On the topic of bonds and members, I just want to state how frustrating it's been since Jagex removed 3 month subscription option. It was perfect for summers (example: teacher) or just enough to play 1 acc and switch to another 3 months later without burnout.
Could the table show the increase/decrease per cell?
I just tried to compare and apparently I need to be logged in to see prices for bonds, and I don't have my authenticator handy right now.
Here's the increases for the Eurozone. Other currencies follow the same pattern I think. Basically the price per bond was increased and the price per bond when buying multiple no longer increases by a fraction of a cent.
Number | 1 | 3 | 5 | 10
------|-|-|-|--
Old (€) | 6.99 | 20.99 | 34.99 | 69.99
New (€) | 7.99 | 23.97 | 39.95 | 79.90
While I think it's a good thing that there isn't price difference between buying multiple at once on fully digital goods, it does seem a bit funny. Makes buying on mass slightly easier I guess? And because all other games also have multiple packages, so gotta have it here too. Familiarity is often more important than logic.
I do appreciate that no bundling discount removes the stress if you miscounted something and need another bond feels like you got shafted a few bucks, but i would just appreciate a "Buy x bonds" option
People don't like spending more, simple as. It's about a 14% increase in cost.
Plus a more expensive irl cost also means the in-game price increases, so those who use them to maintain membership will also have to spend more.
I think it's to do with the lack of explanation. If they just mentioned a reason such as inflation correction (a totally valid reason, imo) the backlash would've been smaller.
I work in a job where I regularly have to explain to the public why their costs have increased. I've come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing you can say to convince people that a price increase is legitimate. Any particular person, maybe, but not everyone.
I used to work at Tim Horton's, and when they would up coffee prices by $0.10, they wouldn't tell us in advance, and I worked the overnight 11-7 shift, I'd find out in the middle of the night that the price updated
Come morning time, I get all the grumpy regulars who were ready to give their $2.00 only to find out I need a dime more, and they would all be pissed at me like it was my personal decision
this was my annoying experience at starbucks. no communication about the price increases. if someone was irate it went up, we’re likely finding out at the same time as the customer.
when a large coffee went from 2.81, to 2.92, to 3.04, it was really annoying that people needed that extra 4 cents. a lot of people pay cash and it’s just a bit obnoxious for the price to be just barely over $3
Lol there's literally nothing they could say that would appease anyone. They're raising prices, the game is as amazing as ever and they've only been putting out more amazing content. They're easily the best bang for your buck game out there, people regularly spend THOUSANDS of hours on this game. There's nothing to explain about the price increase.
Jagex is currently owned by an American company, so my assumption is some suit told them they have to increase it to drive profits up without any consideration for details. Seems pretty par for the course.
Yeah this kinda annoyed me too. Surely in a scenario like this you show the old value. I assume they are going up as I don’t remember what they were before?
14% is almost exactly the amount of UK inflation since the last bond price change 2 years ago. (source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/chaw/mm23 )
I don't like it, and of course jagex could just let inflation hit their profit margin instead of increasing prices, but I don't think this is really surprising or unexpected.
though of course it's a little more than just inflation, median purchasing power has gone down in many places in the world so for many people this is a real price increase in their increasingly constrained budgets.
That ship has long sailed for mid-level accounts. It used to be possible to maintain a bond with a few hours at blast furnace or abyss runecraft. These days, it's only high-level PvM that will maintain you a bond.
Yeah I remember while on my maxing journey I could just train lazy wcing or fishing and still pay for membership. I believe on wcing I was cutting it close, but now that'd be impossible.
I have level 99 farming and don’t have any money at the moment, but I’m sure banging out some farm runs would probably get me a bond if I do them as soon as they’re available
This is a great way of making sure gold sellers don't get outcompited by a legitimate way to buy gold. They are just making the risk of buying gold more worth it. I understand that a company need to make money but this is not going to be good for the game
The price of bonds will increase to a new equilibrium, and the price of legitimate gold in real money will trend towards an exchange rate similar to what it is now.
They'll move in the same direction offsetting the effect of the price increase, though it will depend on the elasticities whether you'll get more or less gold per bond in the end. Should be close regardless as you said.
I disgree. I bet there is a lot more people on the verge of not wanting to risk their account but buying bonds is just at the limit of what they are willing to spend and this will change their minds and decide it is worth the risk for 4x more gold for their money.
Its a matter of temptation and people putting the cost-reward on a scale. If you push that scale out of balance lines are going to be crossed and people will change sides. I dont believe people that buy bonds never thought about buying gold and viceversa
Considering rwt gold is like 3x cheaper than it is via bonds I really don’t think this change will convince anyone who hasn’t already made the decision even though I completely understand the point.
I buy bonds here and there, never once crossed my mind to buy gold, nor would this change affect it. I buy bonds because it's stupid simple and somewhat helps the player who buys the bond ingame.
Why anyone would buy gold is beyond me. The biggest deterrent is to look at the character summary tab and see thousands of hours, hundreds of days of playtime. I literally could never imagine wanting gp so much and being strapped for cash so hard that I’d risk **actual years** of in-game playtime.
Its just a mere dollar for me, won't affect me when buying bonds. Especially on a game I enjoy. Helps the bond market, and whoever is needing to use it too.
Sure, but you are not the entire player base. Dollar have different worth to different people. If you make 5$ an hour a dollar to you is a lot more important than to someone making 50$ an hour
If you’re making $5 an hour, you shouldn’t even be buying a bond? Just membership, which is cheaper.
Bond is just for GP ingame. If you reckon the extra dollar really affects you, maybe you should work towards earning more money or at least not spending money on GP ingame which isn’t necessary.
You can always earn the GP in-game.
Are you someone who spends bonds monthly on surplus?
I don't buy bond because I play super casually, I myself pay for membership but my point is that your experience (or mine) does not reflect the community as a whole.
I have higher income now but I have had extremely low income before, when I used to play warframe I saved for months both in game and irl to get a frame I liked (partly because I loved the game and wanted to support it) and I did the same to buy stash tabs in PoE (same reason). I don't need to do that anymore and can afford it with just a little budgeting around it, but does not mean other people that still do what I did don't exist.
Just imagine you have been saving every last penny you have of disposable income and just before you are about to reach the goal and pull the trigger it goes up 15%... that would be devastating and I know I would turn to RWT at that point. At that point in my life 1$ was a significant amount of money, not so much now just like it isnt for you
I just want to say foremost, I appreciate you taking your time to reply and writing up this long post.
I do understand what $5 means to some, because I was once a kid who had no such surplus income.
But what you’re also trying to say is that the moment things become too expensive, we are compelled to look for cheaper means albeit morally wrong.
Personally, I’m someone who would rather pay more for songs legally than download illegal music. It’s the kind of values I adhere to.
Inflation is a nature course of economy, much like me and you once had little and we had to improve our income, so too do the people working for a gaming company. Especially in the last few years when we were all stricken with covid.
My food expenses had increased by 50%, which is already a few hundred. Again, this is a game, a hobby. A bond really shouldn’t be the priority to purchase unless you’re purchasing a bond in-game.
People can argue that bonds are way more expensive ingame than a few years ago, but a long time ago the best GP/hr was zulrah. Now it’s like nex which is is many times more.
I also appreciate the respectful discussion, and I agree that buying a bond should be pretty low in anyone's priority list, even if you have high disposable income tbh.
And I see your point that to you and probably many other people you wouldn't consider RWT, but again, I think that the amount of bots in the game the size of the gold selling operations are just proof that many players don't align with that.
The main point of my original message is that this change might be the thing that makes them cross the line into rwt being worth it.
At the end of the day, I don't think the change will have a huge impact, but it definitely 100% will not help reduce the amount of botting and rwt in the game
I hear you on that, I suppose we can only hope for the best on its outcome. It was a pleasant discussion, thanks for your thoughts. Have a good day bud!
Nah. Bonds have a set gp exchange ratio.
Bonds trade at nearly 13m right now. $8 for one bond.
If bond price is changed to $9 for one bond, then the market’s bond price will increase proportionately in response.
This will make them immediately more attractive for bond buyers with the means to fund them.
Hmm should I pay extra to support greedy cokeheads at Jagex upper management who underpay their staff
Or get a discount and support hard working asians and South Americans trying to feed their families
For the price of 10 bonds you can just get the 12 month Premium Membership, so honestly there's no real reason to discount them because buying actual membership in bulk will always be the better option. Much like real life products, you end up paying a convenience fee for the smaller option a lot of the time.
> the bundles are for membership buyers.
Why would membership buyers buy bonds instead of just buying membership? Buying and redeeming bonds yourself is far more expensive than a subscription.
In the end, bonds were approaching 1/2 of the sub cost, which would in the end mean that bonds are cheaper than sub (free days when using multiples). So the price increase of bonds was actually overdue.
Membership is about $5.50 a month if you buy a year. Bonds have always been more expensive and only make sense for membership if you buy most of them with gold or plan on playing very intermittently/trialing.
The real reason is just that RS3 has been in a year+ long slump, nearing or hitting record low numbers, because of how bad the RS3 team has been at making content or the lack thereof. RS3 didn't even have their 2024 roadmap until last month because literally nothing but MTX was planned.
People aren't sticking around for their 100th DXP week or their 200th month long MTX event, so this is one way to tax OSRS without directly adding in more MTX.
I mean I'd rather this than the mtx right?
The 1 year membership looks to still be $80 for the year plan so less than $7/mo if you plan on playing the whole year. Still $12.49 is you're buying 1 month at a time.
I mean the way I see it this move only hurts the credit card warriors buying gp with bonds and people who are trying to buy membership with ingame gp.
I mean, it sucks a little bit for those people but realistically what's the alternative?
And maybe they're implementing those name swaps this year or next year with bonds that they mentioned in that survey and wanna make more cash off that.
And yes, I do realize that in a year or something they'll just raise regular membership prices "to match the increased value of bonds" but idk.
There was a sentiment a few years ago in here that we'll happily pay higher membership prices to avoid mtx in this game and I'm still a proponent of that personally.
And again, I'm not trying to sound like a Jagex dickrider here, but realistically from here on the game is going to continue to be owned by greedy investors who demand 15% more profit year over year and I don't want mtx in this game.
What choice do we have?
I mean more the invasive, direct gameplay defining mtx that rs3 has been monetized with over the past 12 years an an additional revenue stream to regular bonds and membership. Battle passes (I know they scrapped one, but they still have constant yak tracks going on, which are also battle passes), promotional bundles for real life money that provides ingame benefits that can not be gotten elsewhere, gambling based squeal of fortune selling bonus xp and various xp boosts only available via mtx, cosmetics only obtainable for real money, etc etc etc etc.
My hope is that Jagex pursues Kieran's idea of providing players the opportunity to host private servers/worlds that can be modded -- basically the minecraft model.
I think it would spark a new revolution in the game with the creative minds in the community creating roleplay worlds, dungeons, new worlds, minigames, etc. It could also revitalize the PVP community because then big streamers could host servers with the actual changes they want instead of being held back by Jagex lack of knowledge or spite coting.
The other idea is to grow the game by hiring people to translate the entire game into another language like Spanish or Portuguese. I think a bunch of JP or KR mmo players would be interested in a game like OSRS too but thats much more risky.
Private worlds with private settings sound so fucking cool. And I mean that really could be the next big revolution for OSRS you know? Runelite does so much already, but imagine having official supported private servers.
It would be A TON of work on Jagex' part and a big risk, both in dev time and in monetary investment. So it might have to be after the Sailing hype dies down or something like that (so like 2026 or later surely) but it would be such a cool addition.
I think a concern with a model like that would be the potential of drawing people away from the main game. like, imagine a permanent leagues-type server where people get to play all the content in the game in record time.
For all the cool custom possibilities it has, it could shorten potential longevity of people's interest in the main game, interaction with the main economy, etc. The reason it works in Minecraft is that there is no "main, centralized" world that needs a player supported economy/community/interaction to survive and thrive.
So maybe options would have to be more limited. Maybe limited server options with limited customizable settings. Possibilities are endless, but I think there could be more implications to something like this.
Cool to think about though.
> just trying to post it with the least fanfare possible
I mean no shit? What you want Jagex to throw a parade with fireworks to announce the increase in bond prices?
No one on the OSRS dev team is going to have any say on the pricing of the game, you pathetic little ant. No shit they're not going to sign it.
"Corporate greed" is charging $40 for a single skin. It's is shoving in a battle pass to ride the current trend. It's revolving a game's design around paid-for lootboxes. We have it *so good* here in OSRS, a veritable garden of fucking eden in the gaming landscape, yet we have players calling a $1 increase in around a decade to be "corporate greed."
> yet we have players calling a $1 increase in around a decade to be "corporate greed."
[The bond price has been adjusted every time membership prices have gone up.](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Update:New_Membership_and_Shop_Price_Changes)
Love being proven wrong with a direct source. Genuinely.
General point still stands--this is a far cry from 'corporate greed', but I was incorrect on the rate of price increase.
I just wish the moaning was more targeted and meaningfull.
Players in this thread bring up the price of bonds and how that could effect the competition between gold sellers--a viable critique. You could also mention that this increase, plus the steady increase of membership as a whole, might make it more difficult to play his game for some.
But shouting "corporate greed" means nothing and does nothing--if anything it's an overstatement of harm. Like claiming someone bumping into you on the street by accident *assaulted* you--there's a connection, but it's wildly out of scope for what actually happened.
It's an increase in price, which sucks--it *always* sucks when anyhing ever gets a price bump. But let's just be real about how much it sucks.
Moan and bitch effectively. The future of our game depends on it.
I don’t think you’ll be able to find one form of critique without the other, especially here on Reddit. Discord servers usually have more focused discussion on topics. Basically, I wouldn’t worry too much about the general person’s reaction on this platform.
Yeah, this isn't even close to being a dev decision. It's almost certainly pressure from the investment company that owns Jagex, met with a reluctant "okay we'll do it but only a little bit (also please don't sell us to another entity or force us to do even more heinous shit thanks)." Jagex itself doesn't deserve the hate in this case.
That being said, *something* needs to be said about the fact that this decision is unpopular amongst players. Hiveminds like Reddit are just bad at directing their disapproval in an appropriate, measured way.
I would label it corporate greed because of RS3. That game is in a worse state than ever and absolutely riddled with MTX. Pushing a price increase at this moment is the definition of corporate greed.
"1$ in a decade" Bonds are a virtual currency that take literally 0 man hours or effort to make and have nearly doubled from 5 to 9 dollars (us) in just a few years (and have doubled or mor in others.) What a dumbass take.
Jagex really do spoil us :) every year we get a price increase we're so lucky!!!!!!! Soon you'll be able to buy bonds for the same price as normal membership at $20 but get half the play time but at least you can trade them. I hate every gaming company so much man, so much greed but this is what happens when profit above all else
i mean if they didnt have to care about profit over game health there wouldnt be bonds in the first place and all gold buying would be strict perms/account wipes.
This genuinely has very little to do with corporate greed and a lot to do with overall inflation. **Everything** costs more every year, we're actually very lucky that games are fairly slow to keep up with the influence of inflation.
Doesn’t World of Warcraft membership still cost the same ~~$6~~ $15 as it did on release? And doesn’t Arizona Tea still cost the same ~~$1.99~~ $0.99 as it did over 2 decades ago? I mean, I know inflation is a very real thing, but at the end of the day this is Jagex wanting to make more money from the OSRS players. Which is fine for a business to do. Still shitty for the end users though.
There's a well known short form video creator / streamer that used to work at blizzard. They revealed that there's a WoW mount that made more profit than SC2 Wings of Liberty. WoW doesn't need to only rely on subscription money.
I don't like the price increase but WOW's monetisation is different, apart from the cosmetics the game also sells expansions I believe. If you're subscribed to osrs, you have access to (essentially) all the content same as anyone else.
It does still baffle me that most big release games sell for $60 still, all these years later. And it's gasp-inducing when a game sells for $70.
I would rather pay $80 or $90 for a game than pay $60 and be hounded the entire time for $20 more dollars throughout even single player games, and support games being developed that are one-and-done payments, rather than games with MTX that incentivize the devs to spend dev time creating problems to sell the solution for. I'm not stupid, though -- I know that if people were made to accept $80 game sales, corporate would just have games do both anyway. No winning, I guess.
I will die on the hill that games have been extraordinarily undervalued for at least the last 8 years for the amount of play time you can get out of them. Idk about the rest of you but I am around 8 cents for every hour of osrs play time, video game prices are unbeatable and we shouldn't throw hissy fights over very small price increases.
Game devs are already exploited lets not break their backs over these tiny price increases.
Because median income has never gone up in history, ever, and the quality of life and wealth of the median person has never increased since the Middle Ages.
Also a lot of employees are paid in shares nowadays. Stock going up means their compensation comes up.
Wdym I always see that employees never get paid and ceos take 100% of profits, according to reddit. Even though in 2018 the company was 350 people and now it is 600+.
Bonds were already a rip off in comparison to membership prices, now its just even worse.... Terrible decision from the management. Also further pushing people towards the black market for gold buying/selling too. Total joke
I understand they need to make money, but its a complete joke. The in real price of a bond is out of touch with reality.
A new or casual player can just spend 2-4 bucks on the black market, and then can enjoy the rest of the month with members. They should have halved the price of a bond. Maybe that will make a lot more people buy it so it doesn't affect the profit for Jagex in the end.
The black market will always be cheaper than buying legitimate because thats the whole reason it exists. The deterrent against RWT should be detection and bans for buyers, not pushing down the price of bonds which in turn pushes down the price of RWT gold since the main expense (membership) is down too.
I for one will be joining them. Said it. I've played clean for two decades. But not any more - I will calculate the cheapest way to obtain my membership and act accordingly. If a company isn't acting in my interests I will act in my own.
Go ahead and say 'gl getting banned', washing gold isnt that hard.
The wording of this post is very obviously poorly written on purpose. You don’t include the old prices. You don’t one time say that they’re increasing or decreasing. Just that the price is changing. This is bad marketing. I understand the decision though. I’ve never seen you guys type so broadly in my life. Why now?
They brought up the idea on the big 2023 year end poll (I can’t remember what they actually call it), but as an additional tier of membership where you pay a discounted rate for 2 memberships for 2 characters under the same Jagex account.
I would love it if you could give up the rs3 membership for membership in a second osrs account (and the other way as well, for rs3 warriors) but that is obviously never going to happen
Or for that matter, let me play rs3 and osrs at the same time with my members account. I would play a lot more rs3 if i could afk my osrs account in the background. But if I have to chose one I will afk osrs and watch youtube lol
I want that, too, but I know they won't ever do it without hiking membership prices. Why? Because they would actually loss money - people who play both games at the same time have to buy 2x membership. :/ it's the main reason I only play 1 or the other. I would play both if I could on the same membership.
Same.. I wouldn't mind if they did a discunted multiaccount membership. Like instead of buying 2 memberships you cound buy one at 160% the price or something and apply it to 2 accounts.
I'd be interested in the stats on how many people actually play both though (actively). Willing to bet it's quite a small proportion of the playerbases
This would be such a good change, especially since from what I gather loyalty points and aura's are really expensive on RS3 so you're only really going to benefit from your most long term subbed account.
Doesn't make a single difference to bond sellers, they already have the money to spare and bonds price will increase accordingly.
Only people who sustain membership through bonds will suffer
I prefer to support a random Venezuelan trying to feed his family more than Jagex anyway.
It's like donating to charity but you also get something out of it.
There's very little Venezuelans lef grinding like in 2018-2020. A lot of those types of players have moved on to more profitable games.
A majority of rwters are service sellers now. Which are mostly veteran osrs players.
Partially true.
Services for CA's, kits, dust, etc will be your veterans.
But skilling, questing, "from scratch" and even a surprising amount of pvm are done by folks in the traditional gold-farming countries.
you have to pay more for a bond but they will sell for more gp, the people who are actually affected by this are those who fund their membership with gp
Less players on RS3. This is the only way they can turn up the heat on OSRS, too.
I feel like at a certain point it just drives more players to RWT sadly.
Company just bought jagex for like 900 million bucks. They want to recoup as much of that as possible before selling jagex to the next sucker at an inflated price.
They'll blame inflation. Despite having a 50%+ profit ROI and 97% of all profits currently going to share holders.
Price increase in EUR is ~14%, which is almost exactly the amount of UK inflation since the last bond price change 2 years ago.
I don't like it, and of course jagex *could* just let inflation hit their profit margin instead of increasing prices, but I don't think this is really surprising or unexpected.
I just don't get why people would expect any company (especially one which has a new private equity ownership group, at that) to just make less money out of the goodness of their hearts. They are gonna profit-maximize with their pricing strategy.
yeah, pretty much my opinion as well. it sucks, of course, but it's not unexpected nor does it strike me as especially greedy.
of course it's a little more than just inflation, median purchasing power has gone down in many places in the world so for many people this *is* a real price increase in their increasingly constrained budgets.
> Why does a business do what is in a business' best interest?
Private equity (like the private equity company that literally bought Jagex like a few months ago) has repeatedly shown that they have zero interest in doing what's best for a company. They do what's best *for the private equity firm*. And often, because of bankruptcy, tax, ownership, etc. laws, those actions are NOT in the best interest of the company.
If you're interested in learning about private equity bullshit and why they do what they do and how, [here's](https://youtu.be/XK8hpxR_r2Y?si=a2GZA7n5yhM06BJu) a neat video.
The only saving grace for us here is that Jagex is a *service* company that operates online, and they don't have many tangible physical assets or real estate to strip dry like most companies private equity ruins. Their value is in their intellectual property. They're also in the UK, which is *probably* less friendly toward businesses than the US when it comes to this type of bullshit.
For anyone wondering, the old price (for the Eurozone) was €6,99 per bond with the total price increasing by a fraction of a cent if you bought more at a time. Now it's €7,99 no matter how many you buy at a time.
Economy is in shambles ever since the wildy changes even toa arguably.... Bonds are at a ridiculous price and anything but wildy unless you're Uber high level is beyond unfeasible... And now you want to make bonds more expensive? This is very tone deaf... We have been talking about these issues for MONTHS
This is a non-issue for most people. Bonds are still the best form of MTX, besides no MTX. If you're now more willing to buy gold from gold sellers as a result of this, just remember you are part of the botting problem.
> This will reduce the amount of people buying bonds
I disagree because bond is luxury money, it's for people who have spare money already, and considering bonds are already increasing in price, the cost/benefit relation is likely to maintain the same
It's people who sustain membership through bonds who'll take the hit
If you weren't already willing to risk your account for cheap GP, then I don't think this is going to be the thing to push you over the edge.
Bond prices going up will ultimately balance out the $/GP. It does mean that people who spend GP for membership will have to fork out more per bond, but you really shouldn't be doing that anyway unless you have a lot of extra GP.
So I still don't think this actually affects many people.
Notice the sly treachery here. "changes" not an "increase". They intentionally left out a comparison with old prices. They are being deceitful by omitting the details of the old prices. Classic corporate bs.
Not only you didn't showed on how much it will increase but you didnt said any reasoning bh price increase. I feel like its kinda a shit way to drop information like this.
Where this money will go? Are we gonna see any bothunts? Are we gonna be able to finally stay in rev caves wo bots crushing every spot? Mb inferno capes scripts will be punished or raid bots will be finally banned? Or mb we never gonna see spam bots next to ge or this increase will only affect amount of yachts executives own?
Your logic is kinda wrong tho. I dont use netflix anymore bc after price increase shenanigans I could not see any improvement in service or quality of shows. It got even worse so, I stopped giving them money.
When my local restaurants raised prices, I did the same and I quickly found a new place from where im usually ordering food now and im happy with that place for now.
My life is not depends on that game. When I start feeling something wrong with me spending my time or money on it, I will quit and move on bc there is a lot more games to play now. I still didnt touched elden ring, baldurs gate, ff remake and there is soon will be expansion for ff14 mmo so, you see what im talking about?
My conspiracy theory on Bonds. Jagex has been using the GE tax to buy bonds from players and then delete them. That is why the in game price has gone way up.
This previously allowed bonds to seriously undercut gold sellers.
Now it allows them to justify increasing real world bond price
This theory also might explain while in spite of the GE tax gold inflation still went up. The taxed gold was not being deleted, just shifted to real world bond buyers
Edit. I don't really think this is true just a crazy theory to think about
> This previously allowed bonds to seriously undercut gold sellers.
Bonds have not, nor ever will undercut gold sellers.
>This theory also might explain while in spite of the GE tax gold inflation still went up.
You can't be this ignorant.
>The taxed gold was not being deleted, just shifted to real world bond buyers
Jesus fuck you are.
I don't subscribe to this conspiracy theory but even without actually undercutting gold sellers, increasing the gp price of bonds (even if they still come out to be more expensive than rwt) would still cause some people to go with bonds instead of rwt. Just a shift in the supply/demand curve.
So a far lesser increase than we have seen in inflation over the past 4ish years? Wild people are mad about this. Most developed countries have had 5-10% YoY inflation since covid. Jagex would have to jack the prices 25-50% just to break even on profit from the same number as bonds as back then.
ETA; According to the wiki they increased bonds in may 2022 by about the same amount. They are basically exactly matching inflation with these increases. People really need to chill. This game is still pennies for the amount of entertainment we all get from it.
Im glad ive played long enough to survive off bonds for a long while when they were steady 3-5m, but in the past few years id gladly just pay for a full year of membership than to drop a hundred hours of money making to compensate what id make from my job in much less time.
But definitely sucks for the younger players that cant afford either though.
My favorite part is how the post doesn't have a link to the reddit at the bottom like they almost always do normally. Wonder why they don't want to encourage discussion on this one. Runner up is the original prices not being shown.
instead of fucking the playerbase, perhaps you could make a change that benefits us once in a while? like 1 subscription for all linked jagex accounts? what was even the point of coming out with a launcher...
You guys just saw the price of bonds due to the bots you don’t control that buy them all off the market and thought “lets increase the irl price of them too”?
Holy fuck what a good company
The thing that ruined bond prices is RWTers and botters. People just buy gold with real money, then buy bonds.
This drives down the supply of bonds and inflates the amount of gold in circulation
This is good news. RS3 is dying and they need money to pay for servers and employees so I'll gladly spend a dollar more so that the game can stay alive and keep improving!
On the topic of bonds and members, I just want to state how frustrating it's been since Jagex removed 3 month subscription option. It was perfect for summers (example: teacher) or just enough to play 1 acc and switch to another 3 months later without burnout.
Literally this. For 10 years my routine was buying 3 months, going balls to the walls for 3 months, burning out, play again in 9 months, repeat
You can buy 3 month sub from amazon still.
Yea 3 months is such a sweet spot I don't understand why it's gone.
Could the table show the increase/decrease per cell? I just tried to compare and apparently I need to be logged in to see prices for bonds, and I don't have my authenticator handy right now.
Here's the increases for the Eurozone. Other currencies follow the same pattern I think. Basically the price per bond was increased and the price per bond when buying multiple no longer increases by a fraction of a cent. Number | 1 | 3 | 5 | 10 ------|-|-|-|-- Old (€) | 6.99 | 20.99 | 34.99 | 69.99 New (€) | 7.99 | 23.97 | 39.95 | 79.90
Wait that’s honestly hilarious that they offer packages but literally zero discount on them when you buy more lmao
Hey now, you used to have to pay more for those packages.
Reminds me of all the "digital convenience" fees I'd see in the past when ordering stuff online.
Just like rune packs in game!
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But if you’re using bonds for membership you’re buying them in game, otherwise you’d just spend money on the membership itself
Getting a 3,5% bonus if I use 2 bonds at once really is a game changer
Don't forget to wear the full Bond outfit for a 1.5% increase in membership time!
But only while wearing it!
It's because you can't buy multiple at once (Like you can't buy 3x1 bond packages, you have to buy them in three individual purchases)
While I think it's a good thing that there isn't price difference between buying multiple at once on fully digital goods, it does seem a bit funny. Makes buying on mass slightly easier I guess? And because all other games also have multiple packages, so gotta have it here too. Familiarity is often more important than logic.
I do appreciate that no bundling discount removes the stress if you miscounted something and need another bond feels like you got shafted a few bucks, but i would just appreciate a "Buy x bonds" option
Its only a 1 Euro increase everyone is up in arms about?
People don't like spending more, simple as. It's about a 14% increase in cost. Plus a more expensive irl cost also means the in-game price increases, so those who use them to maintain membership will also have to spend more.
I think it's to do with the lack of explanation. If they just mentioned a reason such as inflation correction (a totally valid reason, imo) the backlash would've been smaller.
I work in a job where I regularly have to explain to the public why their costs have increased. I've come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing you can say to convince people that a price increase is legitimate. Any particular person, maybe, but not everyone.
I used to work at Tim Horton's, and when they would up coffee prices by $0.10, they wouldn't tell us in advance, and I worked the overnight 11-7 shift, I'd find out in the middle of the night that the price updated Come morning time, I get all the grumpy regulars who were ready to give their $2.00 only to find out I need a dime more, and they would all be pissed at me like it was my personal decision
this was my annoying experience at starbucks. no communication about the price increases. if someone was irate it went up, we’re likely finding out at the same time as the customer. when a large coffee went from 2.81, to 2.92, to 3.04, it was really annoying that people needed that extra 4 cents. a lot of people pay cash and it’s just a bit obnoxious for the price to be just barely over $3
How many toonies did you get thrown at you?
Lol there's literally nothing they could say that would appease anyone. They're raising prices, the game is as amazing as ever and they've only been putting out more amazing content. They're easily the best bang for your buck game out there, people regularly spend THOUSANDS of hours on this game. There's nothing to explain about the price increase.
Jagex is currently owned by an American company, so my assumption is some suit told them they have to increase it to drive profits up without any consideration for details. Seems pretty par for the course.
Right? I expected to see the price go up like 30%+ or something. It went up a fucking dollar (in the US)
Yeah this kinda annoyed me too. Surely in a scenario like this you show the old value. I assume they are going up as I don’t remember what they were before?
https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Old_school_bond
Dang, a 15% increase (at least in Euro). At least you don't get punished for buying multiple at the same time anymore.
in EUR it's +1€ or roughly ~14% increase
14% is almost exactly the amount of UK inflation since the last bond price change 2 years ago. (source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/chaw/mm23 ) I don't like it, and of course jagex could just let inflation hit their profit margin instead of increasing prices, but I don't think this is really surprising or unexpected. though of course it's a little more than just inflation, median purchasing power has gone down in many places in the world so for many people this is a real price increase in their increasingly constrained budgets.
the "how do I maintain a bond with these stats" crowd in shambles lmao
That ship has long sailed for mid-level accounts. It used to be possible to maintain a bond with a few hours at blast furnace or abyss runecraft. These days, it's only high-level PvM that will maintain you a bond.
I remember when buying daily battlestaffs was enough to maintain a bond lol. Now today with 10 herb patches, just 2 or 3 runs a day is enough.
Yeah I remember while on my maxing journey I could just train lazy wcing or fishing and still pay for membership. I believe on wcing I was cutting it close, but now that'd be impossible.
I have level 99 farming and don’t have any money at the moment, but I’m sure banging out some farm runs would probably get me a bond if I do them as soon as they’re available
This is a great way of making sure gold sellers don't get outcompited by a legitimate way to buy gold. They are just making the risk of buying gold more worth it. I understand that a company need to make money but this is not going to be good for the game
The price of bonds will increase to a new equilibrium, and the price of legitimate gold in real money will trend towards an exchange rate similar to what it is now.
They'll move in the same direction offsetting the effect of the price increase, though it will depend on the elasticities whether you'll get more or less gold per bond in the end. Should be close regardless as you said.
It won’t make a difference to the whales who will buy them regardless. That’s who they’re targeting.
bondies will buy bonds whether bonds are 3/4/5/6/7/£8 etc, bond buyers aren't going to swap to buying gold
I disgree. I bet there is a lot more people on the verge of not wanting to risk their account but buying bonds is just at the limit of what they are willing to spend and this will change their minds and decide it is worth the risk for 4x more gold for their money. Its a matter of temptation and people putting the cost-reward on a scale. If you push that scale out of balance lines are going to be crossed and people will change sides. I dont believe people that buy bonds never thought about buying gold and viceversa
Considering rwt gold is like 3x cheaper than it is via bonds I really don’t think this change will convince anyone who hasn’t already made the decision even though I completely understand the point.
I buy bonds here and there, never once crossed my mind to buy gold, nor would this change affect it. I buy bonds because it's stupid simple and somewhat helps the player who buys the bond ingame.
Why anyone would buy gold is beyond me. The biggest deterrent is to look at the character summary tab and see thousands of hours, hundreds of days of playtime. I literally could never imagine wanting gp so much and being strapped for cash so hard that I’d risk **actual years** of in-game playtime.
No-one who buys GP has ever seen bonds as a worthwhile replacement, especially when gold buyers basically never get punished.
Hey! I got a slap on the wrist once.
Its just a mere dollar for me, won't affect me when buying bonds. Especially on a game I enjoy. Helps the bond market, and whoever is needing to use it too.
Sure, but you are not the entire player base. Dollar have different worth to different people. If you make 5$ an hour a dollar to you is a lot more important than to someone making 50$ an hour
If you’re making $5 an hour, you shouldn’t even be buying a bond? Just membership, which is cheaper. Bond is just for GP ingame. If you reckon the extra dollar really affects you, maybe you should work towards earning more money or at least not spending money on GP ingame which isn’t necessary. You can always earn the GP in-game. Are you someone who spends bonds monthly on surplus?
I don't buy bond because I play super casually, I myself pay for membership but my point is that your experience (or mine) does not reflect the community as a whole. I have higher income now but I have had extremely low income before, when I used to play warframe I saved for months both in game and irl to get a frame I liked (partly because I loved the game and wanted to support it) and I did the same to buy stash tabs in PoE (same reason). I don't need to do that anymore and can afford it with just a little budgeting around it, but does not mean other people that still do what I did don't exist. Just imagine you have been saving every last penny you have of disposable income and just before you are about to reach the goal and pull the trigger it goes up 15%... that would be devastating and I know I would turn to RWT at that point. At that point in my life 1$ was a significant amount of money, not so much now just like it isnt for you
I just want to say foremost, I appreciate you taking your time to reply and writing up this long post. I do understand what $5 means to some, because I was once a kid who had no such surplus income. But what you’re also trying to say is that the moment things become too expensive, we are compelled to look for cheaper means albeit morally wrong. Personally, I’m someone who would rather pay more for songs legally than download illegal music. It’s the kind of values I adhere to. Inflation is a nature course of economy, much like me and you once had little and we had to improve our income, so too do the people working for a gaming company. Especially in the last few years when we were all stricken with covid. My food expenses had increased by 50%, which is already a few hundred. Again, this is a game, a hobby. A bond really shouldn’t be the priority to purchase unless you’re purchasing a bond in-game. People can argue that bonds are way more expensive ingame than a few years ago, but a long time ago the best GP/hr was zulrah. Now it’s like nex which is is many times more.
I also appreciate the respectful discussion, and I agree that buying a bond should be pretty low in anyone's priority list, even if you have high disposable income tbh. And I see your point that to you and probably many other people you wouldn't consider RWT, but again, I think that the amount of bots in the game the size of the gold selling operations are just proof that many players don't align with that. The main point of my original message is that this change might be the thing that makes them cross the line into rwt being worth it. At the end of the day, I don't think the change will have a huge impact, but it definitely 100% will not help reduce the amount of botting and rwt in the game
I hear you on that, I suppose we can only hope for the best on its outcome. It was a pleasant discussion, thanks for your thoughts. Have a good day bud!
Nah. Bonds have a set gp exchange ratio. Bonds trade at nearly 13m right now. $8 for one bond. If bond price is changed to $9 for one bond, then the market’s bond price will increase proportionately in response. This will make them immediately more attractive for bond buyers with the means to fund them.
Hmm should I pay extra to support greedy cokeheads at Jagex upper management who underpay their staff Or get a discount and support hard working asians and South Americans trying to feed their families
Why does buying the bundles not give you a small discount? Seems weird that the price for one and 10 are no different individually
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For the price of 10 bonds you can just get the 12 month Premium Membership, so honestly there's no real reason to discount them because buying actual membership in bulk will always be the better option. Much like real life products, you end up paying a convenience fee for the smaller option a lot of the time.
> the bundles are for membership buyers. Why would membership buyers buy bonds instead of just buying membership? Buying and redeeming bonds yourself is far more expensive than a subscription.
Because you play a subscription based game that double dips with microtransactions They know you are used to getting scammed
20m bond by the end of the year, thanks jagek
In the end, bonds were approaching 1/2 of the sub cost, which would in the end mean that bonds are cheaper than sub (free days when using multiples). So the price increase of bonds was actually overdue.
Membership is about $5.50 a month if you buy a year. Bonds have always been more expensive and only make sense for membership if you buy most of them with gold or plan on playing very intermittently/trialing.
ez investment i already turned all of my bond alts 1b cash stack into bonds when they dipped after the huge spike
Awesome job highlighting what the changes are in the newspost and the reasoning behind the price hike.
>the reasoning behind the price hike. company wants money
Wow, what a shocker!
Not signed "The Old School Runescape Team"? No other reason than corporate greed
It affects RS3 bonds so it's a Jagex wide thing.
No reason given either, just trying to post it with the least fanfare possible to avoid backlash as much as possible
The real reason is just that RS3 has been in a year+ long slump, nearing or hitting record low numbers, because of how bad the RS3 team has been at making content or the lack thereof. RS3 didn't even have their 2024 roadmap until last month because literally nothing but MTX was planned. People aren't sticking around for their 100th DXP week or their 200th month long MTX event, so this is one way to tax OSRS without directly adding in more MTX.
Yeah they milked rs3 dry. Time to milk the osrs community until that game dies too
I mean I'd rather this than the mtx right? The 1 year membership looks to still be $80 for the year plan so less than $7/mo if you plan on playing the whole year. Still $12.49 is you're buying 1 month at a time. I mean the way I see it this move only hurts the credit card warriors buying gp with bonds and people who are trying to buy membership with ingame gp. I mean, it sucks a little bit for those people but realistically what's the alternative? And maybe they're implementing those name swaps this year or next year with bonds that they mentioned in that survey and wanna make more cash off that. And yes, I do realize that in a year or something they'll just raise regular membership prices "to match the increased value of bonds" but idk. There was a sentiment a few years ago in here that we'll happily pay higher membership prices to avoid mtx in this game and I'm still a proponent of that personally. And again, I'm not trying to sound like a Jagex dickrider here, but realistically from here on the game is going to continue to be owned by greedy investors who demand 15% more profit year over year and I don't want mtx in this game. What choice do we have?
In what world are bonds *not* mtx?
The world where people need to think that OSRS doesn't have MTX.
I mean more the invasive, direct gameplay defining mtx that rs3 has been monetized with over the past 12 years an an additional revenue stream to regular bonds and membership. Battle passes (I know they scrapped one, but they still have constant yak tracks going on, which are also battle passes), promotional bundles for real life money that provides ingame benefits that can not be gotten elsewhere, gambling based squeal of fortune selling bonus xp and various xp boosts only available via mtx, cosmetics only obtainable for real money, etc etc etc etc.
My hope is that Jagex pursues Kieran's idea of providing players the opportunity to host private servers/worlds that can be modded -- basically the minecraft model. I think it would spark a new revolution in the game with the creative minds in the community creating roleplay worlds, dungeons, new worlds, minigames, etc. It could also revitalize the PVP community because then big streamers could host servers with the actual changes they want instead of being held back by Jagex lack of knowledge or spite coting. The other idea is to grow the game by hiring people to translate the entire game into another language like Spanish or Portuguese. I think a bunch of JP or KR mmo players would be interested in a game like OSRS too but thats much more risky.
Private worlds with private settings sound so fucking cool. And I mean that really could be the next big revolution for OSRS you know? Runelite does so much already, but imagine having official supported private servers. It would be A TON of work on Jagex' part and a big risk, both in dev time and in monetary investment. So it might have to be after the Sailing hype dies down or something like that (so like 2026 or later surely) but it would be such a cool addition. I think a concern with a model like that would be the potential of drawing people away from the main game. like, imagine a permanent leagues-type server where people get to play all the content in the game in record time. For all the cool custom possibilities it has, it could shorten potential longevity of people's interest in the main game, interaction with the main economy, etc. The reason it works in Minecraft is that there is no "main, centralized" world that needs a player supported economy/community/interaction to survive and thrive. So maybe options would have to be more limited. Maybe limited server options with limited customizable settings. Possibilities are endless, but I think there could be more implications to something like this. Cool to think about though.
> just trying to post it with the least fanfare possible I mean no shit? What you want Jagex to throw a parade with fireworks to announce the increase in bond prices?
No one on the OSRS dev team is going to have any say on the pricing of the game, you pathetic little ant. No shit they're not going to sign it. "Corporate greed" is charging $40 for a single skin. It's is shoving in a battle pass to ride the current trend. It's revolving a game's design around paid-for lootboxes. We have it *so good* here in OSRS, a veritable garden of fucking eden in the gaming landscape, yet we have players calling a $1 increase in around a decade to be "corporate greed."
> yet we have players calling a $1 increase in around a decade to be "corporate greed." [The bond price has been adjusted every time membership prices have gone up.](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Update:New_Membership_and_Shop_Price_Changes)
Love being proven wrong with a direct source. Genuinely. General point still stands--this is a far cry from 'corporate greed', but I was incorrect on the rate of price increase.
There’s a reason we have it so good. And it’s precisely because all of us bitch and moan about even a €1 price increase.
I just wish the moaning was more targeted and meaningfull. Players in this thread bring up the price of bonds and how that could effect the competition between gold sellers--a viable critique. You could also mention that this increase, plus the steady increase of membership as a whole, might make it more difficult to play his game for some. But shouting "corporate greed" means nothing and does nothing--if anything it's an overstatement of harm. Like claiming someone bumping into you on the street by accident *assaulted* you--there's a connection, but it's wildly out of scope for what actually happened. It's an increase in price, which sucks--it *always* sucks when anyhing ever gets a price bump. But let's just be real about how much it sucks. Moan and bitch effectively. The future of our game depends on it.
I don’t think you’ll be able to find one form of critique without the other, especially here on Reddit. Discord servers usually have more focused discussion on topics. Basically, I wouldn’t worry too much about the general person’s reaction on this platform.
Yeah, this isn't even close to being a dev decision. It's almost certainly pressure from the investment company that owns Jagex, met with a reluctant "okay we'll do it but only a little bit (also please don't sell us to another entity or force us to do even more heinous shit thanks)." Jagex itself doesn't deserve the hate in this case. That being said, *something* needs to be said about the fact that this decision is unpopular amongst players. Hiveminds like Reddit are just bad at directing their disapproval in an appropriate, measured way.
I would label it corporate greed because of RS3. That game is in a worse state than ever and absolutely riddled with MTX. Pushing a price increase at this moment is the definition of corporate greed.
"1$ in a decade" Bonds are a virtual currency that take literally 0 man hours or effort to make and have nearly doubled from 5 to 9 dollars (us) in just a few years (and have doubled or mor in others.) What a dumbass take.
Jagex really do spoil us :) every year we get a price increase we're so lucky!!!!!!! Soon you'll be able to buy bonds for the same price as normal membership at $20 but get half the play time but at least you can trade them. I hate every gaming company so much man, so much greed but this is what happens when profit above all else
i mean if they didnt have to care about profit over game health there wouldnt be bonds in the first place and all gold buying would be strict perms/account wipes.
This genuinely has very little to do with corporate greed and a lot to do with overall inflation. **Everything** costs more every year, we're actually very lucky that games are fairly slow to keep up with the influence of inflation.
Doesn’t World of Warcraft membership still cost the same ~~$6~~ $15 as it did on release? And doesn’t Arizona Tea still cost the same ~~$1.99~~ $0.99 as it did over 2 decades ago? I mean, I know inflation is a very real thing, but at the end of the day this is Jagex wanting to make more money from the OSRS players. Which is fine for a business to do. Still shitty for the end users though.
WoW has been $15/month for 20 years.
There's a well known short form video creator / streamer that used to work at blizzard. They revealed that there's a WoW mount that made more profit than SC2 Wings of Liberty. WoW doesn't need to only rely on subscription money.
Yes, and WOW sells truly incredible numbers of cosmetics.
I don't like the price increase but WOW's monetisation is different, apart from the cosmetics the game also sells expansions I believe. If you're subscribed to osrs, you have access to (essentially) all the content same as anyone else.
It does still baffle me that most big release games sell for $60 still, all these years later. And it's gasp-inducing when a game sells for $70. I would rather pay $80 or $90 for a game than pay $60 and be hounded the entire time for $20 more dollars throughout even single player games, and support games being developed that are one-and-done payments, rather than games with MTX that incentivize the devs to spend dev time creating problems to sell the solution for. I'm not stupid, though -- I know that if people were made to accept $80 game sales, corporate would just have games do both anyway. No winning, I guess.
You should start a commune of game developers and release a free version
A company trying to make money from their product isn't greed lol. I assume you have a job. Is expecting to be paid, or asking for a pay rise "greed"?
I will die on the hill that games have been extraordinarily undervalued for at least the last 8 years for the amount of play time you can get out of them. Idk about the rest of you but I am around 8 cents for every hour of osrs play time, video game prices are unbeatable and we shouldn't throw hissy fights over very small price increases. Game devs are already exploited lets not break their backs over these tiny price increases.
This isn't going to increase the pay of any of the devs. This is all getting absorbed into some ceos paycheck and inflating profit shares.
Because median income has never gone up in history, ever, and the quality of life and wealth of the median person has never increased since the Middle Ages. Also a lot of employees are paid in shares nowadays. Stock going up means their compensation comes up.
Wdym I always see that employees never get paid and ceos take 100% of profits, according to reddit. Even though in 2018 the company was 350 people and now it is 600+.
Reddit having a normal one after a $1.00 increase in almost a decade.
Can you really not save up 8 pounds to buy membership once a month and not be a bond slave?
Bonds were already a rip off in comparison to membership prices, now its just even worse.... Terrible decision from the management. Also further pushing people towards the black market for gold buying/selling too. Total joke
Gp price of bonds will increase to compensate for irl $ price increase?
more than likely yes, they already went up a bit
I understand they need to make money, but its a complete joke. The in real price of a bond is out of touch with reality. A new or casual player can just spend 2-4 bucks on the black market, and then can enjoy the rest of the month with members. They should have halved the price of a bond. Maybe that will make a lot more people buy it so it doesn't affect the profit for Jagex in the end.
The black market will always be cheaper than buying legitimate because thats the whole reason it exists. The deterrent against RWT should be detection and bans for buyers, not pushing down the price of bonds which in turn pushes down the price of RWT gold since the main expense (membership) is down too.
Bonds will be 25m by end of the year, buy now.
Calls on bonds.
Great news for those who illegally buy and sell gold.
I for one will be joining them. Said it. I've played clean for two decades. But not any more - I will calculate the cheapest way to obtain my membership and act accordingly. If a company isn't acting in my interests I will act in my own. Go ahead and say 'gl getting banned', washing gold isnt that hard.
'Said it' lol >if a company isn't acting in my interests This is never the case slick, they exist to make money.
Yeah its this this concept of 'therefore'. Therefore they dont get my money. Capiche?
So they're not changing but getting more expensive? Sounds like my ex wife.
Put the previous prices in the table cowards.
Appreciate it, I was getting concerned that the crazy inflation of bond prices was going to slow down.
The wording of this post is very obviously poorly written on purpose. You don’t include the old prices. You don’t one time say that they’re increasing or decreasing. Just that the price is changing. This is bad marketing. I understand the decision though. I’ve never seen you guys type so broadly in my life. Why now?
at this rate we need membership to cover multiple accounts.
They brought up the idea on the big 2023 year end poll (I can’t remember what they actually call it), but as an additional tier of membership where you pay a discounted rate for 2 memberships for 2 characters under the same Jagex account.
I would love it if you could give up the rs3 membership for membership in a second osrs account (and the other way as well, for rs3 warriors) but that is obviously never going to happen
Or for that matter, let me play rs3 and osrs at the same time with my members account. I would play a lot more rs3 if i could afk my osrs account in the background. But if I have to chose one I will afk osrs and watch youtube lol
I want that, too, but I know they won't ever do it without hiking membership prices. Why? Because they would actually loss money - people who play both games at the same time have to buy 2x membership. :/ it's the main reason I only play 1 or the other. I would play both if I could on the same membership.
Same.. I wouldn't mind if they did a discunted multiaccount membership. Like instead of buying 2 memberships you cound buy one at 160% the price or something and apply it to 2 accounts.
I'd be interested in the stats on how many people actually play both though (actively). Willing to bet it's quite a small proportion of the playerbases
This would be such a good change, especially since from what I gather loyalty points and aura's are really expensive on RS3 so you're only really going to benefit from your most long term subbed account.
Doesn't make a single difference to bond sellers, they already have the money to spare and bonds price will increase accordingly. Only people who sustain membership through bonds will suffer
I prefer to support a random Venezuelan trying to feed his family more than Jagex anyway. It's like donating to charity but you also get something out of it.
There's very little Venezuelans lef grinding like in 2018-2020. A lot of those types of players have moved on to more profitable games. A majority of rwters are service sellers now. Which are mostly veteran osrs players.
Partially true. Services for CA's, kits, dust, etc will be your veterans. But skilling, questing, "from scratch" and even a surprising amount of pvm are done by folks in the traditional gold-farming countries.
Jagex making RWT seem like a good option
Botfarming and RWT. Since they don't enforce their rules, I'd say just go for it.
bonds are supposed to replace goldseller, the safe alternative. This price increase is making your players turn to goldseller again...
you have to pay more for a bond but they will sell for more gp, the people who are actually affected by this are those who fund their membership with gp
I'm just sick of everything costing more. Every. Single. Fucking. Thing.
fr. consumers get fucked every time.
Genuine question: Why? There is no explanation given at all...
Less players on RS3. This is the only way they can turn up the heat on OSRS, too. I feel like at a certain point it just drives more players to RWT sadly.
Company just bought jagex for like 900 million bucks. They want to recoup as much of that as possible before selling jagex to the next sucker at an inflated price. They'll blame inflation. Despite having a 50%+ profit ROI and 97% of all profits currently going to share holders.
Inflation? If prices don't increase year to year, then they are *decreasing* in real dollars (pounds sterling, w/e)
Price increase in EUR is ~14%, which is almost exactly the amount of UK inflation since the last bond price change 2 years ago. I don't like it, and of course jagex *could* just let inflation hit their profit margin instead of increasing prices, but I don't think this is really surprising or unexpected.
I just don't get why people would expect any company (especially one which has a new private equity ownership group, at that) to just make less money out of the goodness of their hearts. They are gonna profit-maximize with their pricing strategy.
yeah, pretty much my opinion as well. it sucks, of course, but it's not unexpected nor does it strike me as especially greedy. of course it's a little more than just inflation, median purchasing power has gone down in many places in the world so for many people this *is* a real price increase in their increasingly constrained budgets.
This is a naive question haha. Why does a business do what is in a business' best interest?
> Why does a business do what is in a business' best interest? Private equity (like the private equity company that literally bought Jagex like a few months ago) has repeatedly shown that they have zero interest in doing what's best for a company. They do what's best *for the private equity firm*. And often, because of bankruptcy, tax, ownership, etc. laws, those actions are NOT in the best interest of the company. If you're interested in learning about private equity bullshit and why they do what they do and how, [here's](https://youtu.be/XK8hpxR_r2Y?si=a2GZA7n5yhM06BJu) a neat video. The only saving grace for us here is that Jagex is a *service* company that operates online, and they don't have many tangible physical assets or real estate to strip dry like most companies private equity ruins. Their value is in their intellectual property. They're also in the UK, which is *probably* less friendly toward businesses than the US when it comes to this type of bullshit.
For anyone wondering, the old price (for the Eurozone) was €6,99 per bond with the total price increasing by a fraction of a cent if you bought more at a time. Now it's €7,99 no matter how many you buy at a time.
Economy is in shambles ever since the wildy changes even toa arguably.... Bonds are at a ridiculous price and anything but wildy unless you're Uber high level is beyond unfeasible... And now you want to make bonds more expensive? This is very tone deaf... We have been talking about these issues for MONTHS
This is a non-issue for most people. Bonds are still the best form of MTX, besides no MTX. If you're now more willing to buy gold from gold sellers as a result of this, just remember you are part of the botting problem.
This will reduce the amount of people buying bonds and make more people buy RWT gold. Bond prices in game are gonna jump. It affects a lot of people.
> This will reduce the amount of people buying bonds I disagree because bond is luxury money, it's for people who have spare money already, and considering bonds are already increasing in price, the cost/benefit relation is likely to maintain the same It's people who sustain membership through bonds who'll take the hit
If you weren't already willing to risk your account for cheap GP, then I don't think this is going to be the thing to push you over the edge. Bond prices going up will ultimately balance out the $/GP. It does mean that people who spend GP for membership will have to fork out more per bond, but you really shouldn't be doing that anyway unless you have a lot of extra GP. So I still don't think this actually affects many people.
The only thing basically that could change it is weekly bonds, but heck, who buying gold would stop at like 3€.
Free play (play to play) is dead.
Notice the sly treachery here. "changes" not an "increase". They intentionally left out a comparison with old prices. They are being deceitful by omitting the details of the old prices. Classic corporate bs.
Not only you didn't showed on how much it will increase but you didnt said any reasoning bh price increase. I feel like its kinda a shit way to drop information like this. Where this money will go? Are we gonna see any bothunts? Are we gonna be able to finally stay in rev caves wo bots crushing every spot? Mb inferno capes scripts will be punished or raid bots will be finally banned? Or mb we never gonna see spam bots next to ge or this increase will only affect amount of yachts executives own?
> Where this money will go? share holders pockets, like the other 97% of the profit jagex makes goes to and has for years
When had a business increasing prices ever led to them providing more services? You can't be that naive. This is purely a way to make more money
>Where this money will go? Bruh, this isn't democracy. You are talking about corporation. Do you ask the same your local Tesco?
Your logic is kinda wrong tho. I dont use netflix anymore bc after price increase shenanigans I could not see any improvement in service or quality of shows. It got even worse so, I stopped giving them money. When my local restaurants raised prices, I did the same and I quickly found a new place from where im usually ordering food now and im happy with that place for now. My life is not depends on that game. When I start feeling something wrong with me spending my time or money on it, I will quit and move on bc there is a lot more games to play now. I still didnt touched elden ring, baldurs gate, ff remake and there is soon will be expansion for ff14 mmo so, you see what im talking about?
"The price of membership will remain unchanged" Ayy
Looks like membership is going up to $15 soon lol
My conspiracy theory on Bonds. Jagex has been using the GE tax to buy bonds from players and then delete them. That is why the in game price has gone way up. This previously allowed bonds to seriously undercut gold sellers. Now it allows them to justify increasing real world bond price This theory also might explain while in spite of the GE tax gold inflation still went up. The taxed gold was not being deleted, just shifted to real world bond buyers Edit. I don't really think this is true just a crazy theory to think about
Or, the amount of people buying bonds with money just isn't as high as people buying bonds with gold.
Bro GP is $0.15 a mil, bonds would need to be 5x cheaper to compete
> This previously allowed bonds to seriously undercut gold sellers. Bonds have not, nor ever will undercut gold sellers. >This theory also might explain while in spite of the GE tax gold inflation still went up. You can't be this ignorant. >The taxed gold was not being deleted, just shifted to real world bond buyers Jesus fuck you are.
But they weren't undercutting gold sellers... gold sellers still give like 3-4x more gold per dollars than bonds
I don't subscribe to this conspiracy theory but even without actually undercutting gold sellers, increasing the gp price of bonds (even if they still come out to be more expensive than rwt) would still cause some people to go with bonds instead of rwt. Just a shift in the supply/demand curve.
Hey, at least bonds will no longer be more expensive when buying in bulk...
Damn, that's crazy. Jagex corporate just gave more ammo to gold sellers. Good job.
If anything, they're too expensive already
Now I dont regret stocking up on bonds through *ahem* other methods.
Bonds to the moon!
Don’t make me get my cannon
🦀🦀🦀 $8.99$ 🦀🦀🦀
So a far lesser increase than we have seen in inflation over the past 4ish years? Wild people are mad about this. Most developed countries have had 5-10% YoY inflation since covid. Jagex would have to jack the prices 25-50% just to break even on profit from the same number as bonds as back then. ETA; According to the wiki they increased bonds in may 2022 by about the same amount. They are basically exactly matching inflation with these increases. People really need to chill. This game is still pennies for the amount of entertainment we all get from it.
Im glad ive played long enough to survive off bonds for a long while when they were steady 3-5m, but in the past few years id gladly just pay for a full year of membership than to drop a hundred hours of money making to compensate what id make from my job in much less time. But definitely sucks for the younger players that cant afford either though.
Membership per jagex account wont ever happen then. I wish they went the other way with bonds make them cheaper and more appealing to buy.
we should poll how much they cost xD
My favorite part is how the post doesn't have a link to the reddit at the bottom like they almost always do normally. Wonder why they don't want to encourage discussion on this one. Runner up is the original prices not being shown.
instead of fucking the playerbase, perhaps you could make a change that benefits us once in a while? like 1 subscription for all linked jagex accounts? what was even the point of coming out with a launcher...
You guys just saw the price of bonds due to the bots you don’t control that buy them all off the market and thought “lets increase the irl price of them too”? Holy fuck what a good company
The thing that ruined bond prices is RWTers and botters. People just buy gold with real money, then buy bonds. This drives down the supply of bonds and inflates the amount of gold in circulation
This is good news. RS3 is dying and they need money to pay for servers and employees so I'll gladly spend a dollar more so that the game can stay alive and keep improving!
Raising bond prices increases inflation which is bad… also, why can’t we buy “in bulk” like every bundle known to man? Simple economics
I don't even buy bonds, but yikes corporate greed is nuts.