The World's Largest MMOG

Of course, this post's title refers to the game RuneScape.  Keen-eyed readers will glean that from the title that I have made an error in my omission of two letters from the acronym "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)."  I assure them that my "mistake" was intentional, for the gameplay of RuneScape, and other games in general, should adhere to the description, abbreviated as six letters or not, plastered over their respective homepages.

My argument, as one may have anticipated, is that the "Role-playing" element disappeared from RuneScape long ago, and has not yet resurfaced.  At first, this claim may elicit much debate-of course you can "role-play" by doing anything from fishing lobsters to felling trees.  It is hard to speculate on the developers' predictions for the evolution of RuneScape ten years ago.  Indeed, significant changes such as upgrading the game engine to enable "RuneScape 2," [2] the version of the game enjoyed by the vast majority of players, creating an entire new revenue stream for the company in the form of a "pay to play" (or "p2p") version, and the sequential addition of new skills to appease a paying customer base.  But these updates are not the cause of the aforementioned changes.

On January 2, 2008, Jagex instituted an update which affected every RuneScape player ever since [3].  Of course, this is the removal of free trade, and its subsequent reinstatement on February 2, 2011.  But the topic neglected in players' discussion is the second half of the update, which still persists today-not free trade, but the introduction of the Grand Exchange.

Often abbreviated as the "G.E." by players, this innovation effectively destroyed any role-playing by the majority of players.  Prior to this update, imagine a medium level player who, although not exceedingly wealthy, wanted to go player-killing, or "pking."  An essential staple for pking is a strong weapon to score a KO on an opponent, and the one of choice was a rune two-handed sword.  The requirements for creating this sword are daunting-85 Mining to obtain the ore and near 99 Smithing (feasible by boosting one's Smithing level to obtain '99' temporarily).  But for any current player, the reaction is instantaneous-buy one from the G.E.

A far less extreme example is food, another pking staple.  For example, in free to play, one could travel a substantial distance to Karamja, fish the raw food, and then cook it.  This still requires a reasonable investment of time in training one's Fishing and Cooking skills, but meeting them is a far more feasible task for a new player than the above example  Yet instead, most players choose to buy their fish off the G.E. for the obvious advantages in terms of convenience.

Although my experience on RuneScape does not predate this update, but some research and imagination have yielded me the conclusion that in pre-G.E. times, obtaining desired items was either more difficult or costly.  Whereas today one simply puts in a buy offer, for which countless sellers compete and vice versa, before a player had to find someone with the desired good, and perhaps pay substantially more.  This also applies to the quantity of items-a single player buying one inventory of food will pay much more than someone buying a "lifetime supply" of ten thousand, due to the inefficiency of making many trades, each to a different buyer.  All of these are so-called transaction costs.

With the advent of the G.E., most transaction costs were wiped out.  There was no need to shout in world 1 that one was purchasing a few swordfish repetitively in the hopes of finding a seller.  This occurred not only because the G.E. collected all the market participants in one place using a computerized system, but also due to its lack of concern with the relative quantities of a perspective buyer and seller.  If a seller has ten thousand swordfish to sell and a buyer needs only twenty-five, the G.E. will happily match the offers, despite the unlikelihood of the seller with a bulk quantity selling such a small fraction at the bulk price in a player-to-player trade.  Furthermore, bots were able to find ample buyers for their goods, given they lowered the price a small fraction.

Perhaps the addition of the "Assist" system, by which players can "borrow" the skills of a higher level player in return for not receiving any experience, helped, but only infinitesimally.  In creating a rune two-handed sword, one needs runite ore-and obtaining the ore is almost equally difficult to smithing the weapon, and there is only assistance in certain skills, which exclude Mining.  But this would still involve tracking down a player willing to provide the assistance for a negligible amount of xp.

In conclusion, for better or worse players are able to purchase their goods from the Grand Exchange with minimal transaction costs, and for a relatively cheap price due to bots.  The massive "bot-nuking" advertised prominently on the homepage and implemented recently [1] may lift some of these items off the "floor" temporarily or permanently, but it will not change the element of purchasing goods.  Of course, modern life is filled with markets resembling the Grand Exchange, but the setting of RuneScape is not exactly contemporary-or is it?

References:

[1] "Bot-Nuking Day: Making RuneScape Fairer and More Fun!"  Jagex, 25 October 2011. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/newsitem.ws?id=4831&dir=n&allcat=true>

[2] "RS2 Launced!" runescape.com.  Jagex, 29 Mar 2004. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/newsitem.ws?id=204>

[3] "Unbalanced Trade Removal."  runescape.com.  Jagex, 2 Jan 2008. Web.  3 November 2011.  <http://services.runescape.com/m=news/unbalanced-trade-removal?allcat=false>;