Gifts in Runescape
Do you like to receive gifts? What kind of question is that?! Of course, everybody likes gifts!
OK. How about this one: do you like to give gifts? Surprisingly, most people do - even more than receive gifts! I am one of them.
I like to see happy smiling faces of my friends when they unwrap that box and peer inside. I feel like sharing part of my life with them at that moment.

Now, how about Runescape? What would you give to your Runescape friend at his or her birthday? What would you give to your Runescape girlfriend to cheer her up? What if you made a contest and want to reward the winner?

Money? - dull, it looks more like a charity not a gift…
Logs, Bars, Runes? - what kind of gift is that? “Happy Birthday, my dear friend! Here are your willow logs! I just chopped them.” Nice…
Armor and weapons? - nah, everybody should take care of his own battle stuff.

Then what? Let me share with you some of my thoughts.

1. Flowers
Of course, flowers are good gifts! Add a chocolate bar to it and it’ll be perfect!
Flower seeds (mithril seeds) can be bought in the Legends Guild, you also get some seeds after the Waterfall quest.

2. Cooked Sea Turtles or Manta Rays
Those are ROYAL gifts. Not many people in Runescape can give one like that!

3. Casket
I think, it is the best gift! You never know what’s inside and it could be as valuable as a half key. Plus, you have to work to get caskets and your friends would appreciate that. Therefore, it’s number one on my list!
4. Keg with useful beer (Greenman’s Ale, Dragon Bitter, Axeman’s Folly, Chef’s Delight, Slayer’s Respite) or cider.
A keg is hard to get (you have to grow Calquat tree or buy it from other players) and you need to put effort and time in brewing. But the result is indeed a very nice gift!

5. Cloth, gloves and capes
Always a good gift. Let your friend to choose a color!

 Increase in the Selling of Runescape Accounts
On the topic of buying Runescape account, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if a number a new sites selling unwanted Runescape accounts start popping up. I mean with so many Runescapers constantly quitting the game, it makes sense that many of them may look to attempt to gain financially from all the hard work they have put into their characters, and I’m sure with new Runescape trade limitations essentially destroying the Runescape gold market that many of the previous Runescape gold buyers may well look to shortcut the whole process and just buy a high level Runescape account that has easy means of making money. So with both an increase in supply and demand for such transactions I wouldn’t be surprised if some Runescape account brokering firms start to emerge, much like the common day real estate agent. Obviously there are some complications with such things, but I think most of the complications could be alleviated if a somewhat “trustworthy” Runescape account broker was to emerge.
 

Increases In Buying, Selling and Hacking of Runescape Accounts
So many people are talking about how Real World Traders (RWT) traders have been stopped in their tracks by the recent trade restrictions imposed by Jagex, but as much as Jagex have reduced the ability for RWT to sell Runescape gold easily, they still haven’t solved the primary reason players opt to buy Runescape gold. That being that they don’t want to have to grind their way through hours of monotonous gameplay to have enough money to buy their dream items or have the levels they require to perform the quests they want or play the other aspects of Runescape that require high levels. So with that said I think RWT is going to continue to be an issue that affects MMORPG games like Runescape.

 
Before I go any further I’d just like to point out that Jagex clearly have done probably the best job of all the MMORPGs in eliminating gold selling, and I commend them for what they have done. However, throughout this article I don’t really condemn or support Runescape gold selling, powerleveling services or Runescape account trading because I personally take the view that all these sorts of services are a result of increasing players demands for such things and that in principle where there are demands there generally needs to be reforms and going against strong player demands constantly is rarely a good business strategy in the long run.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was writing about the Runescape Gold Selling Problem and how I thought they could solve it considering there was actual evidence to suggest that despite their best efforts Runescape gold sales were continuing to grow. At the time I suggested that Jagex consider the option of selling gold themselves and profiting from the sales whilst essentially destroying the black market. I definitely didn’t see these recent changes that they were to implement a mere 6 months later. None the less they have achieved their primary objective of significantly reducing RWT.

Increases in Buying Runescape Accounts Ready Made
So whilst I imagine most Runscapers are not willing to give over their Runescape account passwords to powerleveling and gold farming services, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an increase in the number of people buying Runescape accounts that have already been setup with certain amounts of gold, skills and having completed certain quests. Obviously this will probably a lot more expensive than buying Runescape gold, but I’m sure there will definitely be a market there, especially amongst older players who really don’t have the necessary time to develop their characters. When you consider that many Chinese gold farmers are probably not paid much more than $1 an hour you could probably buy a character with 60 in every stat for around $1,000 I’d assume.

Increases in Runescape Account Hackings
So whilst the ability for players to buy Runescape gold from RWT has been removed, it would seem that a new market has spawned – buying Runescape accounts and Runescape powerleveling services. These styles of services are much better known in the World of Warcraft industry. However I believe that these new style of services where players will be required to give their Runescape account details over to the companies providing the service will result in a number of scam websites offering similar services with the sole intention gaining Runescape account passwords with the intention of hacking Runescape accounts. Please protect your Runescape passwords so your don’t get hacked. Thankfully much has been done in recent times to reduce the effectiveness of Runescape hackers stealing items or an account itself, like bank pins and being unable to make unbalanced trades. Though obviously hiring these new sorts of services still comes at a great risk to an individual’s Runescape account, where as in the past the main risk was the few dollars you spent buying Runescape gold, assuming you are excluding the risk of being banned by Jagex for engaging in such practices.

Runescape Rare Items

Runescape Rare Items have gripped the Runescape economy and in a way are like the equivalent coastline real estate of real world. Why do I compare Runescape rare items to that of coast line or beach front real estate? Well because like beach front real estate there is a very limited quantity available in good locations and there definitely isn’t more of it going on the market. Runescape rare items are the same, and their value is skyrocketing, and with every passing month the value of such rare items is increasing.

Well to own a wearable Runescape rare item is quite a privilege these days, and a privilege that I’d imagine 99% of Runescape players won’t ever get the chance to experience. The sad reality is that the prices of Runescape rare items is quickly becoming out of reach for new players. Why? Well at the rate of inflation of these items it is hard to see new player being able to develop their characters to the point where they are able to earn enough Runescape gold to be able to pay for such items is probably getting out of reach. The amount of gold it costs to purchase these Runescape rare items seems to be close to doubling every 3 – 6 months. So even if a new player was able to make around 100k and hour on average and was able to play for 3 hours a day then that would mean that they could earn around 2 million Runescape gold a week. That that isn’t a small task by the average Runescape players standards and when considering the cheapest of these wearable Runescape rare items is now over 20 million gold you are looking at it taking in excess of 10 weeks to make this sort of money, by which time the price of the item will have increased no doubt by at least 50%. As you can see it really is an upward battle in regards to obtaining a wearable Runescape rare item these days.

Runescape Rare Item Duplicator

Now the only time in history that the price of Runescape rare items has significantly dropped was when someone worked our how to duplicate the rare Runescape item, the pink party hat, and of course if you could duplicate any Runescape item with your duplicator your would of course duplicate the most expensive ones which in this case was pink party hats which at the time were the most expensive of the party hats. So how did this affect the price of Runescape rare items? Well they plummeted. Why? Because there was a huge increase in supply of rare items in combination with a reduction in demand for rare items seeing people were unsure of their future, and both of these changes in supply and demand put huge downward pressure on Runescape rare item prices. Of course once Jagex had fixed the duplicating glitch prices once again began to rise again slowly to today’s heights of being multi-million Runescape gold purchases.