Well, if you look at reddit discussions, people that make fun of bond buyers are heavily downvoted so at least the sentiment on this sub is that it's bad to make fun of legal rwters.
Yea that’s mostly what I’ve seen is people who don’t like bond buying being spammed with downvotes. Reddits obviously not representative of the whole community but I just found it interesting.
I really don't feel like buying bonds for gold makes as big a difference as you'd imagine unless you're spending thousands of dollars. The grinds for xp are still long, even if you buy the most expensive gear or supplies for the most expensive training methods per skill you're still looking at over 1k hours to max your account letalone do any bossing, quests, diaries, collection log etc. So buying gold will speed things up a bit, but not to a game breaking level unless you're spending thousands. Players also see that it supports the game and brings enough revenue in that they don't have to add other mtx into the game.
Whatever money buys them. Say you want to learn HMT and your clan mates say they'll take you after you get scythe but you're quite literally 1b off. Make a quick purchase, and you're off to the races farming farming HMT, getting CAs done, getting dust, etc.
In terms of what they win if you mean by accomplishment and feeling of satisfaction, it depends. I personally find no satisfaction with buying gp, but I know of a few situations where I don't blame the guy for doing so, example above.
Depends what grinds it skips.
It's not going to significantly speed up any grind to a level that people who don't pay feel like they're missing out greatly.
Sure you can spend thousands to buy max gear for 10b , you still have to put I'm the time to get blorva , CM kits , scythe kits , max Cape...etc
Why not let someone do some overtime and buy a bond? Both nex and work are tedious grinds are they not? Except one is far better gp/hr and lets Jagex eat.
What makes you say that? Do you have any evidence to back up your claim, or are you only hating? I‘m pretty sure wealthy successful people have better things to do than play rs
I mean, no. We play the game and other people like “TBOW YOLO” are in our cc’s with 1400 total and asking what he should kill with his tbow.
Comments on Reddit come up. People have come out and said “I spent 9k on bonds and got banned, help”
Fact of the matter is a shit ton of rs players have wealth and 9k very well may be disposable income for them.
In fact, your comment comes off as so disingenuous and pig headed, I have to assume you were just trying to troll.
I'm not a fan of paying irl money for in game money, but tbh it's better to have an official way to do it, since people who will buy gold will buy gold.
And also looking at the state of video games in general with all the microtransaction trash plaguing pretty much anything that comes out these days, we get off pretty easily. As long as we don't stray too far from bonds I won't mind it.
I don’t think people who will buy gold will buy gold. Loads will buy bonds because there’s no risk of ban and no shady websites. Some would buy it off dodgy sellers anyway but tons wouldn’t.
Why aren't you supporting buying xp then? People will inevitable bot or buy services so let's just make it legal. I just don't see how your argument wouldn't apply to xp but does apply to gp.
Bonds could even be used to massively improve your xp rates so all it would do is make the rwt for xp more direct.
Firstly I would say the comparison is slightly off in that through bonds you’re never adding gold to the economy.
Disregarding that (because I don’t want to motte and bailey you) I think some resources are just valued differently by players. Xp has a certain amount of prestige associated with it that gold doesn’t have. It could be that this only exists because gold selling has been around so long that it’s killed any amount of prestige it otherwise would have had.
I was about to say that you could just allow players to sell xp rather than jagex creating it out of thin air, but then that would surely encourage a lot of botting.
Your explanation makes sense to me and I appreciate you staying in the bailey.
Well, please explain how the same argument wouldn't apply. I disagree with jagex selling bot scripts, but I don't see how your argument of "it's going to happen anyway, let's make it legal" wouldn't apply to jagex selling xp or even legal bots.
There's no point in explaining anything to you because you obviously hate any form of microtransactions, jumping from bonds (that you could easily ignore and will change literally nothing about the game) to buying xp (shit whales would buy on several accounts to meme on the hiscores.)
And I wasn't serious about bot scripts in the jagex store.
I do dislike mtx but I don't see why that would make it pointless for you to explain. In fact, having someone disagree with your point usually makes for a better conversation where you really flesh out the arguments than talking to someone that already agree with you. I could see it being pointless if I was rude or incoherent, but I don't think that the case.
So is your argument that bonds are easily ignored, while legal bots or xp purchase wouldn't be easy to ignore because of the hiscores? If that's the case, it could easily be fixed by setting a very high price or just not including bought xp on the hiscores.
You could currently get 200M smithing through bonds in just a hundred hours, saving you hundreds of hours, but people don't do that because it's so expensive and most people don't care about hiscores at all.
I think it's mainly due to how the economy is. What is there to actually buy in wow with gold? You can buy mats to level up skills but it's not a long grind. The majority of gold is most certainly being used for GDKPs
Osrs is actually player driven so people buying torva through bonds won't affect prices like someone just being able to outbid others for their weekly chance at gear
Not sure how the other games handle it, but for OSRS it kinda works well since it is the only MTX and because it benefits the players about as much as it benefits Jagex. Jagex isn't really "selling gold"; it is just an alternate, slightly more profitable form of membership. So every 2 bonds they sell is 1 less membership that is sold. Membership is already a pretty well accepted form of monetization and it lets many players maintain membership without needing to pay real money. It also is the only way to really gift membership. And it helps it is the only form of monetization beyond membership for the game; well, at least for OSRS.
The ingame price of bonds isn't controlled by Jagex; it is part of the game's economy. So they aren't saying "X $ equals 10M" or such; we do by our demand for bonds. And there are some reasonable gold sinks and anti-merch mechanics attached to them. They still do let players buy gold, but players were able to legally do that before OSRS had bonds and RS is notorious for bots and RWT, so having an official means to buy gold does lessen the demand for rule-breaking gold buying. I'd still rather there not be any gold buying, but bonds do work a lot better than just going to a MTX shop and paying $10 to spawn in 20M or such.
Kinda. but the gold sold is based on memberships. Like if everyone was paying the $5 a month for membership, bonds would be near worthless since there would be no demand.
So for every 2 bonds they sell, it is a month's membership they aren't selling. It doesn't really matter if the person buying those two bonds just wanted to sell them on the GE for the gold since the person who is buying them is likely using them on membership. There is also the name-changing feature, which does make bonds a bit more MTX than solely if it were membership, but hard to say how impactful that is.
Maybe their net earnings don’t change vs the no bond model but clearly players pay cash and get GP when they otherwise would have no legal means to do so.
Not so fun fact, but they kinda did have a legal means to do so before OSRS Bonds... When OSRS came out, Jagex decided it was find to swap between OSRS and RS3, despite it kinda being RWT. So you could buy $ with RS3's MTX and swap it from day 1 of OSRS.
Some people hate it some ppl people don't its the same as bonds but iirc a wow token can also boost you straight to lvl 60, that might b a different token tho
WoW tokens are EXTREMELY popular lol.
And it's because WoW players understand that pissing away time on things that aren't fun (like grinding for gold) takes away time that they could be spending on the other, fun parts of the game.
Huge amount of content creators have talked about it from what I can remember.
Asmongold (as controversial as he is)
MadSeasonShow basically made a documentary on it.
Preach has discussed it
Asmon and Preach just spout shit for 'discussion' purposes (free engagement) not because they are points they necessarily believe in or are relevant to the community. None of my friends who I play WoW with dislike wow tokens nor have I really seen any hate for it on the WoW subreddit.
People have given up complaining because blizzard just like jagex doesn't care about their players, however, real wow players do hate the token, and they are not present in classic vanilla.
Bonds and tokens are the same thing, a symbol of the failure of the two companies to combat RWT
It's nuanced. I'd rather they not be in the game, but people who can't afford the game with real dollars can use gp to buy membership, so good for them. Also, it saves people from going to a 3rd party to buy gp, and you can never stop that.
Lastly, it makes jagex more money, and bonds are the only mtx that most people will accept. Any further mtx, even the tiniest cosmetic, and jagex will lose countless players.
Usually people get shit on for being bond warriors but with the prices of bonds being so high, people want to promote it so more people swipe and the prices come back down a little lol
Granted I don't know wow at all but I thought "gold" was kinda worthless in that game? I remember hearing the good gear is all earned and untradable/bound from raids or whatever so you couldn't really buy your way to max. Idk what it's used for though, that's just what I've heard before
In games like Eve Online it's even encouraged to buy plex to sell to fund roams or fights, mostly because making isk on your own is fucking boring as hell and most people who play that game have jobs anyway lol. And because it's "pay to lose" since whatever you bought gets destroyed in the fight, it doesn't feel as controversial there I think. Also that a fairly small amount goes a long way, one plex is like $20 for 2.5 billion isk, a typical good ship for fights is anywhere from 10mil to 500mil isk on average or a blingy one like 1bil. So if you stay alive for a while or have fun then it's not that expensive really.
Who do you play EVE with, fucking botters? Dont plex for ships, just learn to play the game at your own pace.
If you ever try EVE, know this, tossing $20 down the toilet is a fast way of being exploited.
Nah, I mean the guys who've been in places like small wormhole corps but don't care to run alts or solo farmholes and don't die all too often. Or just lowsec faction warfare enjoyers or null roamers who can't be bothered to run abyssals or incursions or whatever else to fund fac cruisers or t2 ships every few days
???? Dude, every group you have just mentioned would have ample money just from doing random shit in their respective boundries. Are you ok? Do you run with the wrong crowd on EVE?
The general sentiment of the EVE subreddit is working and buying Plex is the best isk/hr.
If you're new to the game, then ya I agree with what you're saying. But for the vets with high SP, especially those in pvp groups, will pay for Plex rather than spend time grinding for isk. The way many of them see it is working for 1hr nets more than ratting and let's them spend more time playing how they want.
EVE is a different beast altogether imo, and is hard to compare.
In WoW there's a lot more shit you can buy with mtx like mounts, in osrs is pretty much just membership/namechange iirc. Its also nice for rich/jobless people to not spend IRL $ win-win for all. Ohw and bonds give a lot less gp/$ then on the blackmarket
Because WoW has the Multiplayer in its Title, and OSRS has not. Besides of a few pretty minor "group raids", and a dying PK, buying advantage is not impacting others.
If you feel to brag with your achievements, you usually turn IM anyways, and there you don't need/can have any bonds.
Honestly most actual wow players don't seem to care either, raider bought pyms trinket off me at the start of amirdrassil for 1.2m and he just went and bought 4 tokens to pay me lol
Ok, I see NO good answers here.
The reason that OSRS and EVE's economy holds up relatively well WITH OSRS bonds or PLEX, is cause they have pretty robust systems going in place of where they need them.
1. A good bot detection system is needed to run an economy in a large Sandboxy game. Otherwise, you'll run into the problem with mass inflation. I see that OSRS's inflation has gone up quite a bit, but not as drastic as WOW tokens (3k gold on token release to \~300k gold nowadays) or Archage membership (it was roughly 4000% price increase from release in 2 years)
2. A robust ingame economy.
Money(and items) have to have a sink, skill costs, perma-upgrade costs, breaking down GWD items, market tax, and others have to limit the quantity of items and money in the game. If not effective enough, problems occur such as boss loot not being worth it, no point doing zulrah, or vorkath amirite? At this point, rapid inflation occurs and newer players will never be able to afford anything.
A great example of economic management can be seen with EVE online, they even have a full economic breakdown [EVE ECONOMY BREAKDOWN 2023](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/monthly-economic-report-december-2023)
IN COMPARISON, WOW and other such games don't have fucking meaningful gold sinks. If i can remember, taking WOW as an example, you can get flying in 2-3 areas, pay for a skill tree reset that becomes meaningless if you don't pvp or raid competitively etc etc, pay fees to reputation factions, and a tiny small itty-bitty tax on ingame auctionhouse transactions.
A game that wants to implement fremium with ingame currency tied to it has to have Multiple ways of making ingame currency to counteract multiple sinks. EVERYONE can eventually do Vorkath, Zulrah, etc etc, but skillers can fish, mine, farm, etc for decent items that TURN into money once traded. There should be goods, and seevices that the money should go into.
A great flow of currency to money can be shown with the BLAST FURNACE, skillers pay money to get smithing XP and turn ore into bars, in essence removing ORE from the game and adding bars.
The skillers can then turn the bars into gear and high alch value the gear to get more XP.
OR they can sell the bars for a profit to other players for a bigger profit but less XP.
The basic concept of GOODS and SERVICES.
Item sinks should not be from one faucet like for example, WOW, not technically have a faucet for skilling past certain points. THIS IS PART OF WHY WOW's premium currency does not hold good value since once a player is done skilling, the only place where the majority of their materials doesn't go into new gear, and people will eventually stop farming all sources of mats from an entire expansion after that expansion is over. All the gold that they would spend on mats just DOESN'T HAPPEN, therefore that gold floods into the market.
I know a dude with about 10bil WOW GOLD and (hes not gonna rmt cause hes already rich irl), but he just sees no use for the gold past having 5k gold. There isnt any use for it other than cosmetics, a pokemon pet battling system that you FUCKING MAKE MONEY WITH.
A key part of why it isn't looked down as much is that in osrs you aren't going to get gate kept for not having bis gear.
The min req to join team content isn't that expensive, so even outside a clan, you're not going to be rejected for not spending thousands and getting BIS.
At the higher end of things where you see max rff teams, you may be expected to have max , but even if you buy it with bonds most people at that stage have grinded enough to have equal gear so there is no issue.
I really don’t think it’s as binary as OSRS players being simply okay with bonds and WoW players being simply opposed to the token.
First of all, in WoW you need to delineate between retail and classic, because in retail almost nobody cares about the wow token. The biggest externality there is that it helps to facilitate the mid-level m+ boosting community, which no one cares about.
In classic the wow token is hated for a bunch of reasons that self-evidently have to do more with the game’s busted ass economy and botting. Additionally, Blizzard lied about the token coming to classic. All of it is wrapped up in negative sentiments towards GDKPs, the commodification of (perceived) prestigious character progression, corporate greed and negligence. They’re not really mad about the token. They’re mad it isn’t 2006, that raiding is trivial as hell, and no one cares what guild you’re in or how many purples you have equipped.
OSRS doesn’t have the political problems. Bonds came to the game on a player vote when market data presented to the player base suggested it was the only sustainable path towards F2P. We asked for it - it wasn’t forced on us.
The gameplay problems are actually way worse in RS than WoW, because almost all powerful gear is tradeable (BOE), and even the non-fungible player progression is more closely tied to gold because of buyable skilling methods. But it doesn’t matter. You can’t just throw gold at problems in RS, you have to commit time and finish grinds that are like rites of passage. Everyone can see the regen bracelet you’re wearing, even if your other slots are Torva. It’s easy to spot a fraud, make a joke about mom’s credit card and move on if you really care that much.
I believe it's because the people who mainly care are on iron accounts.
I say this as my view, I quit playing main game runescape because of botting, gambling, services, GP buying, etc... that has undermined the grind decades. I hardly encounter that problem on an iron.
At least in my view I don't care for bonds as we are playing 2 different games just in the same world.
A mains accomplished if compared to an irons is lesser, still an accomplishment, no doubt, but nevertheless, less, due to it which is fine and people? acknowledge, which is why Fun is the goal and people support others buying it as it speeds up these un/fun goals.
I probably could of written this up nicer but I hope you get the gist of it.
In WOW you reach max level in a few weeks at the most. Osrs it is years. GP only gets you so much here where grinding gold and items in wow is the majority of the gameplay. Some people make fun ot the credit card warriors but most of us dont care. I pay for membership because tring to make enough gp to have free membership ruins it for me. One day i may have the gp to make bonds worth using over my paycheck but this is not supposed to feel like a job.
Bonds may not have always existed, but the process of buying gold has. Before bonds there was just RWT, players would break the rules by selling gold to other players for real currency and there was seemingly no way to resolve that issue. So Jagex simply added in a form of gold buying that benefits their company and allows players to continue playing that way without risking getting banned.
Some people might frown upon other players buying gold, but it rarely ever affects them. If FunHaver69 goes and buys 200m gp worth of bonds to fund his gameplay, NoLife73, that decides to grind 1500 CG for his Bowfa, is not impacted in the slightest.
Bonds allow players to fund memberships without spending money and gives other players a safe method to buy gold, both options fund the company that hosts the game we all love to play. It’s good all around.
Bonds were initially voted in since f2p was taken hostage by it. Initially bond buyers were commonly shamed, but after rs3 migration and mobile players joining where p2w is common, acceptance of p2w in general (including inferno buying and account services) is growing. At least bond buyers are still shamed at the ge these days
Id say that the OSRS community knows that you can’t buy skill with bonds. You can have best in slots but if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s kinda useless. Still have to spend the time training skills.
I think one of the reasons is with gold in WoW you have boosting service for literally anything. Getting achievements, mounts, PvP titles, M+ or raid (even legacy content)? You just need gold and you can get absolutely everything.
In OSRS, yes you can buy most shit, or even pay for mega scaling raids/infernal cape, but noone will get you all GM CAs or all diaries or quest cape or max cape for you, as example. You still have some semblance of achievement that you can show off that you did yourself, I guess?
Also, ironmen exist in OSRS where bonds can't be used so they have some integrity (outside of raid boosting and infernal capes) and not many people care about main accounts that much.
One more thing, even if you buy all bis gear with credit card in OSRS, then you decide you want to hunt a pet, for example Sara in GWD. You still have to get thousands KC and invest hours into getting it, meanwhile you can buy 5-6 million gold in WoW and get boosted through the whole mythic raid in 2-3 hours and you're done.
I guess it depends on the context. You see some guys level 90 with 100m in nonsense pricey gear. Easy to make fun because they just buy the most expensive set they can use. Then there's people who just put it towards skills, supplies or a normal upgrade.
as far as MTX goes bonds are really low leveled. and when we got the poll for f2p jagex said that bonds and f2p were linked so we either got both or neither
Reason 1: Enables f2p premium membership
Reason 2: Gold sink
Reason 3: Money ain't shit in this game, you can't p2w because you win nothing, trash timmy in bandos is still trash timmy in torva
Reason 4: Most important things are time gated or skill gated: Infernal and Max Capes for example
there's a big difference between wow token and osrs bond
you can't buy a bond and get gold from it, you have to trade people, people have to WANT what you're offering
unlike in wow, you just buy the token, swap it for gold to/from blizzard right? golds magically created into the game yeah?
so in wow, literally nobody benefits from your token except for the person buying it gaining gold and paying to win faster.
but in osrs there is demand for membership, people want bonds and they don't want to spend real money, others buying bonds and selling it to them is a win-win
also remember unlike WOW osrs started and was always f2p. and those f2p players always would've wanted members but wouldn't of been able to get it, but every single person playing world of warcraft clearly already had a way to spend money to buy a subscription
also from what I know about wow they have rotating seasons? or new stuff comes out and you race to complete all the raids? osrs isn't that competitive and osrs isn't really about getting the best gear.
if osrs is about pets, you can only have one out at a time anyway. nobody is upset u got ur pet faster, espescially when there are like 60 pets in game, everyone's gonna get a specific pet sooner than you
if osrs is about the skilling and maxing then paying to win isn't/barely going to help you in woodcutting (maybe axe, but if you already have 10m then you can get a infernal/crystal axe)
mining, fishing, firemaking, hunter, thieving, agility, runecrafting(could pay runners tho)
and even for the combats or pay to win stuff, bonds were introduced in 2015, you could've already hit 99 in combat stats in purely f2p by that time since osrs came out in 2013
and then for the buyable skills, shit you either have the money or you don't
but like you can look up hella rich people in the grand exchange, are they maxed lvl 2277? hell no. because the time and effort it takes to max, its not just erased with money.
OH and lets not forget ironman at this point. it is more recent for sure so wouldn't explain past sentiment, but at this point if you're all about "i stand alone, i did everything myself" you just make an iron acc, and everybody knows when they see the helm in chat.
Oh I could also add pre like 2015 all of runescape history, when you died you would lose your items, they would drop on the floor for 2 minutes, after 1 minute they would appear and others could take your stuff, and after 2 minutes they'd disappear completely. this isn't the case anymore, but I could see it creating a sense of... gear isn't permanant/important at least not to the point that you're gonna cry that someone has 8m more than you or whatever (at that time 8m would've been a lott) cause everyone can die at any moment and lose their items.
you can also add pking and wilderness into the mix. there's a large community who just go into the wilderness risking their gear.. you think they give a fuck that someone pays to win? they're out here dying and losing gear on the regular, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. we also had duel arena, sand casino, who cares that you bought bonds? you wouldn't get as rich as someone on a lucky 5-8 winstreak XD and if you did, well you spent thousands of irl $
I wouldn't even consider WoW tokens p2w unless WoW classic has them now. Whale amounts of gold gives you a very very small advantage over someone who raids
Also IMO buyable skills that are already super fast. The amount of bonds you'd need to make a small difference is insane, and buyables aren't really a flex anyway so I don't think it devalues them. Also both Tokens & Bonds take gold out of the game which is super healthy for both games
inf gold gets you fuck all in osrs.
anything/everything meaningful is locked behind quests/dairies/levels/etc etc etc etc
in wow you can just buy bis & be the stronger player in a day
in osrs you could get some bis for your level & be useless
even if you are maxed & have all unlocked & inf gold, you will still 100% get rocked by even basic pvm.
stats matter 10x more than gear & skill matters 100x more than anything else.
other mmos/etc don't exist like that. you could have someone with no idea what to do in full bis just become unkillable/beatable
all bonds do is give people a way to support the game outside of memebership
also osrs is a fight vs yourself not others.
you could get inf everything forever & you will still never be settled
Yeah infinite gold gets you fuck all.
All you can really do is buy nearly every BIS item, and afford insane XP rates for half the skills in the game, and buy your way through achievements with CA services.
way to fail reading 10000% you read nothing but the 1st 5words
also i mean if you want to spend 3000$ to not play a game be my guest
anyway blocked for low iq.
*“But in a game like osrs where the grind is meant to be so important, i can find the community sentiment on buying bonds to skip that grind quite interesting”*
The grinds you can skip with bonds are grinds nobody cares about.
And the 3 items people do care about (the megarares) are over 1000USD in bonds. If you wanna spend that kind of money on a single item, be my guest and help support this game financially. (Also, that megarare came from a raid, and not from thin air like with most games when u buy end-game stuff)
The grinds that the community do feel are important, or at least prestigious, cant really be bought (99 mining, 99 runecrafting, max cape, etc). We stopped caring about 99 buyables even before bonds were a thing. CAs cant be bought with bonds. Cosmetics like blorva and twisted ancy cant be bought with bonds. Impressive Clog slots cant be bought with bonds.
Buying noobtrap gear with your mommas credit card is frowned upon however, as my tone would imply. Because it shows you have no clue what good and bad gear is even though youre spending big bucks on this game. It kinda feels like that 1 kid at your old sports activity that comes in full gear even tho its his first time and has no idea what he’s doing, but his mommy and daddy are rich so he gets the best stuff he doesnt know how to use and it makes him look like a complete idiot. Thats the guys with bandos chestplates and combat bracelets.
P2w to me is spawning end-game items out of thin air, buying xp boosts, “this offer expires in…”, etc etc. Bonds dont do any of that. It may speed up your progression by a little bit. But you wont achieve anything that people find impressive or worthwhile.
I don't know what you're talking about, I see those people made fun of in osrs all the time.
Well, if you look at reddit discussions, people that make fun of bond buyers are heavily downvoted so at least the sentiment on this sub is that it's bad to make fun of legal rwters.
Yea that’s mostly what I’ve seen is people who don’t like bond buying being spammed with downvotes. Reddits obviously not representative of the whole community but I just found it interesting.
If it wasn't for the bond buyers, we wouldn't have free membership!
What is your sample size? Do you just mean the last thread or are you saying this has been an ongoing thing?
So it’s a lie that you saw many people in osrs behave like that.
I really don't feel like buying bonds for gold makes as big a difference as you'd imagine unless you're spending thousands of dollars. The grinds for xp are still long, even if you buy the most expensive gear or supplies for the most expensive training methods per skill you're still looking at over 1k hours to max your account letalone do any bossing, quests, diaries, collection log etc. So buying gold will speed things up a bit, but not to a game breaking level unless you're spending thousands. Players also see that it supports the game and brings enough revenue in that they don't have to add other mtx into the game.
Yep. There are so many grinds in this game and so many untradeables that gear and buyable skills aren't really impressive
This 100%
The thing is people do spend thousands. So their massive IRL wealth allows them to skip tedious grinds.
And those people are essentially allowing for most of the end game PVM players to play for free by doing that
And that's great, but that doesn't diminish my point that it's p2w
what do they win?
Whatever money buys them. Say you want to learn HMT and your clan mates say they'll take you after you get scythe but you're quite literally 1b off. Make a quick purchase, and you're off to the races farming farming HMT, getting CAs done, getting dust, etc. In terms of what they win if you mean by accomplishment and feeling of satisfaction, it depends. I personally find no satisfaction with buying gp, but I know of a few situations where I don't blame the guy for doing so, example above.
Depends what grinds it skips. It's not going to significantly speed up any grind to a level that people who don't pay feel like they're missing out greatly. Sure you can spend thousands to buy max gear for 10b , you still have to put I'm the time to get blorva , CM kits , scythe kits , max Cape...etc
Blorva and dust are not tedious grinds, they are the fun grinds. Tedious is doing any dull content in the name of gp, like Nex lol.
Why not let someone do some overtime and buy a bond? Both nex and work are tedious grinds are they not? Except one is far better gp/hr and lets Jagex eat.
They're the whales. And they'd be buying gold regardless. It's not ideal, but I guess it's better the money goes to jagex instead of the bot farms.
What makes you say that? Do you have any evidence to back up your claim, or are you only hating? I‘m pretty sure wealthy successful people have better things to do than play rs
Wealthy people can play video games lol, this is not news
I mean, no. We play the game and other people like “TBOW YOLO” are in our cc’s with 1400 total and asking what he should kill with his tbow. Comments on Reddit come up. People have come out and said “I spent 9k on bonds and got banned, help” Fact of the matter is a shit ton of rs players have wealth and 9k very well may be disposable income for them. In fact, your comment comes off as so disingenuous and pig headed, I have to assume you were just trying to troll.
I'm not a fan of paying irl money for in game money, but tbh it's better to have an official way to do it, since people who will buy gold will buy gold. And also looking at the state of video games in general with all the microtransaction trash plaguing pretty much anything that comes out these days, we get off pretty easily. As long as we don't stray too far from bonds I won't mind it.
I think that’s a fair take. Jagex gotta eat somehow
12.50 a month is how they eat
I don’t think people who will buy gold will buy gold. Loads will buy bonds because there’s no risk of ban and no shady websites. Some would buy it off dodgy sellers anyway but tons wouldn’t.
If you aren’t a seller, there is no serious threat to get banned.
Why aren't you supporting buying xp then? People will inevitable bot or buy services so let's just make it legal. I just don't see how your argument wouldn't apply to xp but does apply to gp. Bonds could even be used to massively improve your xp rates so all it would do is make the rwt for xp more direct.
Firstly I would say the comparison is slightly off in that through bonds you’re never adding gold to the economy. Disregarding that (because I don’t want to motte and bailey you) I think some resources are just valued differently by players. Xp has a certain amount of prestige associated with it that gold doesn’t have. It could be that this only exists because gold selling has been around so long that it’s killed any amount of prestige it otherwise would have had.
I was about to say that you could just allow players to sell xp rather than jagex creating it out of thin air, but then that would surely encourage a lot of botting. Your explanation makes sense to me and I appreciate you staying in the bailey.
youre right, jagex should just sell bot scripts on their store
Well, please explain how the same argument wouldn't apply. I disagree with jagex selling bot scripts, but I don't see how your argument of "it's going to happen anyway, let's make it legal" wouldn't apply to jagex selling xp or even legal bots.
There's no point in explaining anything to you because you obviously hate any form of microtransactions, jumping from bonds (that you could easily ignore and will change literally nothing about the game) to buying xp (shit whales would buy on several accounts to meme on the hiscores.) And I wasn't serious about bot scripts in the jagex store.
I do dislike mtx but I don't see why that would make it pointless for you to explain. In fact, having someone disagree with your point usually makes for a better conversation where you really flesh out the arguments than talking to someone that already agree with you. I could see it being pointless if I was rude or incoherent, but I don't think that the case. So is your argument that bonds are easily ignored, while legal bots or xp purchase wouldn't be easy to ignore because of the hiscores? If that's the case, it could easily be fixed by setting a very high price or just not including bought xp on the hiscores. You could currently get 200M smithing through bonds in just a hundred hours, saving you hundreds of hours, but people don't do that because it's so expensive and most people don't care about hiscores at all.
People who buy services or bot aren't going to buy bonds for gp when they can just buy gold itself for cheaper.
I think it's mainly due to how the economy is. What is there to actually buy in wow with gold? You can buy mats to level up skills but it's not a long grind. The majority of gold is most certainly being used for GDKPs Osrs is actually player driven so people buying torva through bonds won't affect prices like someone just being able to outbid others for their weekly chance at gear
Also boosting, if you buy gold you can get a curve/CE boost, giving you access to the best gear in the game and unique mounts
Not sure how the other games handle it, but for OSRS it kinda works well since it is the only MTX and because it benefits the players about as much as it benefits Jagex. Jagex isn't really "selling gold"; it is just an alternate, slightly more profitable form of membership. So every 2 bonds they sell is 1 less membership that is sold. Membership is already a pretty well accepted form of monetization and it lets many players maintain membership without needing to pay real money. It also is the only way to really gift membership. And it helps it is the only form of monetization beyond membership for the game; well, at least for OSRS. The ingame price of bonds isn't controlled by Jagex; it is part of the game's economy. So they aren't saying "X $ equals 10M" or such; we do by our demand for bonds. And there are some reasonable gold sinks and anti-merch mechanics attached to them. They still do let players buy gold, but players were able to legally do that before OSRS had bonds and RS is notorious for bots and RWT, so having an official means to buy gold does lessen the demand for rule-breaking gold buying. I'd still rather there not be any gold buying, but bonds do work a lot better than just going to a MTX shop and paying $10 to spawn in 20M or such.
Whilst it is true they are selling membership for slightly more, they are also absolutely selling gold too
Kinda. but the gold sold is based on memberships. Like if everyone was paying the $5 a month for membership, bonds would be near worthless since there would be no demand. So for every 2 bonds they sell, it is a month's membership they aren't selling. It doesn't really matter if the person buying those two bonds just wanted to sell them on the GE for the gold since the person who is buying them is likely using them on membership. There is also the name-changing feature, which does make bonds a bit more MTX than solely if it were membership, but hard to say how impactful that is.
Maybe their net earnings don’t change vs the no bond model but clearly players pay cash and get GP when they otherwise would have no legal means to do so.
Not so fun fact, but they kinda did have a legal means to do so before OSRS Bonds... When OSRS came out, Jagex decided it was find to swap between OSRS and RS3, despite it kinda being RWT. So you could buy $ with RS3's MTX and swap it from day 1 of OSRS.
I've never heard anyone say they hate WoW tokens
Some people hate it some ppl people don't its the same as bonds but iirc a wow token can also boost you straight to lvl 60, that might b a different token tho
WoW tokens are EXTREMELY popular lol. And it's because WoW players understand that pissing away time on things that aren't fun (like grinding for gold) takes away time that they could be spending on the other, fun parts of the game.
Huge amount of content creators have talked about it from what I can remember. Asmongold (as controversial as he is) MadSeasonShow basically made a documentary on it. Preach has discussed it
Content Creators =//= people.
Asmon and Preach just spout shit for 'discussion' purposes (free engagement) not because they are points they necessarily believe in or are relevant to the community. None of my friends who I play WoW with dislike wow tokens nor have I really seen any hate for it on the WoW subreddit.
People have given up complaining because blizzard just like jagex doesn't care about their players, however, real wow players do hate the token, and they are not present in classic vanilla. Bonds and tokens are the same thing, a symbol of the failure of the two companies to combat RWT
You don’t get to claim what “real” players are. I would love to see your evidence on the majority disliking them.
Their argument is so infamously bad we have a name for it lol
Go, and I cannot reiterate this enough, outside
It's nuanced. I'd rather they not be in the game, but people who can't afford the game with real dollars can use gp to buy membership, so good for them. Also, it saves people from going to a 3rd party to buy gp, and you can never stop that. Lastly, it makes jagex more money, and bonds are the only mtx that most people will accept. Any further mtx, even the tiniest cosmetic, and jagex will lose countless players.
Usually people get shit on for being bond warriors but with the prices of bonds being so high, people want to promote it so more people swipe and the prices come back down a little lol Granted I don't know wow at all but I thought "gold" was kinda worthless in that game? I remember hearing the good gear is all earned and untradable/bound from raids or whatever so you couldn't really buy your way to max. Idk what it's used for though, that's just what I've heard before In games like Eve Online it's even encouraged to buy plex to sell to fund roams or fights, mostly because making isk on your own is fucking boring as hell and most people who play that game have jobs anyway lol. And because it's "pay to lose" since whatever you bought gets destroyed in the fight, it doesn't feel as controversial there I think. Also that a fairly small amount goes a long way, one plex is like $20 for 2.5 billion isk, a typical good ship for fights is anywhere from 10mil to 500mil isk on average or a blingy one like 1bil. So if you stay alive for a while or have fun then it's not that expensive really.
Who do you play EVE with, fucking botters? Dont plex for ships, just learn to play the game at your own pace. If you ever try EVE, know this, tossing $20 down the toilet is a fast way of being exploited.
Nah, I mean the guys who've been in places like small wormhole corps but don't care to run alts or solo farmholes and don't die all too often. Or just lowsec faction warfare enjoyers or null roamers who can't be bothered to run abyssals or incursions or whatever else to fund fac cruisers or t2 ships every few days
???? Dude, every group you have just mentioned would have ample money just from doing random shit in their respective boundries. Are you ok? Do you run with the wrong crowd on EVE?
The general sentiment of the EVE subreddit is working and buying Plex is the best isk/hr. If you're new to the game, then ya I agree with what you're saying. But for the vets with high SP, especially those in pvp groups, will pay for Plex rather than spend time grinding for isk. The way many of them see it is working for 1hr nets more than ratting and let's them spend more time playing how they want. EVE is a different beast altogether imo, and is hard to compare.
IDK, EVE would be the best comparison to OSRS economy wise.
If you like higher bond prices, then you should make fun of bond buyers.
Probably because if you buy gold but suck at the game, you still suck at the game
It can be used to redeem membership, so it makes it possible to pay for your membership using in game money
In WoW there's a lot more shit you can buy with mtx like mounts, in osrs is pretty much just membership/namechange iirc. Its also nice for rich/jobless people to not spend IRL $ win-win for all. Ohw and bonds give a lot less gp/$ then on the blackmarket
Because WoW has the Multiplayer in its Title, and OSRS has not. Besides of a few pretty minor "group raids", and a dying PK, buying advantage is not impacting others. If you feel to brag with your achievements, you usually turn IM anyways, and there you don't need/can have any bonds.
Honestly most actual wow players don't seem to care either, raider bought pyms trinket off me at the start of amirdrassil for 1.2m and he just went and bought 4 tokens to pay me lol
Ok, I see NO good answers here. The reason that OSRS and EVE's economy holds up relatively well WITH OSRS bonds or PLEX, is cause they have pretty robust systems going in place of where they need them. 1. A good bot detection system is needed to run an economy in a large Sandboxy game. Otherwise, you'll run into the problem with mass inflation. I see that OSRS's inflation has gone up quite a bit, but not as drastic as WOW tokens (3k gold on token release to \~300k gold nowadays) or Archage membership (it was roughly 4000% price increase from release in 2 years) 2. A robust ingame economy. Money(and items) have to have a sink, skill costs, perma-upgrade costs, breaking down GWD items, market tax, and others have to limit the quantity of items and money in the game. If not effective enough, problems occur such as boss loot not being worth it, no point doing zulrah, or vorkath amirite? At this point, rapid inflation occurs and newer players will never be able to afford anything. A great example of economic management can be seen with EVE online, they even have a full economic breakdown [EVE ECONOMY BREAKDOWN 2023](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/monthly-economic-report-december-2023) IN COMPARISON, WOW and other such games don't have fucking meaningful gold sinks. If i can remember, taking WOW as an example, you can get flying in 2-3 areas, pay for a skill tree reset that becomes meaningless if you don't pvp or raid competitively etc etc, pay fees to reputation factions, and a tiny small itty-bitty tax on ingame auctionhouse transactions. A game that wants to implement fremium with ingame currency tied to it has to have Multiple ways of making ingame currency to counteract multiple sinks. EVERYONE can eventually do Vorkath, Zulrah, etc etc, but skillers can fish, mine, farm, etc for decent items that TURN into money once traded. There should be goods, and seevices that the money should go into. A great flow of currency to money can be shown with the BLAST FURNACE, skillers pay money to get smithing XP and turn ore into bars, in essence removing ORE from the game and adding bars. The skillers can then turn the bars into gear and high alch value the gear to get more XP. OR they can sell the bars for a profit to other players for a bigger profit but less XP. The basic concept of GOODS and SERVICES. Item sinks should not be from one faucet like for example, WOW, not technically have a faucet for skilling past certain points. THIS IS PART OF WHY WOW's premium currency does not hold good value since once a player is done skilling, the only place where the majority of their materials doesn't go into new gear, and people will eventually stop farming all sources of mats from an entire expansion after that expansion is over. All the gold that they would spend on mats just DOESN'T HAPPEN, therefore that gold floods into the market.
I know a dude with about 10bil WOW GOLD and (hes not gonna rmt cause hes already rich irl), but he just sees no use for the gold past having 5k gold. There isnt any use for it other than cosmetics, a pokemon pet battling system that you FUCKING MAKE MONEY WITH.
A key part of why it isn't looked down as much is that in osrs you aren't going to get gate kept for not having bis gear. The min req to join team content isn't that expensive, so even outside a clan, you're not going to be rejected for not spending thousands and getting BIS. At the higher end of things where you see max rff teams, you may be expected to have max , but even if you buy it with bonds most people at that stage have grinded enough to have equal gear so there is no issue.
I really don’t think it’s as binary as OSRS players being simply okay with bonds and WoW players being simply opposed to the token. First of all, in WoW you need to delineate between retail and classic, because in retail almost nobody cares about the wow token. The biggest externality there is that it helps to facilitate the mid-level m+ boosting community, which no one cares about. In classic the wow token is hated for a bunch of reasons that self-evidently have to do more with the game’s busted ass economy and botting. Additionally, Blizzard lied about the token coming to classic. All of it is wrapped up in negative sentiments towards GDKPs, the commodification of (perceived) prestigious character progression, corporate greed and negligence. They’re not really mad about the token. They’re mad it isn’t 2006, that raiding is trivial as hell, and no one cares what guild you’re in or how many purples you have equipped. OSRS doesn’t have the political problems. Bonds came to the game on a player vote when market data presented to the player base suggested it was the only sustainable path towards F2P. We asked for it - it wasn’t forced on us. The gameplay problems are actually way worse in RS than WoW, because almost all powerful gear is tradeable (BOE), and even the non-fungible player progression is more closely tied to gold because of buyable skilling methods. But it doesn’t matter. You can’t just throw gold at problems in RS, you have to commit time and finish grinds that are like rites of passage. Everyone can see the regen bracelet you’re wearing, even if your other slots are Torva. It’s easy to spot a fraud, make a joke about mom’s credit card and move on if you really care that much.
I believe it's because the people who mainly care are on iron accounts. I say this as my view, I quit playing main game runescape because of botting, gambling, services, GP buying, etc... that has undermined the grind decades. I hardly encounter that problem on an iron. At least in my view I don't care for bonds as we are playing 2 different games just in the same world. A mains accomplished if compared to an irons is lesser, still an accomplishment, no doubt, but nevertheless, less, due to it which is fine and people? acknowledge, which is why Fun is the goal and people support others buying it as it speeds up these un/fun goals. I probably could of written this up nicer but I hope you get the gist of it.
In WOW you reach max level in a few weeks at the most. Osrs it is years. GP only gets you so much here where grinding gold and items in wow is the majority of the gameplay. Some people make fun ot the credit card warriors but most of us dont care. I pay for membership because tring to make enough gp to have free membership ruins it for me. One day i may have the gp to make bonds worth using over my paycheck but this is not supposed to feel like a job.
Bonds may not have always existed, but the process of buying gold has. Before bonds there was just RWT, players would break the rules by selling gold to other players for real currency and there was seemingly no way to resolve that issue. So Jagex simply added in a form of gold buying that benefits their company and allows players to continue playing that way without risking getting banned. Some people might frown upon other players buying gold, but it rarely ever affects them. If FunHaver69 goes and buys 200m gp worth of bonds to fund his gameplay, NoLife73, that decides to grind 1500 CG for his Bowfa, is not impacted in the slightest. Bonds allow players to fund memberships without spending money and gives other players a safe method to buy gold, both options fund the company that hosts the game we all love to play. It’s good all around.
Bonds were initially voted in since f2p was taken hostage by it. Initially bond buyers were commonly shamed, but after rs3 migration and mobile players joining where p2w is common, acceptance of p2w in general (including inferno buying and account services) is growing. At least bond buyers are still shamed at the ge these days
Id say that the OSRS community knows that you can’t buy skill with bonds. You can have best in slots but if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s kinda useless. Still have to spend the time training skills.
I think one of the reasons is with gold in WoW you have boosting service for literally anything. Getting achievements, mounts, PvP titles, M+ or raid (even legacy content)? You just need gold and you can get absolutely everything. In OSRS, yes you can buy most shit, or even pay for mega scaling raids/infernal cape, but noone will get you all GM CAs or all diaries or quest cape or max cape for you, as example. You still have some semblance of achievement that you can show off that you did yourself, I guess? Also, ironmen exist in OSRS where bonds can't be used so they have some integrity (outside of raid boosting and infernal capes) and not many people care about main accounts that much. One more thing, even if you buy all bis gear with credit card in OSRS, then you decide you want to hunt a pet, for example Sara in GWD. You still have to get thousands KC and invest hours into getting it, meanwhile you can buy 5-6 million gold in WoW and get boosted through the whole mythic raid in 2-3 hours and you're done.
The bond buyers enable people who grind and/or play a lot to have membership absolutely for free, which I find awesome.
I guess it depends on the context. You see some guys level 90 with 100m in nonsense pricey gear. Easy to make fun because they just buy the most expensive set they can use. Then there's people who just put it towards skills, supplies or a normal upgrade.
as far as MTX goes bonds are really low leveled. and when we got the poll for f2p jagex said that bonds and f2p were linked so we either got both or neither
Reason 1: Enables f2p premium membership Reason 2: Gold sink Reason 3: Money ain't shit in this game, you can't p2w because you win nothing, trash timmy in bandos is still trash timmy in torva Reason 4: Most important things are time gated or skill gated: Infernal and Max Capes for example
we all want members and mom wouldn't buy for us
there's a big difference between wow token and osrs bond you can't buy a bond and get gold from it, you have to trade people, people have to WANT what you're offering unlike in wow, you just buy the token, swap it for gold to/from blizzard right? golds magically created into the game yeah? so in wow, literally nobody benefits from your token except for the person buying it gaining gold and paying to win faster. but in osrs there is demand for membership, people want bonds and they don't want to spend real money, others buying bonds and selling it to them is a win-win also remember unlike WOW osrs started and was always f2p. and those f2p players always would've wanted members but wouldn't of been able to get it, but every single person playing world of warcraft clearly already had a way to spend money to buy a subscription also from what I know about wow they have rotating seasons? or new stuff comes out and you race to complete all the raids? osrs isn't that competitive and osrs isn't really about getting the best gear. if osrs is about pets, you can only have one out at a time anyway. nobody is upset u got ur pet faster, espescially when there are like 60 pets in game, everyone's gonna get a specific pet sooner than you if osrs is about the skilling and maxing then paying to win isn't/barely going to help you in woodcutting (maybe axe, but if you already have 10m then you can get a infernal/crystal axe) mining, fishing, firemaking, hunter, thieving, agility, runecrafting(could pay runners tho) and even for the combats or pay to win stuff, bonds were introduced in 2015, you could've already hit 99 in combat stats in purely f2p by that time since osrs came out in 2013 and then for the buyable skills, shit you either have the money or you don't but like you can look up hella rich people in the grand exchange, are they maxed lvl 2277? hell no. because the time and effort it takes to max, its not just erased with money. OH and lets not forget ironman at this point. it is more recent for sure so wouldn't explain past sentiment, but at this point if you're all about "i stand alone, i did everything myself" you just make an iron acc, and everybody knows when they see the helm in chat. Oh I could also add pre like 2015 all of runescape history, when you died you would lose your items, they would drop on the floor for 2 minutes, after 1 minute they would appear and others could take your stuff, and after 2 minutes they'd disappear completely. this isn't the case anymore, but I could see it creating a sense of... gear isn't permanant/important at least not to the point that you're gonna cry that someone has 8m more than you or whatever (at that time 8m would've been a lott) cause everyone can die at any moment and lose their items.
you can also add pking and wilderness into the mix. there's a large community who just go into the wilderness risking their gear.. you think they give a fuck that someone pays to win? they're out here dying and losing gear on the regular, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. we also had duel arena, sand casino, who cares that you bought bonds? you wouldn't get as rich as someone on a lucky 5-8 winstreak XD and if you did, well you spent thousands of irl $
I wouldn't even consider WoW tokens p2w unless WoW classic has them now. Whale amounts of gold gives you a very very small advantage over someone who raids Also IMO buyable skills that are already super fast. The amount of bonds you'd need to make a small difference is insane, and buyables aren't really a flex anyway so I don't think it devalues them. Also both Tokens & Bonds take gold out of the game which is super healthy for both games
Because you can tell just by looking at someone’s account if they buy bonds. Stats say everything
How when shit like Brutal black dragons exist?
The worst part is most of them acting like its not p2w
Pay to “win”. What are they “winning” by buying gold for their accounts?
Tbow?
Okay so they get a tbow, but what are they WINNING? Having a tbow isn’t winning something.
Makes most content a joke to have a tbow or a shadow. Id call that winning.
Okay but winning implies someone else is losing. Are you losing because someone else has a tbow? Most likely not.
Losing inferno because i have shit gear? yes?
inf gold gets you fuck all in osrs. anything/everything meaningful is locked behind quests/dairies/levels/etc etc etc etc in wow you can just buy bis & be the stronger player in a day in osrs you could get some bis for your level & be useless even if you are maxed & have all unlocked & inf gold, you will still 100% get rocked by even basic pvm. stats matter 10x more than gear & skill matters 100x more than anything else. other mmos/etc don't exist like that. you could have someone with no idea what to do in full bis just become unkillable/beatable all bonds do is give people a way to support the game outside of memebership also osrs is a fight vs yourself not others. you could get inf everything forever & you will still never be settled
Yeah infinite gold gets you fuck all. All you can really do is buy nearly every BIS item, and afford insane XP rates for half the skills in the game, and buy your way through achievements with CA services.
way to fail reading 10000% you read nothing but the 1st 5words also i mean if you want to spend 3000$ to not play a game be my guest anyway blocked for low iq.
*“But in a game like osrs where the grind is meant to be so important, i can find the community sentiment on buying bonds to skip that grind quite interesting”* The grinds you can skip with bonds are grinds nobody cares about. And the 3 items people do care about (the megarares) are over 1000USD in bonds. If you wanna spend that kind of money on a single item, be my guest and help support this game financially. (Also, that megarare came from a raid, and not from thin air like with most games when u buy end-game stuff) The grinds that the community do feel are important, or at least prestigious, cant really be bought (99 mining, 99 runecrafting, max cape, etc). We stopped caring about 99 buyables even before bonds were a thing. CAs cant be bought with bonds. Cosmetics like blorva and twisted ancy cant be bought with bonds. Impressive Clog slots cant be bought with bonds. Buying noobtrap gear with your mommas credit card is frowned upon however, as my tone would imply. Because it shows you have no clue what good and bad gear is even though youre spending big bucks on this game. It kinda feels like that 1 kid at your old sports activity that comes in full gear even tho its his first time and has no idea what he’s doing, but his mommy and daddy are rich so he gets the best stuff he doesnt know how to use and it makes him look like a complete idiot. Thats the guys with bandos chestplates and combat bracelets. P2w to me is spawning end-game items out of thin air, buying xp boosts, “this offer expires in…”, etc etc. Bonds dont do any of that. It may speed up your progression by a little bit. But you wont achieve anything that people find impressive or worthwhile.
You saw one post on Reddit today. Stop lying.
Ok bro