Well that Fizzled: The Trade Movement to Fally

Recently while browsing the Runescape Forums I've been coming across discussions of moving trade to Falador East Bank and the park. It seems big names in RS like Chris Archie, Wr3cked, Thirdagefilm and some others are attempting to push the chaotic trade center of Varrock westward.

The big move took place this past Sunday and supposedly they were hosting a day of trade in world 305, the new trade world. I'm sure a lot of people showed up considering the combined youtube following of all of them. I didn't make it (I'm bad at research. Sue me) so xM A Xx and I decided to show up the next day and see if it worked. I figured that if it did there would be at least some people trading there. This is what we found:

 

Empty. Well actually not entirely. One guy wearing a tiara tried to sell law runes to no avail and a couple mining bots ran through. I'm just saying that if Runescape had crickets, you'd hear them.

I can see why those popular Old School personalities thought a move-over could be successful. Those guys do have a TON of people who listen to them, tens of thousands even, but big brother Jagex has more. Runescape 07 has hundreds of thousands of daily players and I'm sure a ton of more casual ones. I seriously doubt all of them heard of where they should have been trading on Sunday.

On Sunday world 305 probably had a hundred people trading and bargaining at any given time and maybe a few thousand attended in the course of the day. But while they were having their little party worlds 301, 302 and 309 were bustling trade worlds, still going strong.

Those players that went to Fally on Sunday were still playing the game on Monday and if they're anything like me they needed stuff. Stuff to fletch, stuff to eat, stuff to shoot, whatever, Runescape players constantly need stuff. Again, if they're anything like most of the Runescape population they're very very impatient. To get what they need they maybe (although I doubt it) stopped in Falidor but when they saw that not everyone came back that day what do you think they did? Went to Varrock where people were still trading without having ever known about the Fally trade movement.

Those Youtube players tried to start a tradition unorganically. They just didn't figure that pretty much every player in Old School values convenience over doing something that admittedly would be pretty damn cool.

I'm not sure why people started trading in Varrock when the Old School servers went up; I'd suspect its habit from trading near the GE in EoC. Whatever it is I don't think it's going to change anytime soon so I'll see you guys in West bank :)