A topic to hopefully spark a debate on what you think about these Merchant Clans. The ones who purposely buy out items from the GE to raise the price, to then dump the item later on for a heavy profit.

A few days ago, Goldmerch were affected by a stunt pulled by Jagex. The item they have been buying out (limp roots) bizarrely dropped 73gp, when they were bought out. More on this story here.

Anyone with half a brain cell will know that the merchanting clans work as a pyramid. The top people (owners/ranks) will dictate when to buy/sell an item, so can therefore do this before announcing it to the people at the bottom of the pyramid - innocent players looking to make a little money. By doing this, the owner(s) will obviously make the most money and normal people will end up losing money or breaking even. I watched a video on Youtube from Chessy, inviting normal people to her clan chat. She used messages such as "Be rich!" and "Make easy money here!" to lure people into her chat. The more people she gets, the easier it is for her to pull off this scam. I decided to follow Chessys clan chat for the past couple of weeks. The past four items she merchanted (D hatchets, D legs, Zerker Rings and Verac Helms) were listed with a target range they were hoping to reach and feel drastically short of this target. For example, the D Hatchet started at 1.7m and they listed the target price of 2.5m. Quite a few people would be wise enough to sell at around 2.2-2.4m to play safe and still make a nice profit. However, it was dumped at 2m. 500k short of the target price. Who dumped first? Chessy, of course. She then cleverly waits until a GE update before she announces the next item. Why? So she can stock up on the item before GE updates, then put an offer in as soon as it does update to get items before other people.

Merchanting clans are becoming more and more common and it is drastically affecting the economy. Some items are either unbuyable or have been pushed to a ridiculous price. I wanted to buy palm seeds for 90+ farming, but they are double the normal price at the moment. I view it as scamming, or at least price manipulation, and I feel Jagex really do need to step in asap. Mod MMG did announce that they were going to take measures against this.



I really do hope that Jagex messed around with the Limp root prices, though, and that they continue to do so with other merched items.

I guess it doesn't affect me. As long as something I was going to buy, or currently buy shoots waaaay up.

I agree with you; Merch Clans should be abolished - they're ruining the game. Over the last week or so I've been doing a few more quests and minigames, and I've been finding it almost impossible to complete them easy or in a quick amount of time because merch clans have bought out an item. I also remember Onilink wanting to buy 90+ farming, and he said that it would now cost him about 30M more than it did previously because clans had been merchanting the seeds that he uses.

I do not disagree with solo merchanting, like what Blue did or just people who buy certain types of armour, wait for the update and sell, because that doesn't affect the economy in any massive way - but when you get 200-odd people buying out an entire stock of item it's just ridiculous and needs to be stopped.

The problem Jagex face though, is what can they actually do? I remember seeing an image in the SSG a few months ago now (which was removed from view and deleted) about a J-Mod saying they were going to cap every item at a certain price to stop players from buying out items and making massive profits from them - however I still don't see this working. Even with the cap on the items, clans can still buy that item out - they're still going to be in high demand and they're still going to be able to manipulate the market by holding onto the items. All that it means is that they're going to have to trade the merched items for rares and try and downgrade until they're back to cash.

Price manipulation is allowed or overlooked in reality so why should it be any different in a virtual-reality?

when does it happen choice give me an example, it might happen a little bit but there is more reason to it then just messing up the prices for personal gain. People who bought out pvp items before pvp, thats reasonable, buying out magic and yew seeds to make profit is bullsh, you only agree with it cause you do it, take a third party standpoint and see whos getting screwed.

Not only does it happen but there is published techniques on how to do so. I'm not going to get into it because real market manipulation is a complex subject but research it for yourself and I'm confident you will find examples.

Today it's basically a marketing technique...

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/13/jon_stewart_exposes_apple_stock_manipulation.html

if it exists its on a much smaller scale then making the price of something double or changing the cost buy huge scales per unit. Its more like %5 or even less, if that was happening then I would have no problem, but if it doesnt screw everyone like rs price manipulation does

quote Apple insider

admittedly illegal

Right from the article you posted, its a good thing.

Chessy has no *bleep*ing life. (This is one of the only times I've called a fellow player a no-lifer)

You know why? She has 6 piles of max cash. What the *bleep*ing hell are you going to do with 6 piles of max cash other then boast and show off?

My thoughts on Merchanting Clans were selfish because they increased my bank value (as I had Bandos and Armadyl armour) but recently their *bleep*ing up the economy...


edit:

And also...wtf?:

quote Idiot Poster on Forums

Mod Mat K, why are you lieing to all of us. I am trying to buy 60k limps for herblore and have been trying for 2 days. I have gotten about 500. Is there a human resources department at Jagex that I can contact about this?

Ownage, even though I haven't made that much off em, L

Chessy made her first few hundred mill by scamming, she did that trick where u kick someone for your house when they are about to die.

This price manipulation is really screwing with the economy & something needs to be done.

What bothers me is a decent worthwhile item, Dark Bows for example, get merched by these clans, they dump and the next thing that item is now junk! it wont sell on ge the only way to move it is in junk trades. That item then takes a long time to recover, and more than likely when it does it will be merched again

and what sucks is when they fix merch clans is that solo merching will probly get screwed too

Merch clans make runescape terrible for everyone who isn't taking part in it fixed prices will not make people happy but there should be something that should be done about this