The GE Website Update

Well, I have to say that todays update of the official GE website (oGE) is kind of making me nervous.  It not that the update effects anything about my webiste, the Grand Exchange Central, which is an investment website.  But many RuneScape members in the official forums are venting pretty hard about Fan sites like the GEC that provide price data and graphs. 

 There seems to be an overlly sensationalized belief that price data helps clan minipulation.  It may help a little, but not to the extent that people are suggesting.  My stand point is that price data and graphs are of little use to a large clan with a huge collective sum to play with.  A big clan with enough money can manipulate any item at any time with no price information at all.  You just get everyone to start buying at the same time and then tell people to stop at the same time (the last one to the party is screwed but the clan leader is good to go).

It is my firm belief that extended price data like that which is provided by the GEC actually helps the small time investor.  It makes it easier for us little people not in clans to spot items that are being manipulated.  We can avoid those things and find other more secure items. 

Anyway, here is what I posted on the official forums.  Let me know your thoughts.

I’ve been reading the comments concerning this “update” which are particularly frustrating.

First of all, I agree with most of the comments that removing the most valueable list is a big mistake. That was a very useful feature and should be brought back.

What frustrates me is that people think this “update” was done to curb clan market manipulation. I am very against clan market manipulation (it has cost me a lot of gp and prevented me from buying items I wanted or needed). But I see nothing in this update that will have any effect on market manipulation what-so-ever. A large clan with enough collective money can manipulate the market with no data at all. It is obvious that this “update” was intented to improve ease of use and better “regular Joe” understanding. It did neither of those things, but the intent was clear.

I am also frustrated by comments that suggest that fan sites that provide extended price data are somehow contributing to market manipulation. Those fan sites and the extended histories now available on the official GE site can allow individual investors not involved in clan manipulation to spot what items are being manipulated and avoid those items.

Anyway, if Jagex wanted to curb clan manipulation it would attack it from a different angle. Data really has no effect. And I think attacks on fan sites that provide price data are unfair and not well thought out. Better controls need to be implimented within the trade system itself to detect these patterns and block them. Data is not the answer.