How Timezones Affect Merchanting -- RS Player Logger II

For those of you who have VIP Tier 2 Guides access, cross-referencing to Snow's thread http://www.smokinelite.com/t47773-tier-two-s-time-of-day-vs-investing-dumping-flipping-and-manipulation-guide may prove useful.

Runescape has always been affected by the number of players currently online; whether it be minigames, pking, skilling, PvM or merchanting. I remember back in my newbie days how Castle Wars on world 24 always had a good 300+ players when all the american kids got back from school and logged on, but the place was nearly deserted earlier on. Recently in the IRC, Boltions mentioned how cool it would be to have a program that logged the number of players playing RS through time in an attempt to draw conclusions on when the best time for various stages of merchanting would be. It seemed like a nice task to do so I brushed off my PHP and VB skills and put this logger together.



What is this?
This is a website which hosts a graphical representation of the number of players online playing Runescape at any one point in time. I have a script running nearly 24/7 on my home PC taking recordings every 10 minutes, uploading the data it collects each time.

All times are currently in GMT+1, however I plan to make this adaptable for all timezones.

There are a few nice uses for this system.

• It is very useful for anyone that isn't sure when is best to buy and sell for semi inactive flips. When flipping or just buying/selling things on the grand exchange the number of players makes a difference to the prices. For instance if there is a lot of players playing then there will be a greater supply of things like dragon bones/hides and other drops. This lowers the prices slightly at these peak times. When there is very few players playing there is less supply of the items so the price rises, the average players will buy items for whatever it takes to get the item, so it is best to sell when few players are online.
  
• It will be interesting to see returns of Bots/Optimus. By now most of the major bots have returned so it will be interesting to see when those bots are active or updating to combat the latest update so we can see what percentage of the Runescape population are legitimate players.

The site has only been up for a week now and has already begun to demonstrate a typical full 24 hour cycle. We can also see an increase of ~25,000 online players on a weekend compared to a weekday.

Please take minute to look at the site and give some feedback on my work:)

On a side note: I am currently trying to collect data on how much the margins and prices of a typical, stable item fluctuates within a 24-48 hour period to see if there are any strong correlations with how many online players there were.

This is 100% safe guys and is one of the best tools you can have as a merchant.

Been using it for a while now, thanks and +repped.

Wow this tool is super useful! I'll try to flip when there are less players on for bigger margins. Anyways +rep!

Moved as requested

Very useful =D I finally have an answer to finding the low peaks of population on runescape and at what time

Thank you so much for the graph

Excellent tool +rep

So helpfull, i can't thank you enough!

But wait wouldn't it be better to Buy items when hardly anyone is one because the demand for those items would be less and it would be easier to buy compared to the times when there are a lot of players that are wanting thse items in high demand causing them to go up in price? Or why do you believe it's the other way around?

Daxaal wrote:But wait wouldn't it be better to Buy items when hardly anyone is one because the demand for those items would be less and it would be easier to buy compared to the times when there are a lot of players that are wanting thse items in high demand causing them to go up in price? Or why do you believe it's the other way around?

The margins are generally larger when less players are on, but the price fluctuates too. This is an interesting point that I (and others) have been debating for some time now. When I get enough time, I plan to record the margins on a few fairly stable items over 48 hours to see just what affect (if any) the current number of online players has on them.

really cool my friend, ill take ur tool forever

incredibly helpful +rep

Tanks:) thet site is very useful! tanks agin:

this seems really nice, im going to use it +rep

I just started flipping so I don't really know how to use this to my advantage yet, but thanks for the tool that may help in the future.

I'm going to experiment and see what changes when less people are online.

Thank you! Great website and a great tool, so helpful

thanks heaps man!

+rep, amazing tool, have been thinking about that but never could figure out what were crowded and uncrowded times, truly amazing

intresting diddent think of this

This is brilliant, I have always wandered if anyone was documenting this, but have never found anything. This will help for staking, because I can go on at peak times.

+rep

that really does affect flipping :O
thanks

Never really thought about this, good tip.

Cool it looks like any time from 10-13 aclock is when less players are on

Wow really useful already added the link to favorites, going to use it everytime.I will be marching, thnx sir. Repped*

this is weird, but I dont think that the timezone has a link with price....

You see, the morning price is lower than the one in the afternoon.

damn most uncroded times is between 2-3 am for me ._.
atleast between 1-4pm is its still pretty uncrowded but not like 2-3 am :/