Well, I am giving the GEC a forums section. I suspect that because these forums are so new they will probably be pretty lonely for a couple of weeks or even months. But it is my hope that they will eventually take off, slowly but surely. In the future when I finally introduce the Mock Grand Exchange investment tracker, forum membership will be a requirement (mainly in order to have the forum run user login so users can maintain their own personal mock investment history). The MockGEC is still a couple of months down the road. Hopefully a slow start of the forums will give me plenty of time to work out bugs and other kinks in the forum system along with adding more customizations. So consider these forums as a beta test right now. Though never fear, any memberships and posts in this beta system will be automatically carried over to the final product.

You can pretty much discuss anything Runescape, though an obvious focus of the forums will be RuneScape investments. However, remember that this blog, the GEC, and the forums have a strict policy against any material which is knowingly false (with the exception of April Fool’s jokes), inaccurate, abusive, hateful, harassing, sexually orientated, threatening or invasive of a person’s privacy, or any other material which may violate any applicable laws. We will also not tolerate any advice or solicitation about RuneScape real world trading, cheats, or bug exploits. And to become a member of these forums you will need to agree that your activities on the forums and the greater Grand Exchange Central website will in no way violate the official Rules of RuneScape.

Some of the current features of the forums I have right now include realtime connectivity to the GEC database. That means you can display, using BBcode, the current value of items you are discussing. Also, if you wish, you can display your characters current combat level in the header area of each posting you leave. Combat states are acquired once a day. This is of course optional. Other features to come soon.

Anyway, stop by the forums and introduce yourself, leave suggestions, or read a little more about how the GEC functions, future plans for the GEC, or any changes that are currently being made. See you on the forums.

Absenm

If you are not interested in investing in Runescape and using the Grand Exchange then this post will be of no interest to you.  But if you spend your time trying to figure out which GE items will make you the most profit, then read further.

 I have reached the point where I can safely say I have about 80% of all the items I want entered into the Grand Exchange Central Database. Nearly 2000 items with individual values exceeding 3 billion gp.  Because I have devoted a lot of time to the development of the GEC and plan to devoting even more time I have finally got a paid hosting service and a real domain name. www.grandexchangecentral.com. Everything GEC related has already been moved over to the new server and domain and I have setup 301 redirects so visitors from search engines and other blogs can seemlessly be transferred to the new domain. I am sure there will be a few bad links that will crop up, but for the most part everything appears to be functioning properly. It is best to make this move now while the GEC is still small and has very limited search engine placement and visitors.

My blog, Runescape Thoughts, will continue to remain on my free x10hosting account. I plan on continuing to write articles with the same frequency that I currently am now. Which is about one every week to ten days.

Concerning the GEC, I just need to finish off food, range and mage weapons and parts and I will be pretty much finished setting up the database. I am sure when I finish entering those items I will remember a whole lot more things to add, but at least the end is in sight. There are a smattering of a few dozen other non runedexable items I also want to add. Anyway, I see the initial DB building finishing up in the next week or two.

After I get everything entered I am going to proceed by doing following things, all likely simutanoiusly.

1) I will review all the items I have entered into the GEC and confirm alchemy values and parts lists for accuracy. I’ll also try to setup logical comparisons. Anyway, I will likely just work on 25 items a day so it will be about three months before I finish with the “polishing” of the database.

2) I will be continuing to develop and design new content and ways of analyzing the GEC data. We have charts and tables and tickers, but there can always be more. Recently I started working on a Currency Exchange page where Tokkuls and other Runescape currencies are compared to gp. I also plan on tracking the value of the Gold Piece to see how it has performed against itself. The are tons of way to display the wealth of information in the GEC database.

3) I am going to set up some forums that will focus on investing on the Grand Exchange and other ways to make money in Runescape. Real world trading and exploiting bugs and using cheats will be strictly taboo and users who promote such activities will be banned. Of course other general discussion areas will be available.

4) This  item I am most excited about. I will be setting up a Mock Grand Exchange.  A mock exchange can be used as a “game” or as an investment training tool. Users will be allotted a certain amount of mock (virtual) gp and be able to purchase items in the mock exchange. Then they can track how those items perform over time without the risk of using real gp in the real Runescape. After I get the bugs worked out I might even implement contests where users can compete against each other to see who is the best investor.

5) I will finally start actively promoting the Grand Exchange Central. Currently I have made no attempts to mention it on other fan sites or blogs. I want a stable and advanced system in place before trying to bring a bunch of visitors to the site.

All of this and more.  And it is all for free.  I have written this site because I love the game and also because it gives me an excellant chance to train my coding and web development skills.  I have no plans now or in the future of ever charging to access the GEC or any parts of it.  The GEC for me is fun and I would rather have a great and well visited free site then a so-so and barely active pay site.

Wonderful news for those of you interested in the investment side of this website. The Grand Exchange Central has now surpassed the 1000 items mark. This exceeds how many items I thought the database would contain and is only half of what I expect to have entered into the database within the coming weeks. Each item is updated daily and we are now maintaining a 90 day history on all items (though because the GEC itself is not 90 days old it will take a little time to fill in the histories). I am kicking around keeping a year long history of weekly averages.

Another big news item is for those of you involved in Summoning. The GEC now contains a listing of all the summoning pouches and scrolls. But the best part about this is the “parts list” included on each item page. Now at a simple glance you can see exactly how much each pouch will cost to produce. This will let summoners out there see which pouches actually make a profit (sorry, most do not).

Even though the GEC is not as complete as I would like, to the best of my knowledge, I have all the headwear, bodywear, and handwear already entered. There is also a lot listed that is not included in those categories. I am diligently working on getting footwear, weapons, and legwear entered. And please remember that the GEC only lists tradeable items (it is an investment website after all).  Also, if you happen to spot something I may of forgotten please leave a comment here or on the GEC main page.

I’ve also started to add alchemey values to various items.  I will add these values to the rest of the database as time alows.  Right now I have to go back and add to a 1000+ items, so it may take a little time.  Newly added items will have the values added imediately.

I’ve been so bogged down in writing the Grand Exchange Central’s database scripts and page codes lately that I haven’t had much of a chance to really play the game. So this weekend I purposely sat down and told myself to play and enjoy the game for fun sake. That of course let me to see a few funny sights, finish a couple annoying quests (like Shield of Avvay and Heroes)  and come up with a suggestion for a Jagex April Fools prank.

I can’t have a stupid idea without sharing it, so here it is. I think that on April 1, 2009 the people at Jagex should toss in a Rickroll. Maybe right in the middle of Varrock square. Before I go on I probably should mention a couple of things for those few people who are oblivious to the greater workings of the Internet.

First, over the past fifteen years April Fools Day has become the most universally accepted holiday on the Internet. April Fools Day is a holiday that everyone can enjoy because there are no religious or political drawbacks. And it is not geocentric; every place on Earth has fools and pranksters. It is a safe holiday to observe on websites. And most major websites take part.

Second, a Rickroll is an Internet phenomenon that is closing in on its last days. But it still has a little life left. Basically anything can be a Rickroll as long as it involves the song, “Never gonna give you up” by Rick Astley appearing in a place where it would normally not appear.  Hearing the song on Lite-FM WSLP is not a Rickroll. Having the video pop up on a congressional website (which it did) is a Rickroll. Rickrolls originally started out as misleading links to the Astley YouTube video, but have expanded out to include pretty much anything that involves the song.

Now on to my idea. I think that on April 1^st for a few hours there should be a little Rick Astley like NPC wondering around Varrock square singing the lyrics to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Or if there is a copyright concern then change the lyrics slightly. You can’t say that some little dude like the one to the above right wouldn’t be a hilarious April Fools prank. Plus, maybe as a side bonus he could give out tan tench coats as a nontradeable holiday item.

As a side note: The GEC is coming along nicely. It now contains over 500 items, has parts lists on many individual items, and has the ability to store up to 60 days worth of data for each item (the official GE website only displays a months worth). There are now several Runedexes that place items into categories and many more tools to come in the very near future. I have added all the headwear I can find and will be starting on footware this week (it takes a lot of time to initially enter in new items).

As I was entering in all the Runescape headgear I could find into the Grand Exchange Central database I was literally dumbfounded by the variety and cost of all the things players can put on their heads (over a billion gp worth). The world of Runescape allows players to try on all sort of different head garments including partyhats, hoods, masks, bandannas, hats of all colors, sleeping caps and more. My focus was strictly on tradeable items, but there are also a bunch of things for the head that can not be purchased and need to be skillfully acquired through quests and other activities. After spending several hours of researching this category of Runescape clothing I decided to post a little about what I discovered, at least concerning partyhats.

Partyhats [GEC 570.0m gp] or phats are probably the number one article of Runescape clothing that people search for on the Internet. These tradeable items account for six of the most expensive items in Runescape. The cheapest partyhat sells for only 76 million gp. To wrap your mind around that figure consider this; to buy the cheapest partyhat (purple) you would need to sell about 179 thousand swordfish [GEC 516 gp] to get enough money. These clothing items are so expensive because of their rarity, with rumors around the Internet suggesting that only 500 of these rare treasures still in existence. Of course this figure cannot be substantiated unless Jagex comes right out and disclosed the true numbers, which will likely never occur. But if that 500 hat number can be trusted we can imagine an interesting scenario. According to the news in mid 2008, when Runescape was awarded a Guinness World Record, it has about six million players, 1 million of which are members. That means that only 0.008% of the Runescape population could conceivably have a hat (1 in 12,000 players).

Party hats were first introduced during the Christmas event of 2001. They were prizes in Christmas Crackers where two players would pull on the ends of the cracker to obtain the prizes inside. Each cracker contained two prizes, one that sucked and one that was cool. Each player would get one of these prize. Typically a partyhat (the sucky item) of various colors would go to one player and then something else of value to the other. The player who got the hat would likely discarded it because it didn’t seem to be worth anything. But being a limited time item which remained tradeable after the event, the hat’s value soon skyrocketed (hence why new holiday event items are no longer tradeable). Now the complete set of six hats runs around 900 million gp.

The rarity and prestige of owning a partyhat has now grown into a thing of legend and has even created its own mythology. According to one myth it is believed that for an extremely short period of time there was a black party hat. But because Jagex deemed it not festive enough, it was soon changed to white. This is of course a myth and there is no and never was a black partyhat. Usually this myth is only mentioned in order to egg on noobs who don’t know any better.

The black hat myth aside, if you see someone wearing a partyhat you can make a couple of guesses. Either they are a long time player who never got rid of their hats (bravo), or they blew a crap load of money to buy an item that has no purpose beyond being an investment item and showing off. (Did that sound a little bitter?) In either case you will not be looking at a noob.