04-Feb-2011 -
Free Trade Competition

Tuesday 1st February 2011 is already being hailed as an historic day in RuneScape. The return of free trade and the Wilderness has had a massively positive effect on the game and shown just how much you are enjoy having these features back in RuneScape.

In the three days since the update, more than 17.5 trillion GP has been traded in player-to-player trades, nearly 10 trillion GP has been staked in duels and dropped in Wilderness kills, and a massive 19.5 trillion GP has been traded on the Grand Exchange, not to mention the huge number of generous gifts between players! That's a total of around 47 trillion GP! Just to give you some context, 1 trillion GP would currently get you 1,222 blue party hats, so there has certainly been a lot of trading.

That 17.5 trillion in player-to-player trades is greater than the total value of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange during the same period. You could buy all the gold bullion in Fort Knox nearly three times over, and the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom are worth a mere 20 million. In fact, 17.5 trillion is more than the entire GDP of the European Union!

On top of the huge number of player trades we have also witnessed thousands of positive comments on the forums. Here are some of our favourite posts:

“OMG JAGEX YOU FREAKIN' OWN!!!!”

"The Day a Million Sighed - Welcome back to the good RuneScape”

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS!?!?!?!?! IT'S FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE trade. OMFG”

“HAPPY RUNESCAPE INDEPENDENCE DAY!!”

“System update inbound – I’ve never wanted to see that message before right now”

“This update made me realize that RuneScape is a great game. Thank you Jagex for this wonderful update, yes a tear did fall from my eye.”

“This is the greatest update of all time. I hope that we can cherish this forever.”

Inspired by your feedback, we felt that we couldn’t let this opportunity pass without a competition. We want you to guess just how much GP in total will be traded this weekend, including all forms of trading (player-to-player, staking, Wilderness kills and Grand Exchange trades).

The competition will close around midday on Monday 7th February. The winner will be the first person who posted the correct answer, or the person with the closest answer should nobody guess the exact amount. They will receive an “I brought back the Wilderness” t-shirt signed by the entire RuneScape Team.

To enter, simply email your best guess to competitions@jagex.com including your username and guess in the subject line.

Good luck and get trading!

The RuneScape Team