Do WE Control The Market?

Well, I'm sure some of you one day, may be, thought and asked theirselves, "Do WE, control the market of Runescape and its items?".
Well, according to Jagex, you can't set the price of any itemmanually because it follows the Law of supply and demand. So if people are buying an item at highest price and people don't sell usually that item, the item go up and if many people selling an item and nobody buys it, it will go down.

But wait... why there are some items related to each other? I know you are asking what the hell do I mean. Let me explain..

- Why do a piece of a set, changed always the price of a set itself? I know Jagex trying to balance things out, but I thought that WE, the players balanced the whole market.

- Why do you think when glory goes down, all types of charged or uncharged change to the same price? Do you think we really control the market of EVERY item on Runescape? Same things go to black masks with its charges ad sceptres with its charges, etc..

- Why a dose of a potion always have the same price as any dose of the same potion? I mean why (4) dose potion = price of (1)dose x4.. or (2)x2? Do you really think that when saradomin brews gone up, people were buying (1) and (2) doses at the same time while buying (3) and (4), well I don't think so and nobody thinks so.

- Why when for example dragonfire shield goes down, visage goes down with it? Again, WE are not balancing that out.. they are balancing it..

And if anyone says that people are just buying the lower prices parts and selling for a profit, which makes them the same price, thats not true, because there is no way 1 price changes and all prices change the EXACT same amount at the EXACT same time as the original item.


So, do you still think that the prices of items on grand exchange are really based on the Law of supply and demand? Well I began to doubt about it since we don't control anything..
Post your thoughts of what you know..

That doesn't make any sense, wouldn't the price go up?

And I do think that we mostly control the markets except for things like stopping various items to hit 1gp each because of no demand for them and stuff like that but that's needed to keep a healthy economy imo. Look at potion prices, they all went up on october first, the same day that pvp worlds were announced. That's either people stockpiling their supplied for high profits or all the pkers buying their supplies in advance, or both.

No we don't. They are supposed to follow the laws of supply and demand but can't. The whole idea of price ceilings and price floors means that we don't control it. The effects of price ceilings can cause shortages where price floors can cause surpluses in items.

I don't remember what items but I've seen graphs where they have jumped a nice amount such as 25% rather than 22.3% or 5% instead of 4.33% something that's not as naturally occurring.

I'd say for the most part they let the GE determine prices but for key items they do tweak them occasionally.

It should also be noted that it's a sort of hybrid economy, since manual trades don't get counted the demand and supply don't get factored in to the GE price. That's why we rarely see moves in the partyhats and whatnot, I think people still trade them manually.

We don't. Sure, what we do in the GE affects the price, but let's not forget who sets the initial GE prices to begin with.

Also, partyhats are traded outside the GE (I have personally purchased a red one). No one has a pile of 200M coins, so they have to trade lesser rares and other items for partyhats outside the GE, therefore not affecting the price. Jagex recently dropped all phats quite a lot because of this. >_<

We really don't control the price in any sense. Not only is the price of every newly introduced item preset, but you must also stay within 3-60k of it outside the GE and +/- 5% inside.

This may have worked out just fine, but Jagex didn't factor in player impatience when they made this. Within the first week of GE, prices were plummeting. Why? Everyone had a simple way to just toss their items they didn't want (at minimum value to sell faster).

honestly im not sure, the whip went down to 1m, i got it... it was in demand when prices were down, i thought if it were in demand the prices would go up... when prices went up to 1.3m i sold it and it wasnt in demand... we are controling the prices but its on a delay or something....

yes the runescape players actually control prices but jagex trying to sort this out but players powers are too strong

Yes, we control the market. We just don't control the market as directly as we used to. What would Jagex gain in raising or lowering prices of in-game items?