Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Saturday

What are the best ways to make money in RuneScape?

I'm not a gamer, but I have a fascination with massively multiplayer online role playing games nonetheless, muchly because it's hard for me to wrap my brain around how many zillions of hours are spent annually by people who ARE really into these games. One of the most successful of these is RuneScape, which has four million active users. If each user just logged in for 30 minutes per month, that's 24 million hours or 2,739 fulltime person-years of time spent in the RuneScape universe. Amazing indeed!

But rather than just write about the game, I received a question about how to actually make some money in RuneScape, so that you can advance levels, buy stuff, and generally enjoy the game more. With millions of players, it's a sure bet that some folk have mastered different ways to earn money while others plod along in relative poverty. Problem solved!

  How do you make money in RuneScape?

Don't look for me in the world of RuneScape. It's the kind of thing I have to avoid, lest I be sucked into the slick 3D graphics and ability to interact with thousands of other players, never to be seen online again. :-)