TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Sneak Previews - Analysis of Upcoming RuneScape Features and Updates       9  TruthScape Sneak Previews - Why the Grand Exchange Could be RuneScape’s Most Important Update in Years

Preview of The Grand Exchange - The Will Haves and the Will Have Nots Preview of The Grand Exchange - Put Down the Crack Pipe, Chicken Little

I’m quite concerned that with the Grand Exchange (GE), Jagex may follow a path it has gone down many times before: spending lots of time on slick interfaces and fancy features, and not nearly enough on playtesting, adjusting and managing the feature. Many RuneScape players are smart and creative, and many of those are selfish and amoral. Unless Jagex has really done its homework in terms of anticipating and preventing potential abuses, these “black hats” will waste no time in exploiting the GE for negative purposes.

Here are some of the specific concerns I have:

• Internet Connection Bias: A long time ago when I was a lower-level player, I used to like to hang out in the general store in Varrock on busy worlds trying to buy items that were sold to the shop when they had good prices. The problem was that I never got the items because I was on dial-up and other people had faster connections. I can see this being a problem with the GE, depending on how it is implemented.
  
  
• Price Manipulation: Some players, especially in low-volume markets, are going to try to raise or lower the prices of items by listing items for sale or purchase well above or below the going rate. Jagex needs to put some sort of mechanism in place to deal with this; for example, the GE could refuse to list for sale any item that the player doesn’t own. At the very least, Jagex should put in place a rule against deliberately trying to move prices around.
  
  
• Collusion: I have already read comments from some of the less scrupulous merchants in the game that they are going to try to collude to move the market prices on certain high-ticket items. While this usually won’t work in such a large market, it is still a potential issue. Collusion is very detrimental to free markets and Jagex must make clear that it won’t be tolerated, watch for it, and punish those who try it.
  
  
• Auction Abuses: If auctions are permitted in the GE, there are a whole host of potential abuses to watch for, such as shill bids (sellers using friends to drive the price up), hidden charges and so forth. If you’ve ever used eBay you know that they have a long list of rules about what is and isn’t acceptable conduct, and that’s for good reason.
  
  
• “Second Bank Account” Abuse: Many people have already commented on how they could use the GE as a “second bank account” by taking items they rarely use and listing them for sale at ridiculous prices so they stay there forever. This is part of why I think a listing fee is a good idea, as well as time limits on items put on the exchange.
  
  
• Rule 8 Violations: The GE has the potential to act as an easy vehicle for players to transfer items between accounts. While this could be tracked by the company, with thousands of transactions taking place every hour it would seem to be difficult to get them all.
  
  
• Macroing: Just as RuneScape fought a losing battle for years against bots buying things from shops, it is now going to have a similar problem with the GE: bots that scan item listings and snap up everything that appears for a low price. Jagex must put into effect some method to stop this from occurring.

Again here, “the devil is in the details”. How much of an issue these abuses will be depends on exactly how Jagex implements the GE. I really hope that they have anticipated and taken proactive steps against these and other potential exploits of this new system.

Preview of The Grand Exchange - The Will Haves and the Will Have Nots Preview of The Grand Exchange - Put Down the Crack Pipe, Chicken Little