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 - "Most Important Update in Years?" What’s the Big Deal? Preview of The Grand Exchange - What of the Other Marketplaces?

While the Grand Exchange (GE) is going to have a huge impact on RuneScape overall, the changes will be far more noticeable in the trade of certain items than others. Many factors will determine how much a particular item and market is affected, including how popular the items are, the size of the market, the basis by which the item is valued, and how much surplus exists in the game at the moment.

The most important determinant of how much a market will be affected, I believe, is the size of the market. Before I get into that, though, let me start with a few definitions. In general terms, when there are a lot of buyers and sellers for a particular item (or group of related items), that is said to be a liquid market. When items have few buyers and sellers, they are said to be in a narrow market.

As described in the previous topic, the key goal of the GE is to bring more buyers and sellers together for efficient trade. Obviously, this is going to result in far more dramatic changes for markets that are currently very narrow than ones that are already liquid. Thus, narrow markets are going to change much more than ones that are currently already rather efficient.

Examples of liquid markets in the game today include most of the well-known commodities that are traded by the thousands and even millions every day: ores (with a couple of exceptions), most herbs, gems, logs, raw and cooked fish, bones, flax, most seeds, feathers, pure essence, runes and so forth. It is relatively easy to buy and sell these items in large amounts, because the current markets always have dozens of people trying to buy and sell them.

I do not think the GE will lead to major changes in how these items are bought and sold. In fact, if the GE has too many restrictions or costs too much to use, we may see the existing mechanisms change very little as people refuse to use the new system.

Now, let’s consider some narrow markets. These include uncommon armor and weapons, many treasure trail items, finished goods from lots of skills, rares (discontinued items), and a lot more. This group also includes certain items that are less common individuals in an otherwise liquid market. For example, if you consider “food” as a collective whole, it’s easy to get very quickly—as long as you want to buy fish. If you want to buy pineapple pizzas or tuna potatoes or other “alternative foods”, then good luck, because you’ll need it.

Let’s just take one example, which I use only because of how frustrated I became the one time I tried to get one: a Saradomin coif (treasure trail item). Now, these are not particularly rare or expensive items, but I just went on the RS forums to see if any are for sale and the only listing I found was over an hour old. The person selling it is probably no longer online, or has already sold it. I could go to World 2 and see if someone is selling one there, but chances are that nobody is at this particular hour. Meanwhile, there could be five people spread out over different servers in various random banks trying to sell a Sara coif, with nobody around who wants to buy one.

Well, the GE is going to change all that. If there are only, say, 10 people in all of RuneScape who want to buy or sell Sara coifs, they will now be able to find each other. This will obviously make the exchange of these items far easier!

There are very few niche markets in RuneScape—meaning, markets that serve a small number of people—because it’s so hard to get trading partners together. The GE’s ability to concentrate and bring together smaller numbers of buyers and sellers is also going to greatly increase the traffic in specialty items that are currently rarely exchanged.

One area where I can see this happening is with less common farming and herblore items. For example, Torstol seeds are very useful to high level farmers, and useless to anyone else. This would be a natural situation for trade, but there is almost no trade in these now because of the hassle involved. With the GE, these seeds will get put to good use.

My hope is also that we will finally see some growth in the production and trade of foods other than fish, fish and more fish. I love pineapple pizzas, for example, and would buy them if I could only find someone willing to make and sell them. I would also be willing to pay money for certain ingredients for high-level foods, again, if I could find sellers.

If some of these markets take off, they could lead to indirect effects in other areas. For example, if it became easier to buy tuna potatoes, this could lead to manta ray prices going down.

Items that are mainly sold based on their alch value will be impacted by the GE far less than those that aren’t. In particular, I don’t see the GE creating big changes for Fletching items like logs, bowstrings and bows, since these markets are already based on high alch value, which won’t be changing. There could be some indirect effects due to larger supplies entering the market, though, especially at first.

High alch values will also serve as a floor below which certain prices are never going to fall. For example, if a swarm of people suddenly shows up trying to sell bunches of blue dragonhides, the price of them is still never going to fall much below 1.7k each, because at that price high-level crafters can buy them, make bodies and alch them for XP and a profit. Similarly, rune scimitars aren’t going much below 15k, steel platebodies below 900 gold and so on.

There are many items in the game that are primarily associated with the leveling up of skills. In simplified terms, we can consider these as falling into two general groups: raw materials (inputs) and finished products (outputs). Of course, some items don’t fit neatly into these categories. Some can also be considered both at the same time; for example, bowstrings are finished products of Crafting and raw materials for Fletching. But still, in a general sense, looking at most items as either inputs or outputs makes sense.

Raw materials are usually in high demand because so many players want them for XP. Most of these are already in very liquid markets, so I don’t see a huge effect of the GE upon them; goods like ores, uncut gems, logs, flax and so forth will continue to be greatly in demand. The GE will just allow for an even larger market, hopefully with less opportunity for merchants to make profits by moving between smaller markets.

Finished goods will be affected more than raw materials, I believe. There is already a glut of items like Saradomin brews, gold bars, low-end fish, certain bows and so forth, because these are the “by-products” of people using raw materials to raise skills. The GE is going to cause an initial influx of people trying to sell these items, many of which are currently just taking up space in their banks, which will lead to a drop in price. I believe that this will settle down, but at lower prices than are common now.

The net result of this is that I believe it may become slightly more expensive to level up some skills that are already difficult or expensive to raise, such as Herblore and Smithing. On the other hand, in many cases those items weren’t being sold before anyway, right? Also, the new exchange may make it practical to use new raw materials for leveling that were not feasible before. For example, I know I would definitely make more super weapon poisons if I had a convenient way of selling them.

Preview of The Grand Exchange - "Most Important Update in Years?" What’s the Big Deal? Preview of The Grand Exchange - What of the Other Marketplaces?