Jagex eventually reversed it's decision on the fixing of prices and returned free trade. This had the effect of bringing back a large number of bots, causing huge inflation of certain items and a large devaluation of item which bots can produce easily.
The economy is now hugely imbalanced, so performing common actions such as crafting a sword from metal will cause you to lose a fair amount of money. There is also no real item sink because the consequence of death from npcs has been reduced (keeping most of the item you where holding when you died) and PvP (player versus player) has been neglected to the point where few players engage in the activity.
