When is the end near?

I was just talking to one of my contacts who buys gold off me irl, and we had a quick and interesting discussion about this. So to you, what is the obvious sign (other than mass uncontrolled botting) that the end of RS is near?

To me there is one big thing : RARES REAL WORLD VALUE

Rares have remained ahead of decreasing gold prices. What I mean by that is, by holding a rare, you could sell it for more money later on than you could right now, despite the falling prices of gold. In the summer of 2004, a blue partyhat cost around 5M. Each mil was going for over $20 at the time. That made a blue partyhat worth about $100. A year later, a blue partyhat cost 30M. Each mil was maybe going for $12-$13 then. That put it at $350-$400. Even further down the line in 2007, before the trade limits, a blue cost around 500M, with mils going for around $3 each. That meant the blue was worth $1500! These days, in late 2011, a blue costs 4300M in-game, and with gold at $0.45/M, that puts its real world value at around $1935.

As you can see, the growth has slowed down significantly. When mils falls to $0.30/M, a blue partyhat will have to reach almost 6500M just to maintain it's current real world value. When gold hits $0.20/M, it will have to be traded almost 10B in-game, just to simply maintain value!

It's no wonder than in 2004-2007, the real world value of rares exploded. Those were pretty much the golden years of RS! Interest in the game was at its highest, and so interest in gold was its highest. And that really showed in the real world increase in value of them. Once rares start to devalue in real currency, they become truly worthless. So spending money to buy them, becomes pointless. Major RWTers will dump their stock of rares, and flood the market with gold. It'll be a quick collapse. But after the dust settles... hopefully there will be a Stellar Dawn to start things over!

 

RS will be dead by the end of next year probably, Stellar Dawn is supposed to be released in 2011, only 3 months of 2011 left but you never know following the death of games trend when a company releases a new game majority focus is put on the new while the old dies on its own slowly. Eventually Jagex will update rs bi-weekly then monthly then dead.

 

I don't really think RS will die that soon. Many players and goldfarmers buy membership, which is Jagex main form of income. However, inflation of gold and less updates might kill RS in the future.

 

The value of money in the new game will be a lot more than it is in runescape especially in the first months of the release. Give it a year to be honest people will lose interest since rsgp will be worthless and it will be like playing a private server. It won't die just players will leave.

 

Fixed original post, due to some typos (might still be some left over but whatever). On topic though... who would have though actually investing real money into RS rares in 2004 would have provided a 5-10x return 3 years later!