TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Weighted Index of RuneScape Prices (TWIRP)       9  TWIRP Weekly Reports and Economic Analyses

TWIRP Special Indexes Report and Analysis (2008/03/24) TWIRP Index Values (2008/03/17)

This is the TWIRP report covering price changes and economic trends for the week of March 17, 2008. (Happy St. Patrick’s Day! J) Please read on for a summary of TWIRP index results, and be sure to check out the subsections for more index reports, charts and details.

If you are new to TWIRP and have not yet learned about how it works, I recommend reading either the sections Understanding TWIRP and TWIRP Index Details, or the more concise TWIRP Quick Guide. Without that background you may have a hard time understanding this report.

Global Composite Yield (TWIRP): 93.9 -1.2% q
Skill Composite Yield (TWIRP-S): 99.3 +0.1% p
Combat Composite Yield (TWIRP-C): 88.4 -2.3% q
Key Items Affordability (TWIRP-X-KEY): 96.7 -2.4% q

Advancing Items: 133 (43.9%)
Declining Items: 130 (42.9%)
Unchanged Items: 40 (13.2%)

Item "Winner" of the Week: Toadflax seed: +42.6% pppp
Item "Loser" of the Week: Dragonfire shield: -23.6% qqq

Index "Winner" of the Week: Herb Drop Value: +6.8% pp
Index "Loser" of the Week: Food Affordability: -8.0% qq

Crude Volatility Index (TWIRP-X-VOL): 434.3

RuneScape’s economy is in a downturn. I have been leaning towards this view for a few weeks now, but didn’t want to “pull the trigger” and make a comment about it. However, the last couple of weeks have made it abundantly clear to me that, on the whole, RuneScape players are losing wealth, on the whole.

If you look only at item prices, this isn’t that easy to see. For example, the index of key items (TWIRP-X-KEY) was actually down by 2.4%, suggesting a rise in overall prices that might indicate that wealth is increasing. The value of the TWIRP project, however, is its ability to measure productivity in the form of yield, taking into account both the value of items produced and the cost to produce them. And when we do that, the downtrend becomes clear.

This week we saw the overall TWIRP composite yield index fall significantly for the second straight week, its fifth down week in the last six. It now sits at 93.9, representing a decrease in overall productivity of 6% since the start of the year. As with the week before, this is being caused almost entirely by rising costs of supplies and raw materials, coupled with flat or decreasing drop values. Most of this is a result of the introduction of the CoinShare feature, which is leading to huge numbers of players in the God Wars Dungeon.

This was exacerbated by the new dungeon under the Stronghold of Player Safety, which was released last week. This dungeon features easy monsters with excellent drops, and is also an F2P feature; it has been crowded nearly continuously in every world. The large volumes of law runes, mithril ore, rune scimitars and other items coming from this dungeon are driving down the values of many items.

I hate to harp on the Grand Exchange, but unfortunately the truth is that it is also continuing to have a deleterious effect on the economy. I continue to see items that swing wildly in price due to absolutely no valid fundamental reasons—for example, the dragonfire shield was down over 20% this week, after increasing by 20% the week before, and decreasing by 20% over the spawn of the two weeks prior. It doesn’t take much analysis to conclude that this market is being manipulated, and it’s far from the only one.

The upcoming second batch of Summoning familiars is a source for concern as well. I certainly agree that these needed to be improved, as they are currently annoying to use and underpowered, especially in combat. However, if they strengthened too much, this will just lead to even more of a glut of drops on the market, making combat less and less attractive from a financial standpoint. Jagex has a tough balancing act to follow here.

I believe it is time for Jagex to step up to the plate and update certain monsters and game features to make them more challenging. Barrows items drop every week because it is too easy to get them, and even the once mighty God Wars armor and swords are at risk of becoming commonplace thanks to hordes of mid-level players using CoinShare.

For more indexes, reports and analysis, be sure to read the subsections below. Otherwise, see you next week.

TWIRP Special Indexes Report and Analysis (2008/03/24) TWIRP Index Values (2008/03/17)