Bonds are under fire from many players because they feel this will hurt the playerbase and ruin the economy, as well as offer easy access to ingame currency and render any profits to Jagex obsolete. This is wrong for a majority of reasons:
Bonds cost real money to exist in the game world. In order for a player to get ‘free’ membership time and other services, someone else has to PAY Jagex for the Bond to exist. Therefore, everyone benefits from the purchase of Bonds, even those who bought the Bonds for coins.
Bonds are NOT real-world trading, but rather a secondary payment option. Jagex does NOT force the player to sell the Bonds, but rather allows the player that option if they wish to, and at a penalty if they wish to do so due to the tax rate. Jagex does NOT give you Runescape Powerleveling, another PLAYER gives you the gold, therefore not creating any new gold. This is not the same thing as Jagex selling a Barrows Set for actual money, which would generate content and cause the value of gold to lessen.
Bonds are ARE ACTUALLY MORE EXPENSIVE compared to traditional payment models. One Bond valued at $5 gives you less value of game time at approximately 36 cents a day compared to a month valued at approximately 27 cents a day. Plus, it would take at least $10 in Bonds to pay for almost a month of membership time. 200 RuneCoins are valued at $4.99 (a little over 2 cents a coin) and 160 RuneCoins from a Bond purchase is a little over 3 cents a coin (You can see the better deal here, not to mention the bonus Coins you get from directly buying them). Spins, which are valued at 10 for $4.99, are about 49 cents a Spin, where 8 Spins from a Bond of the same price is about 62 cents a Spin.
Bonds offer an alternative to hardcore players or players who have no use for their coins. If someone is indeed sitting on a gold pile of say, 500 million coins, and were to spend all of that money on Bonds, the player could then buy 44 Bonds and get 616 days of membership, 352 Spins, or 7040 RuneCoins (Hit me up buddy, I’d love some). Remember, 44 Bonds is also valued at $220 USD, so it’s not likely someone is going to make a huge profit off of those (They still lose around 55.44 million gold from the tax they are penalized with, causing less gold to be in the economy)
Bonds WILL fluctuate in price, causing higher or lower amounts of gold to be needed for Bonds.
