[snip]

If a duped rune is up'd, is it still a dupe?  If not you could have a
lot of legit runes whose origins are dupped.

Actually, they are more likely to trade items for a collection of duped
runes and make a rune word.

Not really, those areas aren't any more likely to produce an HR than
the throne room is.

More likely because of the proliferation of Baal bots that was only
recently ended. It was very easy to find a bot doing a run of Baal
games and hook up for an hour and get a load of XP.

None of which helps get HR, as the best you can get from the forge is a
GUL.

See above.

This is simply and horribly incorrect. They have banned over 100,000
CDkeys for botting, and to the best of my knowledge, not a one for
duping.

Stores do not trade for runes, they buy them. The wholesale price for
HR is about 15 cents. This is a subject I have personal knowledge of,
as I supply half the stores with their torches.

And where do they get these runes? They trade an item that they gambled
(a hat with +2 Pally skills, 20%FCR, 15%RA and 2 sockets) for 40 HR
that are duped. As some here will tell you, I have a FAR better insight
into all this than most, and I can simply and clearly state that this
entire post is WAAAAAAY off the mark. 99.99% of HR are duped, and I am
being generous.

Mickey

<snip>

I can see where your coming from Anne.
However, it's been my personal experience that the rate of HR drops in no
way reflects the availability of such. I traded a nice Crafted Ammy for 50
(yes fifty) high runes....
For example, in the HOP i have never seen a rune higher than IO drop, and i
believe that i have been to Nilly and his mates often enough to say that HR
drops in that area are no better than any other Alvl85 place. I know that
Alvl and Mlvl are the ingrediants for what can possibly drop, and i say the
same thing (no better drops) regarding the throne room (Lum being the
highest i have seen drop there). I've been to the throne room alot too ;)
In the 3 Lesser uber areas (Sands, Furnace, Pain), I have only ever seen up
to a UM pop out of a chest. I have seen a pul drop from a normal carver on
the way to the Countess. My highest "legit" rune (a gul) was the result of a
hell hellforge ,and apart from that i have never seen anything higher than
Um drop.... sad but true (again my own personal experience).
I do know that some poeple here have found good runes in these 85Alvls, but
i put it down to the two thing that matters most in D2, luck and time spent
playing the game killing stuff  :) . The same goes for items.

This incoherant and totally unstructured post is IMHO and also, YMMV   :D
An interesting view you present, respected (as always) and welcomed (as
always).

good hunting

Jay

Hi Anne,
I read and re-read your posts many times to try to understand your
argument.  I would like to be absolutely certain that I understand it
completely, thus please allow me to reiterate what you said in my own
word.

You hypothesize that "a large number of traded HR are legit."  For the
purpose of this argument, you define "legit" as runes that are actually
dropped by monsters or objects in the game, and not by a glitch in the
game.  (I will use this same definition for the purpose of my
argument).  In order to prove your hypothesis, you provide 2 theories.
One, there are a lot of high runes.  Two, it is make sense to trade
high runes. Therefore, you conclude that a lot of these high runes that
are being traded must be legit.

To prove your first point, you describe the following chronological
chain of events (a and b happen independently of each other, not
consecutively).
1a. The game has become a lot cheaper, make it easier for people to buy
additional CD key to mule, forge rushing, etc.
1b. The release of patch 1.11 with the new areas.
2a. This new areas with patch 1.11 increase the number of areas that
can drop high runes.  Thereby giving players more chance to find them.
2b. This new areas also add incentive to players to have strong, high
level characters.
3. Since there are more strong high level characters around, it is
logical to assume there are more high runes found.  Especially, since
Blizzard has failed to completely ban bots.

Furthermore, to prove your second point in your hypothesis, you
describe the following fact and the ensuing chain of events.
Fact: Runes are more profitable than items to the stores.  Therefore
stores will supply a large amount of runes in order to maximize their
profits.
1. The above fact causes High Runes to be the accepted currency.
2. With HR being currency, more people are willing to trade their Ber
Ber Mal Ist to Jah Lo Vex Vex, and vice versa, even though the two are
clearly not equal.
Fact: Ruststorm has not been activated for a long time, giving people a
sense of security.
3. There is really no difference between a legit and a dupe rune due to
the above fact.  It is then perfectly harmless to trade a legit rune to
one whose legitimacy can't be verified.

-----][-----

Before I start, let's agree on some minor unimportant details.
1. High runes are Vex to Zod.
2. In the current trading market, each of the above runes has the same
value.  For example, one can trade an Ohm for a Jah, and vice versa.
Zod, Cham, and Sur often have lower trading value, but let's not dwell
too much on this as it does not affect the subject at hand in any way
at all.

I will start my contradicting arguments with some statistics on rune
drops.

I am quoting the highest drop probability for Vex rune in an 8-player
game from ATMA
1 in 317K chance from regular monster (many types have this same
chance)
1 in 50K from Hell Andariel quest
1 in 109K Hell Andariel non quest

I do believe dedicated rune farmers would choose to kill random
monsters than to kill certain Super Unique / Act bosses if their goal
is the most amount of high runes in the shortest amount possible.
Therefore I will conclude that a player will kill 317 thousands regular
monsters before that person kills 50 thousands Andy for quest, or 109
thousands Andy not for quest.

Again quoting ATMA, this time only the drop chance from regular
monsters.
Vex - 1 in 317K
Ohm - 1 in 370K
Lo - 1 in 555K
Sur - 1 in 648K
Ber - 1 in 972K
Jah - 1 in 1.13M
Cham - 1 in 1.70M
Zod - 1 in 5.95M

Hrmm is my copy of ATMA broken?  Why the sudden jump in Zod's drop
chance compared to Cham?

Let's step back for a moment to imagine a Bnet without dupe.  In this
Bnet, we are all certain that any runes we trade with strangers are
legit.  We can easily see from the above data that Jah worths less than
2 Ber, even though it takes 2 Ber to cube for a Jah.  We can also
easily see that a Jah clearly worths a lot more than an Ohm.  At this
point, I'm sure we all agree that in this Bnet, we will not trade our
Ber to their Ohm.  Of course, I am assuming that neither the buyer nor
the seller are under duress; therefore Fair Market Value prevails.

Anne states that in the real Bnet as we know it, "There are probably
still a huge amount of duped runes floating around out there at any
given time."  Coupled with the second part of her reasonings, Anne
argues that this makes it likely for someone to trade a legit Ber to an
Ohm, whose legitimacy is unknown.

I'm afraid I disagree with you here, Anne.  If I have a legit Ber, I
definitely will never trade it to a lower rune whose legitimacy can't
be verified.  Would I trade it to a higher one with unknown legitimacy?
I don't see the point of doing so.  If I am a person that very
regularly includes runes with unknown legitimacy in my builds, I am
very likely to be a trader, and as a trader I am very likely to have
something other than that legit Ber to trade for whatever it is that I
need.  Therefore I wouldn't need to trade my legit Ber rune to
anything.  If I am a person that never includes any runes of unknown
legitimacy in my build, I am very likely to have very little legit high
runes available.  Therefore, even if I trade my legit Ber to a Jah, I
would have no real use for that Jah anyways.

So far, I'm only stating that my personal experience is different than
yours.  You may be willing to trade your legit high rune to one of
unknown legitimacy; whereas I will not under any circumstances.  I do
not think it is possible to gauge where most people stand in this
matter, to prove one way or another.

Up to this point, I haven't given any arguments as to why I believe
very big majority of traded runes are duped.  However, I've argued that
your second part of your reasonings stands on shaky ground, and any
conclusions drawn from it deem to stand on shaky ground as well.

Now then, in the first part of your reasonings, you believe that there
are more legit high runes right now than ever in the previous seasons
because
a. more incentive to have higher level characters, and
b. more incentive to play in the new 1.11 areas which can drop high
runes

I again disagree with both of the above.  There are as much incentive
to have higher level characters now and in the past.  People who have
high level chars now are likely to do so in previous seasons as well.
The pubbie still comprise the large majority of players.  I believe we
can see that the average age of these players are around high school
age.  Furthermore, especially those who frequent such trading forums,
can see that these players play this game for the PvP aspect.  HLD
(high level dueling) still comprises the large majority of the PvP
world.  Thus, there is a desire to have high level characters.  Their
main goals is to get to certain level high enough so they have better
chance of winning more PvP.  This trend of course has existed since at
least 1.10 season 2 and is still on currently in this 1.11 season 1.

The ability to run torches as fast as possible, may be an extra
incentive to have high level characters.  But definitely not the main
driving force to do so.  As we can see, majority of HLD'ers prefer to
just buy their torches, because they want specific statistics on their
torches (usually as high attributes as they can afford to pay).  Given
that there are 7 x 10 x 10 = 700 possible torch statistics, running for
torches themselves will severely cut down their PvP time.

Now you may argue that since there's demand for torches, there has to
be torch suppliers; and that those torch suppliers must have found many
legit high runes, which in turn they throw in the trading market.  I
completely agree that there are didicated torch runners in the trading
forums.  However, the number of such dedicated torch runners are
miniscule compared to the number of "regular" players, i.e. PvPers.
This can be demonstrated by the exorbitant price of such valued torch,
for example a 20/xx Pally torch, whereas 10/xx torches don't worth that
much.  The Supply vs Demand graph indicates that this exorbitant price
is caused by a large demand and low supply.

Furthermore, even such dedicated torch runners are still at a
disadvantage of finding high runes.  Firstly, most dedicated torch
sellers will teleport straight to Countess, Summoner, Nihlathak,
Duriel, Izual, and Lilith.  At the very least they teleport straight to
the 3 key droppers, and this I believe only represent a minority of
torch sellers (note that I say sellers and not runners).  Even if they
don't teleport to the mini ubers, the statistics still don't favor
them.  Let's see what kind of monsters they can potentially face.
Furnace: Black Lancers, Imps, Doom Knights, Oblivion Knights, (Pit
Lords drop nothing).
Sands: Maggots, Spiders, Swarms, Scarabs.
Den: Black Lancers, Rogue Archers, Vile Witches, Succubi.
Tristram: No drops.

I am sure each of us can check the rune drop rate from each of the
above monsters and would find that each of their high rune drop chance
is very miniscule.  The monster types with the highest chance to drop
runes are WillowWisps (aka. Gloams), Ghosts, and Specters.  All the
other types are signicantly below them.  None of those monsters can
spawn in any of the four aforementioned areas.

Therefore I can safely conclude that dedicated torch runners and
sellers will find much less legit high runes than the standard MFers.

In summary then, I challenge your postulates in the first part of your
explanations that
a) more high level chars this season, and
b) 1.11 provides more opportunity to find high runes

by arguing that
a) there are as many PvPers this season, thus as many high level chars,
and
b) by spending more time in 1.11 areas, one will statistically find
less high runes

Up to this point, I've only challenged your reasonings while saying
very little if at all about why I believe very large majority of traded
high runes are duped.  I will then close my post by stating my
observations that lead me to this belief.

I am again quoting ATMA, same parameters as the high rune chance above,
8 players 0 MF.
Herald Of Zakarum - 1 in 4152 Nightmare Baal quest
Herald of Zakarum - 1 in 6276 Nightmare Baal non quest
Mara's Kaleidoscope - 1 in 1882 Hell Duriel quest
Mara's Kaleidoscope - 1 in 5434 Hell Duriel non quest

Herald of Zakarum low ED - 2 high runes in the trading market
Mara's Kaleidoscope low resist - 3 high runes in the trading market

I can go on and on with many more uniques with trading values that do
not make sense statiscally.

Why do I quote the boss drop for these items while regular monsters for
the high runes?  I'm using the same logics that a person that hunts for
these items will teleport to bosses and generally will skip all
monsters on the way.  In both item and rune hunting cases, I am
assuming, the player will utilize the most efficient method of
achieving his/her goal, that is to find that item or rune.  It just
that happens that the most efficient method for items are Act bosses,
and that for runes are regular monsters.  If you believe this is not
fair, you may use Act bosses for high rune drop chance as well and will
find that my argument (that the trade values do not make statistical
sense) is still valid.

We know that my quoted trading values above are approximately correct.
Therefore, the statistics must be wrong in the first place.  The chance
of finding 2 Vexes must be similar to the chance of finding 1 Herald of
Zakarum, must be similar to the chance of finding 2 Lo, and must be
similar to the chance of finding 2 Jah.  Therefore, it must be easier
to obtain 1 Ohm than it is to obtain a Herald of Zakarum.  What does
this mean then?  Is ATMA's calculator wrong?  Is the actual chance of
finding a Vex equals to that of an Ohm = Lo = Sur = Ber = Jah = Cham =
Zod = 1 in 3100 Act Bosses non quest kill?

I believe there is another explanation for this phenomenon.  Afterall,
ATMA's calculator is written by one of the most knowledgeable people in
the subject matter, with the consultation of THE most knowledgeable
person in the entire Diablo universe.  What else can it be?  Those high
runes must be obtained in a non legitimate way, i.e. by duplicating
them.  Remember that for the purpose of this discussions, we define
legitimate items to be those dropped by monsters and objects, and not
by a glitch in the game.

Therefore I conclude that all traded high runes in the informed markets
are dupes, otherwise they wouldn't be so cheaply priced.  Informed
markets are markets of which all the buyers and sellers have an idea of
the drop chance of the items traded, and the Fair Market Value for
them.  There always comes a time when an uninformed participant enters
the market and may throw a legit rune into the market.  Imagine a lucky
newbie who found an Ohm without knowing that Ohm could get more than
just a Shako.  Due to this randomness, I cannot put an exact number on
the ratio of the duped vs legit traded high runes.  However, just by
the sheer number of high runes being traded every minute, I am certain,
the amount of legit runes these randomness produce is very miniscule.
Thus, I can say with complete confidence that all traded high runes are
dupes.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone that these discussions
are merely one person's attempts to prove a hypothesis.  None of us are
trying to make anyone a believer of anything.  We are only exchanging
our differing points of views.  I will certainly appreciate that
everyone shows one's class when one posts one's comments, point of
views, and personal experiences.