2014 will be over. I've done a bit of peeking around and it looks to me that there hasn't been any accepted OMM applications in 2014. This came to me as a huge surprise because if we take a look here there were six accepted OMM applications in 2013 and five in 2012.

Do you guys think that people have lost the motivation to middleman trades since the *decline* of runescape? Maybe it has to do with the activity and participation on the forum in general.

 

I would say that that the OMM rank isn't a big payoff for the amount of effort that has to go into it. If you qualify for the OMM rank, you probably already have enough vouches for it not to make a difference in your trades.

 

I'll finish my second app in the next month or two. Probably can't get it done by the end of the year but I'll try. My first one was the only app submitted all year and I got banned with 7b the morning after rip me

 

Middlemanning is the worst >_< lol

 

I think that most people interested in the rank already were on the forums in '11 or earlier. Therefore, most people already had their apps up in 11/12/13.

 

That's odd. It probably has something to do with the deterioration of activity in the market.

 

This is the real problem. Even a good trade takes 20+ minutes and you generally don't get paid much/at all for them. Account trades can take over an hour. And then there's formatting the application itself, which took me three hours after everything else :/

 

Middlemanning officially I presume was more of a goal in years past because OMM's made a tonne of money. Over time, middlemen have reduced and reduced the %'s and prices. Thus, it's less desirable to attain because.. as said above, just having good vouches will get you the same quantity/value of trades, probably.

I only completed my app just to check as many achievement boxes as I could, just because that's what I like to do.. and it was one of the two outstanding ones left to complete - there was no other motivation for me to MM.

I'm not sure that the process is too hard; as it's an official rank handed out to only the most trusted. I think lessening it just reduces the meaning behind the rank. So I'm not sure, personally, what the issue is.

Are less people using MM's? Is a rank not enough incentive? ARE the requirements too steep?

 

There's no demand for OMMs or MMs in general because there are no new users in the market. There are the gold titans who don't need MMs, and vader/scammers. MMs don't prevent chargebacks or account recoveries, if it weren't for the 07/eoc swapping market, there would be even a fraction of the current MM usage.

 

I'd agree with you here.

Whenever I accept paypal from someone, I would have gone first to them with the same amount as well. If you wouldn't, you should not accept PayPal imo considering the rate at which they could chargeback if they wished to.

Other payment methods are used less frequently.

Though many scammers are merely trying to get the gold first without ever risking not being able to chargeback; therefore I think most of the time, middlemen are used to determine whether the buyer could actually be legitimate when considering a chargebackable method. If they decline to use one, they know with 99% certainty he is one.

 

1) I'm not sure. I still get pms every time I bump my thread, but most of them seem to be for account trades, LoL stuff, and rsps stuff, none of which I like doing. I also feel like lots of people with open OMM apps don't update them with every trade. There are various reasons for this (small trades look bad; having extra trades in one OMM category doesn't benefit you and actually hurts you if you fail that app; lots of people without Sythe accounts, or vaders, ask you to MM trades [mostly swaps, I find]; etc.).
2) I think the rank is still incentive enough; that's the only reason I really MMed at all.
3) No, I don't think so. As you mentioned, the rewards are less than they used to be, so the benefits gained from working towards the rank are less than they used to be. I don't think the reqs should be changed, but that's because I'm in a uniquely biased position . I do feel like if they stay as is, we probably won't see any new OMMs in the near future... which may or may not be a bad thing.

 

1. Yes, trying to sell gold on your own as a newcomer often gets you branded as a scammer or questionable user in this community, most users resort to selling/buying from highly trusted gold merchants to save time.
2 & 3. The requirements for becoming an official middleman on Sythe are not necessarily too hard, it does take some work but it surely isn't an unreachable goal by any means. Something I do notice however is that the time spent trying to complete an application results in already obtaining enough trust to be considered for the position. I would say there is not enough incentive in today's market as most of the trades people are asked to middleman either are account trades and name sales, which people cannot be bothered to do.
Here is an example:

I believe this to be true as well. People have begun to realize that a MM/OMM doesn't really make the trade any safer unless that trade is a swap.

I find this very true, if people are going to accept paypal for their goods, it is pretty much the same as going first to the individual they are trading with. Chargebacks are never something that can be prevented by using a middleman, and to my amazement, people still haven't figured this out.

I have had many middleman requests as well where one of the members in the trade tells me that he wanted to offer to use a middleman just to see if the other trader was being serious about his or her deal or if they were just trying to scam. I don't think that the job of a middleman is to tell who you can and cannot trust, if you have to ask if you can trust said user to not chargeback, then I don't think you should be trading with them (even using a MM) period.

 

Omm's charge too much money, also this sites community and market has went down as far as i can see.


Also 2k posts.

 

I disagree that the fees are too high, if i remember correctly the fees have always been at a higher or equivalent rate, and as for the market losing activity, well that has to do with the player base of runescape.

 

The majourity of people who would need to use OMM'S are newcomers and generally trade in small amounts.

 

I'd say there's been a lack of interesting due to OMMing no longer being what it used to be. Before there was this over-saturation of OMMs, it was profitable and going through the rigorous process that it is was worth it. Now becoming an OMM is hardly worth it. There's too many and many have extremely low fees.

 

It might be interesting if we encourage OMMs to MM in different markets, especially if the forum redesign happens. I feel like a lot of Steam, CS, and even LoL (?) trades need MMs relative to the number of RS ones that does these days.

 

But alot of those other trades are harder to MM

That specifically why alot of MM's dont MM runescape accounts.

 

The process has inherently become harder too with the lower value of GP now

a $550 trade is now 1650m EOC GP which is largely unheard of on top of xier0's points

 

I see what you mean with the price of gp affecting the volume of high value trades. Back in 2011-2012 gp was passed around a lot more as well as botting being more prevalent and player run games of chance (flowering and dicing).