The Economy of Runescape

[@EconomicsExplained]

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[@Scapeonomics]

It would be really interesting to see something about the current deflation crisis in osrs

[@Simalacrum]

I remember when I used to play Runescape many, many years ago, I used to trade flax with one, specific player for a fairly significant discount that we'd agreed when we first set up this arrangement. He'd go on to trade it in the general market (the banks, at the time were usually massive hubs for trading) at the market standard price and make a profit. The advantage for both of us was this: he'd get a reliable source of cheap produce for which he could then sell on for a profit, I'd have a single source of income which, while cheaper than the general market, was consistent and didn't require any bartering or finding other players who needed flax.

[@TheFNProductionz]

Pretty much real life economy lol!

[@dumyjobby]

this is why the free market is of such benefit to society, because it only works if it benefits all parties involved, you won, your friend won and the person buying from him won as well. long live the free market economy

[@ultimsing]

@@dumyjobby You need trust though. If one of the party does not upheld is part (for whatever reason), the other stand to lose big time: here the flax producer lose a significant part of income or the seller lose his merchandise and market share. If then, one of the party decide not to trust again or worst get back at the other, both stand to lose. This is what happen when you have a production shortage or a demand shortage.

[@kuyaleinad4195]

Lol so you basically set up some sort of Supply chain then 🤔😂

[@cheap_car_stories]

back then i used to stand in varrock east bank and spamming that i would buy rune scims for 20K(cant remember exactly), blocking all other chat just accepting all the trades and buying until my cash stack ran out and immediatly selling them for 25K until i ran out of scims. rinsed and repeated it until i got the amount i wanted. back then there was some 3rd party chat program wich would alter the color and shit of the message and let you spam it, i was getting trades left right and centre with people offering them or trying to scam you with noted iron versions. it was like an real busy basar. one of the best memories from back then

[@OopsFailedArt]

I am a trader in derivatives today. I got my start on Runescape at 12 years old which peaked my interest in economics. Always grateful for this experienxe

[@thawdani]

lmaooo, same here, its such a proper way to be introduced to market dynamics

[@thawdani]

from flipping blue d hides to flipping $BA OTMs

[@MythosHistory]

Me too. Found my passion for finance and economics in Runescape and am now a newly grad with a bachelors in finance and concentration in Economics.

[@senlin5635]

@@thawdani can you help me? I'm trying to transition into finance & investments.

[@Suyihai0]

Used to flip rune scimmy buying them at varrock west bank and selling them to pkers at edgeville, that's where 12 yr old me learned basics of demand and supply... Good times

[@taipizzalord4463]

People in Venezuela are gold farming in Runescape and other MMO's and converting it into other foreign currencies because the currency in Venezuela is so useless/worthless.

[@has489]

Yeah I thought it was hilarious that the virtual currency of a game was more stable and reliable than that of a whole country.

[@Snp2024]

@@has489 sad time we live in

[@koray4550]

@htea d Europeans are not gold farmers. You mostly have providers here only. But they hire Venezuelans or Chinese people to farm for them.

[@Rugg-qk4pl]

Europeans mostly run bot farms. Much more money to be had

[@fl3669]

Proof that even a virtual free market economy is better than a real centrally planned economy. It’s actually funny and scary.

[@madhijz-spacewhale240]

You know, for a grown ass man who doesn't play runescape I watch an absurd amount of videos on the runescape economy.

[@williamfontoura]

Me too. We should play the game some time just to make it less weird

[@triumphoverdeath]

@@williamfontoura it really be like that

[@zin.nesis1]

Where did you get the info about player count ath the end? Lol

[@thecoolesteva6]

Thats cool, my whole life I’ve defended RuneScape because the economy made the game so real, and made your time input feel so much more valuable

[@Clout2147m]

LoL

[@SimonNZ6969]

It really is quite interesting. I think a good example is when Summoning was released. Suddenly things that worth shit before became gold mines(ironically Gold has never been worth shit in RS) Take for example Raw Chickens. Those shot up to insane prices and every chicken was being murdered left and right. It was a bad time to be a chicken. But a great time to be a weirdo that hordes raw chicken.

[@mr.fabulousmegardev6256]

This made me lol so hard if I was drinking coffee I'd choke myself to death.

[@Snipper08]

Or when they announced warding and people saw that tree bark or something would be a key ingredient, buying it speculatively, driving the price way up. I ended up making like 5 mill cutting bark for a few hours.

[@DeMark4472]

I remember that. All the higher level Hunter furs skyrocketed in value for a little while. Was the first time grinding that skill actually paid off.

[@Snipper08]

@@DeMark4472 shoot, I grinded Hunter to black chinchompas but hated the wildy, didn't know furs went up in price

[@DeMark4472]

@@Snipper08 It was only for the first day or so, for kyatt furs at least. Sadly, by the time it took me to gather more, the price had dropped heavily. No idea what it’s like in the current game.

[@WILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLU]

Trading was wild before the GE. People also stood in specific locations to sell armor/runes/rares/foods

[@csCherry]

This was such a cool part.

[@kabel7o]

cyan:wave: TRIMMING ARMOUR FOR FREE!!!!

[@ryanbrewer5795]

kabel7o lmaooo

[@tkaftershock]

Ahhh the good ol’ days

[@snailedlt]

Wave:glow1: Doubling money!!!@@@@@

[@BritneyNYC]

Scam alert lol

[@jessefisher1809]

I remember what I noticed when playing runescape was that the economy was somewhat backwards. Where normally raw resources would see tgere value increased by processing them because that increased their usefullness, in runescape that would DECREASE their value due their no longer being room for skill progression. For example if I bought some metal ore and then turned it into cannon balls I would lose money because the main reason people make cannon balls is to increase their smithing skill not to actually produce cannon balls. Its like this with everything. Buying logs are more expensive than the arrows they produce. Kind of silly really.

[@GeorgeTJPG]

The 4Ps, ah bringing me back to GCSE Business Studies

[@Aj-tu4gv]

Did you listen to the 4ps song in business?

[@default632]

Aj195 no, is it interesting?

[@Aj-tu4gv]

@@default632 no it's just weird and silly.

[@benc640]

😂

[@benc640]

I saw Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in another video and thought the same thing.

[@YOUTY209]

Purchasing a partyhat (any color) via RWT in the mid 2000's and selling it 10 years later, again via RWT, gave a better 10-year return than most real-world stocks, even after accounting for the loss from fees associated with RWT. (RWT means real-world-trading, the black market for buying and selling runescape gold for real currency)

[@29_lets_go]

I believe it. People will spend a lot of money on a partyhat.. and I really don't see the partyhat decreasing in value. It could.. but the chances are very small. I think it'll keep increasing in value until the game dies.

[@kevin28115]

@@29_lets_go with how rs3 is going it's not long.

[@29_lets_go]

kevin28115 What do you mean? The game is doing well. Profits are higher than ever and they’re still making a lot of new content. Loyal player base and gets new players pretty frequently. The only thing that hints that it’s “dying” is people complaining about mtx on reddit. Mtx sucks but it’s in pretty much every game, however, they could do less of the overpowered promos.

[@thecoolesteva6]

Runescape is actually so good and the economy is one of the reasons it’s the best game ever. This is a game people don’t quit, no matter how long you’ve been away, your account stays active and you might have actually become rich or poor depending on your investments/items you had from the last time you played

[@kivelocity932]

@Teringventje what about archeage unchained?

[@yoruichixx6951]

@Teringventje this comment aged badly

[@drewberry8945]

It was better pre grand exchange. I would mine coal for around 150GP each was the going rate and sell 200 for 30K. Rune scimitars cost 30K usually. So 200 coal is the same as a rune scimi usually. But you gotta barter for the better prices.

[@Mylada]

The playerbase of Runescape has actually been higher in 2019 than in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.

[@kynexiz2685]

Isn't that with osrs and rs3 combined? The rs3 playerbase is far lower this year compared to other years

[@professorsolo6484]

Kynexiz yes that’s combined, OSRS player base keeps rising while RS3 is plummeting

[@lcmiracle]

I was gonna say that since there's a new mobile version of the game in the late 2018, as the video states, it is only natural running up to 2019 there'll be more players of runescape this year.

[@LEC1857-6inFinalsGotReverseSwe]

When they release the mobile version. Thars why

[@Lx-xr7ub]

Cause of mobile gaming.

[@OneOnOne1162]

I played Runescape back when it was just person-to-person trading. And I remember flaxing. So much flaxing.

[@camgriffin414]

OneOnOne1162 and bowstrings

[@basedaf5580]

you know you can do other stuff right

[@oliverwest5336]

So glad I found this channel, I’ve just started an economics degree and your content is fascinating. Keep going, you’re going to go big with this quality content.

[@jminnerl]

This game actually taught me a lot about economics when I was 10. You learned that value is subjective, limited supply drove prices up (special holiday items), the more skill/risk it took to get raw material the more they were worth and they'd be worth even more once you manufactured them into sometime of value. It also the showed division of laber in a market, not many people had time to be good at everything so some people focused on mining, some of fishing, some on smithing etc. I played this game way back when it was 100% free and had gameboy level graphics, crazy how far it has gone.

[@tkd_sumira9755]

Economy of a video game Just what I needed to make my day

[@eack4252]

amazing after 15 years of not seeing runescape how much has changed and how little has changed. This game taught me economics without me even realizing it. Always went with a smooth cya, the flashers where obnoxious lol. when I saw oil prices go negative it reminded me of dropping party hats for space in my bank vault. different cities had different economies within the game. from people selling food by the edge of the wilderness to people selling armors in verdock to people selling the premium stuff in that castle city north east of lumbridge i forget the name. cool to see the game still going

[@byHeaLiiAU]

I love this channel. Really great stuff. Some random ideas for future videos: Singapore's massive economy and the history of the country How countries like Germany and the Netherlands are able to have their exports remain internationally competitive. The future of Western economies (the term escapes me but I've been hearing Aussie journos and politicians speculate that the future will continue to be low growth, very low interest rates) OPEC and the oil crises, the resurgence of American oil industry Hell, just the fiscal policy of individual presidents and their impacts. You could do any and it'd be interesting. I'd say the same for Australia and I'm pretty well read on each treasurer but your audience is too big to just do Australia

[@basu826]

Awesome video I really enjoyed hearing someone from outside the RuneScape community talk about some interesting bits of the economy cuz man does it get interesting! I also enjoyed hearing about that guys thesis, but I just want to say that while yes RS3's active player base is dwindling, the Old-school RuneScape servers have more active players then the game has seen sense 2007 which was the games peak playerbase wise, OSRS is thriving! (: Thanks for the upload♥️

[@EconomicsExplained]

Hi Guys I hope you enjoy the new Video :) I will be answering questions on here for as long as I can keep up with the comments. I will also be hanging out and chatting live on the new discord server that you can join here discord.gg/nZuCJRY Otherwise please like and subscribe if you enjoy :D

[@edbop]

Pleased that you can see the fallacy in many of economics's assumptions; economics has become a dogmatic religion rather than anything close to a science.

[@jdmfan2170]

Do the economy of GTA Online and Red dead redemption 2 online. please

[@fermitupoupon1754]

Gta online has no economy. There is no trade between players at all. On PC you can't even give money to other players without essentially cheating via mods. And even then it's literally creating money out of thin air.

[@luisxavier1349]

can you make somthing like this for "Albion Online" while it's in beta and later compare it with the game after the official release?

[@alithepotatomaster7330]

@@luisxavier1349 yeah that will be a good idea

[@ElSuperNova23]

NOW THIS IS WHAT I SUB FOR You might wanna be clear that you're referring to OSRS

[@deus_ex_machina_]

Don't think he knows the difference. He kept showing footage of RS3 when the paper clearly mentions OSRS. That being said there were no errors in the video stemming from the confusion.

[@jamesjjames]

It's been a few years since I was into RuneScape but what is OSRS?

[@PUPGRLPDX]

@@jamesjjames The good version of the game that people still play.

[@richardpankow4714]

@@jamesjjames it stands for old school runescape, it is based from an archived backup of runescape from 2007, and the devs keep updating the game based on player polling instead of letting it stay in a legacy state.

[@ryanrodriguez4535]

Well considering he’s talking about he difference of post GE times and pre GE times, talking of regular OS still works because OS wasn’t a thing at the time. There was only one runescape.

[@Decmatee]

Rs was such a huge part of my childhood and I'll always love it. Such an authentic game that's organically evolved into the top mmo it deserves to be today. As much as I hated the GE when it came around I think it's done rs good. Although,.. I don't use it. Iron btw. ;)

[@dahutba]

Loved the video, just pointing out that “Runescape” (aka Runescape 3) is shrinking slowly, but Old School Runescape is actually growing!

[@Cooe.]

Fuck Jagex. The day they killed RuneScape Classic (aka the original & only RS worth playing) was the day they became irrelevant. Using the title of "Old School RuneScape" for RuneScape 2 is straight up insulting.

[@The_Daily_Tomato]

Ah Runescape. My old friend, such good times we had together. I still have fond memories of our time together ;)

[@georgewashington8620]

I remember selling wet clay for 1k each right outfront of the rimmy house portal in world 31

[@dandavidson4717]

For anyone interested, I've typed out a couple of examples of what I found most interesting in the workings of the old days of the RuneScape economy: Players would gather in a specific world (server) and in a specific location in game if they needed to buy or sell any specific items, particularly in bulk or for anything expensive. The in game trading area was totally unofficial and evolved organically, with players self-organising into sections within that area depending on the items they were looking to buy or sell. You'd get to know the nuances as you played, knowing which area to head to as needed. Some players would use the game forums to post notices about items they were selling or buying, most often if those players regularly sold or bought large quantities of the same items. Players would also come to regular trading arrangements with other players that they meet in game. For example, you might meet a player selling Yew Logs and stay in contact specifically for purchasing Yew Logs whenever the other player had cut more of them. If you also bought bow strings from another player, you could then make Yew Longbows you could go on to sell at a profit or use yourself. There were specific micro-markets for activities like this, where players would congregate at a certain location to craft a specific type of item, and buyers of that specific item type would know where these suppliers were and be able to get a better deal by saving the crafters the time and effort to sell them themselves (which would otherwise require a regular buyer, posting to the forums and waiting, or changing game location and server to advertise your items in the trading world - and having to compete with other sellers.) Rare items were also a particularly interesting part of the economy. These were items that had been discontinued - so no new ones were able to be introduced into the game. There are several examples, but the best example are Party Hats (released one year for a Christmas event) that were a cosmetic item that had no real use, but was wearable, looked good, and were only ever released into the game for this event. As there were a truly limited number of these hats in the game, their value increased over time as they were lost in game, and became more and more desirable. Eventually reaching a point where they were worth well over $1000 (real world value!) each. Different coloured hats were worth different amounts - and in a particularly interesting time, there was an item duplication bug that was exploited. Party hats being the most valuable in game items, they were duplicated the most. Their value crashed due to the influx of supply, and one of the rarest hat colours became one of the cheapest due to a particular focus during exploitation of the bug. Their relative values then stayed pretty stable from then on, and over time they regained and exceeded their previous value. Rares were often the ultimate goal of any player, and I found that aspect of the game fascinating. The death mechanic of the game also affects the economy - when you die, you don't lose levels or experience, but the items you were carrying on you or wearing at the time were dropped. This made for particularly exciting player verses player combat in the Wilderness (the PVP enabled zone), as you'd have to weigh up the risks of using more expensive but better equipment versus cheaper gear that you wouldn't mind losing. Good PKers (player killers) could earn decent money doing nothing but fighting other players, and it was one of the most exhilarating aspects of the game. Similarly there were focused fights in the Duel Arena, where fights could be customised with certain rules (no healing, stat boosts, restricted items and equipment, etc) for a structured fight with an individual other player, and in these you could put money and items at stake on your matches. At the highest levels these duels could have stakes worth thousands of real world $, with items like multiple Party hats and other rare items being put at stake. The old RuneScape economy was truly fantastic, and I haven't seen it matched in a game since.

[@corpsman]

I cannot BELIEVE one of my favorite channels is crossing over to Runescape!!!!!!!!

[@fetlix]

the Old School Runescape economy is WAY stronger than Runescape 3's economy, do a crossover on em! Great video man

[@brentonvence]

not really, rs3 has multiple gold sinks, item sinks, less bots. rs3 may have less players but the economy is far healthier.

[@BadEmpanada]

I found the most interesting thing what you said about how old Runescape simulated ancient barter economies. Make a video on that!

[@sachk00]

Never expected to see you here. Us Aussies are taking over youtube apparently now.

[@dandavidson4717]

If you're genuinely unfamiliar, I can give you a small amount of my own experiences. Players would gather in a specific world (server) and in a specific location in game if they needed to buy or sell any specific items, particularly in bulk or for anything expensive. The in game trading area was totally unofficial and evolved organically, with players self-organising into sections within that area depending on the items they were looking to buy or sell. You'd get to know the nuances as you played, knowing which area to head to as needed. Some players would use the game forums to post notices about items they were selling or buying, most often if those players regularly sold or bought large quantities of the same items. Players would also come to regular trading arrangements with other players that they meet in game. For example, you might meet a player selling Yew Logs and stay in contact specifically for purchasing Yew Logs whenever the other player had cut more of them. If you also bought bow strings from another player, you could then make Yew Longbows you could go on to sell at a profit or use yourself. There were specific micro-markets for activities like this, where players would congregate at a certain location to craft a specific type of item, and buyers of that specific item type would know where these suppliers were and be able to get a better deal by saving the crafters the time and effort to sell them themselves (which would otherwise require a regular buyer, posting to the forums and waiting, or changing game location and server to advertise your items in the trading world - and having to compete with other sellers.) Rare items were also a particularly interesting part of the economy. These were items that had been discontinued - so no new ones were able to be introduced into the game. There are several examples, but the best example are Party Hats (released one year for a Christmas event) that were a cosmetic item that had no real use, but was wearable, looked good, and were only ever released into the game for this event. As there were a truly limited number of these hats in the game, their value increased over time as they were lost in game, and became more and more desirable. Eventually reaching a point where they were worth well over $1000 (real world value!) each. Different coloured hats were worth different amounts - and in a particularly interesting time, there was an item duplication bug that was exploited. Party hats being the most valuable in game items, they were duplicated the most. Their value crashed due to the influx of supply, and one of the rarest hat colours became one of the cheapest due to a particular focus during exploitation of the bug. Their relative values then stayed pretty stable from then on, and over time they regained and exceeded their previous value. Rares were often the ultimate goal of any player, and I found that aspect of the game fascinating. The death mechanic of the game also affects the economy - when you die, you don't lose levels or experience, but the items you were carrying on you or wearing at the time were dropped. This made for particularly exciting player verses player combat in the Wilderness (the PVP enabled zone), as you'd have to weigh up the risks of using more expensive but better equipment versus cheaper gear that you wouldn't mind losing. Good PKers (player killers) could earn decent money doing nothing but fighting other players, and it was one of the most exhilarating aspects of the game. Similarly there were focused fights in the Duel Arena, where fights could be customised with certain rules (no healing, stat boosts, restricted items and equipment, etc) for a structured fight with an individual other player, and in these you could put money and items at stake on your matches. At the highest levels these duels could have stakes worth thousands of real world $, with items like multiple Party hats and other rare items being put at stake. Uh, long post, but I hope you enjoyed it! The old RuneScape economy was truly fantastic, and I haven't seen it matched in a game since.

[@wonderoushistoryofclassicf9193]

So the biggest market crash was in 2007 after the grand exchange was introduced because quite simply many formerly extremely expensive items became readily available on the grand exchange due to demand and far too much of these products were introduced onto the market causing a massive price drop on most items.

[@Photosynthjesus]

If you havent already, check out Ultima online. the player economy was 98% player driven and player even had vendors you could set up at your house. had a housing market and so on.

[@JakeStothard]

I used to play Runescape before the grand exchange. The way I made money was to buy coal at 160gp each from miners, then sell batches of 1000 coal for 180K to smiths. This worked because smiths didn't have the patience to buy 15 coal at a time from miners and miners often didn't have the patience to mine the large batches the smiths wanted to buy in. I had a very high mining level, but found it was faster for me to not mine and just trade.

[@daoyang223]

Being the middle man made it work for the supply and demand that is naturally in place. But there werent any rules or penalties to enforce a trade rule in case someone decides they're going to just jack up the price. In actuality i guess people would just not buy. Maybe resort to the slower incremental method of attaining a resource or just shrink the player base because of its unplayability. Theres also the possibility of attaining the resource themselves. At that point there isn't an economy. Most if not all would just be ironmen

[@TadeuCarabias]

Hey, great channel, I've been following it for a couple of weeks already and your content is great. I'd like to suggest you take a look into Tibia's economy, it has a lot of paralels with Runescape's. I know of a lot of Venezuelans who also use it to convert gold into foreign currencies so that they can get by there. Keep up the good work!

[@JohnSmith-kv3eo]

Good video. Hey do you think you could talk in a future video about how Argentina, once a developed country, became underdeveloped? I think it's a really interesting topic.

[@flashamarillo4070]

It was once in the top 10 gdp per capita. I know because it's my motherland. Never forget. :"(

[@jamesjjames]

And maybe what other countries have become, or maybe will become, undeveloped.

[@Fireclaws10]

John Doe lol what. It was a right dictatorship

[@noxus7462]

John Doe You just don’t know what you’re talking about.

[@abifal2212]

The most basic way to describe it, poor decisions and management. Yes, we had a gold age with our farms and meat expo, we where kinda good a few years after, but the real problem would start in the fact that we didn't developed our industry in the right way, and the we had a lot of dictatorships and poor economic choices. Which lends to a circle of asking for money, corruption, fall of the economy and recovery. This is coming from me, an Argentinian, having study last year economic and social history, plus all I've read and remember from it. Really basic though, always interesting to re read again and see now days decisions

[@stevenismart]

Jagex also made another game called Old school runescape or OSRS. The population is increasing in OSRS while the original runescape game, now called RS3, is less popular. There's so many Venezuelan gold farmers now that you run into them everywhere in the game. Venezuelans compete for resources in order to sell for gold. so Jagex puts goldsinks into the game to stabilize the amount of coins and try to ban real world trading. An example would be that they put a tax at the duel arena, a place where players stake money and fight. There is also paying coins to retrieve items you lost when you die. I think a video going into the life of a Venezuelan gold farmer would be interesting.

[@TheDecree93]

I could literally listen to your voice speaking about money all day. It’s weirdly calming lol. Working my way through all of your videos cause they are great

[@WeL0veTechno]

Awesome video! When I was watching your 'Economy of EVE' video, I was woundering if you knew runescape because I always loved that game partly for it's interesting and somewhat realistic economy. It has learned me a lot of things about how trade and stocks work and these days I'm gettin my master in Bussines Engineering (applied economic sciencez) So you my friend, have just earned yourself a new sub! Keep them comming! Peaceee

[@LWylie]

Tell me you're getting a Masters in a language other than English, please.

[@plaguespecter7167]

I discovered your channel today and I love it and pls keep producing good content Your new fan from Algeria

[@roxas3000123]

This is such an informative video about such a good game !! Amazing content !!!

[@EconomicsExplained]

Thanks mate :) glad you enjoyed!

[@meowpow6166]

Was waiting for this video for a long time!!! ty

[@EconomicsExplained]

Hope it was worth the wait :)

[@titsmacgee2622]

Interesting video, although I disagree with your point that the active player base is shrinking. If anything, it is flourishing. Especially on OSRS.

[@TheChaotiCake]

I miss real trading...that was probably my favorite part of rs.

[@Jotto999]

Ah Runescape, I remember standing around spamming "sell lobbies" (slang for lobsters). Runescape is a little bit like Morrowind: very dated, but beautiful.

[@JAXi9321]

I used to love RuneScape so so much back in 2006-2011. I were so addicted. It basically was my life, Online & Offline. It taught me English, Maths, Social skills & it taught me love. Way before any school or teacher did. Then the new graphics, new combat system & shitty items came in 🙁❤️

[@uncertaintyunravelled8273]

Glad to hear that you'll be uploading more videos. Do you have a patreon or another page for donations or something?

[@EconomicsExplained]

Hi mate thanks for the kind words. I am not taking any donations, as soon as I take money from someone I would feel obligated to make videos. As soon as I feel obligated I would no longer enjoy making videos and if I am not enjoying it to quality would decline. I only make about $100 a month at this point given the type of content I discuss not being super advertiser friendly but that is just fine by me these videos are a hobby not a job. If you do have some money that you wanted to give me please consider giving it a charity that will do better work than I do :)

[@alex_gibson]

Runescape led me to understand stockmarkets and become very comfortable in them, its incredible what 15 years of playing a game does to a person, wish i had the spare money to actually try it out

[@EconomicsExplained]

Much the same with myself and eve online mate, I work in finance myself and I think the skills I developed doing industry in EVE online have helped me more than the skills I learnt doing my MBA

[@alex_gibson]

@@EconomicsExplained that's certainly something to think about now that im searching for a permanent career choice, maybe its time to start saving and see what its like to just get my toes wet in the stock market, what ive learnt is that it doesn't take bold decision making investing into a potentially high pay out, its being smart and educated with the audience thats invested in any stock and having a rough profile on the company, its like preparing for updates! Hahaha

[@peternewman9606]

I would like to see more hypothetical videos. For example (if you are also interested in gaming and not just the economics of it) ,how would you create an in game economy? How would drop works from monsters? quests? will it be a subscription based? also the end game is to make it fun and relatively stable. Seeing as how moneytisation is all over the place in MMOs, would be really interesting to see an economics take on how it could be done better

[@arzard403]

These videos are absolute fire!!!! Loving the more frequent uploads lately, keep it up

[@ollie-d]

Great video! Really cool that you spent time talking about pre-GE rs. The GE made flipping insanely easy and profitable. It's easily the single most reliable and profitable moneymaker in the game. Pre-GE trading in world 2 was incredible. Walking around and figuring out which sections contained which items and slowly building a map in your head/scratch paper of prices was a great deal of fun. Being a part of the economy as a gamer is cool, but being part of it as someone looking for real life profit showed me how interlinked OSRS was with the actual economy, and it's insane how it has had such an impact on so many lives.

[@MrYamchu]

I remember never being members gaining adamant armor, hard earned gold, 100k were a lot for me, then losing my runite weapons and eventually getting hacked. 13 years later I become member, I get my first million, almost a 1000 total levels higher, I find a way to make 600k-1M in just 20 min, I get rich, but don't have time for it all, you start to give away 100s of Ks of gold. That game gives you the fair chance of working your way to riches and adventures only a few in the real world control. But still it was the old days when you were in the lower working class things meant something extra for you.

[@007kingifrit]

this game taught the value of hard work, caution, and innovation to an entire generation

[@TheMarksmansam]

I remember being a nonmember in runescape before GE. And law runes were a necessity but nonmembers couldn't get them other than from members. And in return we had to constantly negotiate with members to buy law runes. And the members and sellers really owned and ran the market. And scams were a big thing.

[@Kenionatus]

Place is actually a pretty important factor in EVE trading. You can buy items remotely, but they will be given to you at the location of the seller. And transporting items through the more dangerous areas is quite the logistical challenge.

[@pmqtpqbtmz3956]

A few points you missed. First, the player base of Runescape 3 is shrinking, but the population of Old School Runescape is growing. There are exchange rates between the two servers and middlemen oversee these transactions in a sort of black market trade. The bonds can be used on secondary accounts (known as alts) and are primarily purchased by players on one account to pay for membership on an alt account. There will be a huge spike in the price of bonds in approximately 6 months as a new game mode called Group Ironman is released. I highly recommend looking more into this, because it is a lot deeper than you think. Additionally there are graphs to view price trends for old school at ge-tracker (google it). Hope this gives some additional insight!

[@Ramon22282]

3:45 The game developers didn't use to offer gold for real life money at all, that's why it was such a big deal.

[@Kurraga]

World of Warcraft has a very similar system with WoW tokens, where you can buy game time with gold, but with WoW you not only get game time but can also be redeemed for balance to use on any battle.net store item. So token prices can be drastically affected by announcements not even related to WoW like when Destiny 2 was revealed to be a bnet exclusive on PC and prices spiked as a result. History prices of tokens had always risen over time and players who rely on them to pay for game time will typically see it as a good investment and try and buy as many as they can to stock up for the future or avoid paying more later on amd it became conventional wisdom to invest in tokens if you have spare gold because they always go up. Then in August 2018 the current expansion "Battle for Azeroth" came out, and token prices started to plumet as returning player who hadn't stockpiled gold needed to get some for all the new stuff they didn't want to farm, and the prices fell, which many people including myself had predicted. and then kept falling over the weeks well below what most people would have expected or ever thought possible. The token prices had falle to half what it was towards the end of last expansion and along with it most item values had suffered too as gold was harder to get now. I personally got pretty boned because I had a significant investment in a trade item called "Spirit of Harmony" which had crashed 75% in price for reasons I still don't fully understand. Now the WoW token price has crept back up again and a rally from the release of WoW classic (which is like an external game you can use your Bndt balance on because you can use your WoW tokens to sub for Classic) the token price had rallied up to about where it was last expansion. It'll be interesting to see how it moves next expansion and if we have a similar situation to what happened when BFA came out.

[@i8noodles973]

i deal with the spirit of harmony market as well. to my understanding the huge influx of players also made a huge influx of spirits with farms going on and with returning player having less interest in transmog and mounts since its a new expac the market crashed as expected.

[@kadenkks]

A really cool topic that i wouldn't mind crunching numbers on someday is observable demand shocks for items when new content is released into the game. In osrs, quest releases have spiked the price of items used in the quest that normally have small trade volumes and such. Similarly, the release of a boss was nearly solely responsible for a large persistent increase in the price of a specific shield that is good to use there. There's a couple dozen examples i can come up with in osrs and i feel like there's got to be an interesting behavioral paper there.

[@BIGIFANDYELLOWCARD]

Shout out to the guy who put references in the video details.

[@ironmedhelm]

Runescape inspired by interest in economics. There is so much to study with the runescape economy.

[@BlueTempz]

Oh my god your channel has gone from 30k subs to almost 100k subs so quickly. Gz on you success :).

[@evanharper578]

we really love your video, the more you post the bigger you’ll get man!!

[@KategariYami]

I remember when God Trimmed Rune Armour became free to play - I bought an Ancient set months ago for around 300k. The day it became available for non members I was able to sell it on GE for 3mil in a matter of seconds - meaning I made a profit of 900%. AND because I knew a few days before I sold it that the set was going f2p, I essentially participated in some good old fashion Insider Trading. Fun times.

[@daoyang223]

Did the same years later with T85s. Unaffordable tank only armour. I sold those unused fully charged seasingers and tetsus before they fell to 2m a piece.

[@abdellahmoujahid3947]

"I want, I got it" part 😂😂

[@EconomicsExplained]

Glad I made someone laugh :)

[@marcelahernandez369]

I love how you guys are literally talking about economics on your challenge BUT i found the channel via a RUNESCAPE video. Thats awesome lol

[@tehArgento]

I used to skip world to check at what price they sold the item that I wanted to buy and sell. I remember all the people that got together on the banks, it had its charm.

[@tehArgento]

Still plat it once and a while

[@xMadDonaldx]

Great video. I just found your channel and I am loving your content so far

[@EconomicsExplained]

Welcome to the channel mate :)

[@futureshock382]

4st Runescape was my first online game I ever played, called up my primary school friends the day I finally got internet and asked what the website for runescape was because I didnt know what a search engine was or how to use one. Good times

[@EconomicsExplained]

Haha definitely a bit of a throwback

[@billybobinthehouse12]

When I played runescape when I was younger, I made alot of money through merching in the game. In real life, I still make money through merching via stocks/ futures market. There are some transferable skills Runescape was my child hood, funny to think it was the reason that sparked my interest in economics

[@connortripp6328]

There’s an important difference to note here. The Mobile platform you mentioned was for Old School Runescape, which is a different game with a different economy than regular Runescape (AKA Runescape 3). This also means the paper mentioned regards Old School’s economy.

[@GameControlYT]

3:06 got it

[@maxrush2414]

But why?

[@Vuosta]

Ingame updates also frequently change the eceonomy significantly coal has at times been dropped too much by monsters which made smelting bars really cheap and profitable (their respective armors have a set value due to alchemy so the end product doesnt drop below that value). This made smithing super profitable and a lot of people did it which meant tons of unused armors got made then alchemized into coins effectively making smithing a infinite coin generator which massively inflated the economy. Jagex also has to create NPC services that cost gold because player>player trading is so dominant that NPc trading doesn't offset the spawning of gold from monsters and alchemy. The biggest example of this is the duel arena tax which is just a 0.5% tax on all pvp fights with bets on them. This removes atleast a billion gp every hour.

[@idirhhrin8876]

Can I still get into runescape in 2019 ?

[@nomms]

There's more players today than there has been in nearly a decade.

[@windyr]

old school, yes

[@capekraken2672]

Yea but play oldschool

[@isaacschmid1730]

Runescape 3 is easier to get into as it's far more stream lined. Play both, at the end of the day they're both runescape and it's a shame people have to fight over them

[@capekraken2672]

@@isaacschmid1730 True, but long term wise it seemes like oldschool is going in a better direction because of the mtx involved with rs3.

[@Jamie-rh1sv]

I know it might be a bit unpopular, just due to the fact that nobody knows about it, but I'd love to see a video about this mmo called "spiral knights". It's a really fascinating game that has aged remarkably well, but has a tiny active player base that's not growing to anything like how it was in 2012. A video on the economy of dying games such as this one would be very interesting to see.

[@adobotravels]

Zezima approves this video !

[@Big-Government-Is-The-Problem]

the free trade system before the GE was cool. i remember buying capes for 50 coins and selling them for 10,000 coins... sitting at a bank typing out the same selling or buying message for hours gets old pretty quick though. the game is so much better with the Grand Exchange. it makes it so convenient to quickly buy whatever gear you want, including random obscure items to be used in quests. before the GE you could ask for weeks for an obscure item and never find anyone selling it, but with the GE you just search it, put in a high offer and you get the item.

[@daoyang223]

RuneScape used to take too long to get shit done. The Chinese irl like to get shit done. Chinese farmers ultimately conceived the GE. Now it's pretty easy to buy and sell. Even obscure items like a damn 'bug lantern' for the annoying and inevitable low level slayer task.

[@ShapZack]

Something intriguing in the grand exchange : Pure Essence sells for 21gp. Rune Essence sells for 24gp. Rune Essence is a strictly inferior good - Pure Essence can be used for everything RE can, AND more. Runes made from PE sell for more then RE (as they're more powerful). Rune Essence should be in higher supply, as it can be mined by free players AND members, but PE can only be mined by members. This in isolation violates most rules about pricing that we know regarding inferior goods and supply and demand. But the important difference is that mining PE gives more exp than RE. So people may be mining far more PE than RE even though many more players can mine RE - or, players are optimizing for Mining EXP, finding it relatively more valuable than gold. In other words, Runescape players optimize for less time playing Runescape... :P

[@phbreng]

Hey man. You should check Albion online economy. It's really interesting, because it's full player driven, as 99% of every item inside the game is crafted by players. You should really check it.

[@gerryw173ify]

There were also third party websites for people to post items they were selling. Gradually people probably began to figure out the market prices for each item.

[@HayrullahEsadEsen]

goodluck with your new schedule :D

[@EconomicsExplained]

Thanks mate, realised I probably should have posted this video a bit later because most of the english speaking world is still asleep at the moment but oh well.

[@therougechipmunk8058]

I use to play runescape back in middle school around 2005. P2p trading was basically you had to already have played the game long enough to know about how much certain items were worth. Server world 2 use to be the banking world where most players would gather in large crowds outside the bank in varrock to sell or buy various goods. It was an amazing time, and I remember first when they introduced the grand exchange and changed the trading system. It kinda really turned me off to the game. Sure the GE was really useful but its killed the haggling and prices of various items which was something I enjoyed.

[@daoyang223]

GE also made it easier to manipulate the economy of RS. While before you can just haggle a price. The GE affects all RS players if supply and demand is affected in any way

[@Robbuffet]

Great video! You summarized just about everything. One thing you could’ve shown, but didn’t however, was the old trading world market, and perhaps the chart that went along with it. There is footage of it out there, and I think it would’ve better exemplified the system before the GE.

[@jonahfaulkner1211]

Getting a subscription for this buddy!

[@pwnu2]

Fally Park merching for hours a day... god I wish I could do it again lol

[@dgnz7628]

Outstanding video mate!

[@Clout2147m]

As a 20 year veteran I approve this video and appreciate the recommendation. Not a bad video, Old Runescape was the best. Rs3 has an extremely inflated market and currently gold is worth about 9-13 cents a mil and 07 gold sellinh for anywhere between 48-60 unless buying from an actual site then could lay up to 73 cent. You can make more then a doctor in Venz simply playing runescape if you know enough. Its quite sad.

[@michaeldoyle1963]

I’m an economics student and am in love with this channel and want to know more about everything you do and how you started all this . Make a video or reach out, I love econs and love you tube and want to see how you did this

[@YOUTY209]

If you wanted to go more in depth on the RS economy, an episode on the "merch clans" that abused the ge system when free trade was restricted would be a pretty cool topic. Basically people would pick an item and completely buy it out. At the time free trade was restricted so you could only buy a product for at most, 5% more or less than its designated value (wow, I can't imagine an easier parallel to make with real life broken economic management). So a group of players would pick an arbitrary item, and buy ALL of it for +5%, drastically raising its price and making it nearly impossible to get over a couple weeks. Then, "everyone" would sell and attempt to make a profit. I say "everyone" because in reality the leaders and organizers would sell their stock before it was actually announced, meaning that they would almost always make profit because they would be selling their item to other people who were still supposed to be buying it. If you want more info feel free to hmu on discord (Vorago#5284), I recently quit Runescape (about a year ago now), but I have over 18,000 hours of in game time and lots of experience with various market/merchanting (as we refer to it) aspects of the game.

[@basedaf5580]

i dont think this guys played runescape, youd have to have been playing for like 10 years to be able to go more in depth lol

[@daoyang223]

@@basedaf5580 used to have a lot of RS content back in 2010-2012. Used to watch a dude breakdown the economy of RS. He was a maxed acc who has played since classic and seen the ups and downs. His name was like JamesPKer or something of that sort. But hes since disappeared after EOC (2013)

[@LManonymous]

You should see metin2. I played that for years and here in europe the game is big since 2000s until now. All we could do to trade was make a shop in the center of a city and put items with prices. We would look for prices in other shops and the trade chat, take a little bit and open shop. People usually would have for example 1k valued items ranging for -50 or +50 depending on the time of the day. You would get the best prizes during full servers and the most shops with the best and most variety. As you would get the worst during the night or work hours because of people who would take advantage of scarcity. The prices all depended on amount of items and money players have from mobs, if you have 100 swords selling, the price would go down. Then if you had 5 swords the price would be high. If you had 1000 swords selling they would be cheap otherwise shops won't make money. That means that players would have more swords, be stronger and drop more items and gold from mobs. When you have more money and few items the prices are high, when you have less money and more items the prices are low. When there's a lot of players with a lot of money and a lot of swords, instead of the swords being expensive for new players, you would get them close to nothing. So in the end, if a server is really old you get everything almost for free, for the same effort and save all the rest of the money, but you won't make money selling. That is how china works, selling billions of items for 1€ instead of selling hundreds for 20€.

[@dxelson]

Am I the only one that played this game and doesn't recognize anything from the game footage except player to player trading? And the grand exchange? I'm so old now my God

[@viktorandersson5067]

I feel you :/

[@007kingifrit]

he used only rs3 footage, nothing from pre 2012

[@dxelson]

@@007kingifrit 0:31 isn't that the old one?

[@alanreyes6190]

Great video! Keep them coming

[@ericzimmer]

One time I decided to buy every bit of tin ore one day on the market and try to raise the market price by 5-10 gp more. I had 200k+ tin ore off my first purchase. jagex didn't like that very much. Got all my money and items taken away shorty after. Made my first 100M from buying and selling mithril bolts on the market, totally constantly increasing the market value. Was 10+ years ago. good times.

[@SilvanPierce]

As an avid OSRS player, I still approve this video

[@MsSimon247]

Love your videos, definitely keep up the great work buddy :)

[@austincain411]

Loved this. Ty for it Love runescape 07 version and financial education

[@EconomicsExplained]

Glad you enjoyed mate :)

[@wildalain]

The video I been waiting for

[@EconomicsExplained]

Glad I could Provide :)

[@MrQzetsky]

My friend will love this. keep up the great work.

[@ohdeargod511]

was always wondering why I was decent at economics and trading, must be the 16,000 hours in runescape.

[@EconomicsExplained]

I think the same is true for me only just for eve online

[@Yoyomo124]

This is the kind of content I can get behind!

[@michaelaudley7562]

You should do a video on the virtual economy on Path of Exile. I personally find it to be one of the most interesting economies, with a huge variety in types of currency and the fact the the whole economy has to reset 2 to 3 times a year.