I played before and after the GE was introduced. You're right, but it kind of leveled the playing field in a lame way. The GE made merchanting much more difficult.
Prior to GE, I'd buy as much as I could of an item in the morning in World 2 when the prices were lower but there were still plenty of people selling. Then in the evening, I'd sell and make large profits. I don't remember the details but the GE made the prices more stable and my World 2 merchanting scheme didn't work anywhere near as well.
It was much more fun to try and reign in the chaos of a live manual market than a corporate feeling GE. Maybe there's some relation to the old-school stock market floor where everyone was screaming and yelling to trade?
In its latest incarnation yes, but for a long time prices were locked always to 5% +- of a average value. I'm not sure why that was done, but it must have some article somewhere. They eventually reverted it (years after), now you can put the price you want to anything. When you are buying the lowest price offered get bought, when you are selling the highest bidder wins, given that the price you offer at least matches the other party
"Runescape 2" is doing a lot of work in the original comment.
The GE was originally introduced as a key aspect of restricted trade - the game system disallowing unbalanced exchanges of wealth, either through trade or PvP to combat goldfarming - along with the removal of the real wilderness. Trade value was calculated from GE value, so a trade would only go through if the GE value of the items on both side ~matched.
The +/- 5% thing was at least originally partially intended to prevent players pumping obscure items on the GE via wash trading, then using that inflated GE value to transfer gold through trades that look fair to the system but are unbalanced in actual economic reality.
That sort of unbalanced trade still ended up happening via "junk trading" - players would find items with fixed, high GE values (e.g. addy arrows p(++)) but low actual value, and conversely items with low, fixed GE values (e.g. mint cakes) but high actual values, and use those to circumvent the balanced trade systemm.
In OSRS, on the other hand, adding the GE was fairly uncontroversial because it wasn't introduced along with restricted trade, and because it replaced third-party marketplaces like the Zybez exchange that were shitshows most people disliked having to use. That version of the GE functions as you describe.
Prior to GE, I'd buy as much as I could of an item in the morning in World 2 when the prices were lower but there were still plenty of people selling. Then in the evening, I'd sell and make large profits. I don't remember the details but the GE made the prices more stable and my World 2 merchanting scheme didn't work anywhere near as well.
It was much more fun to try and reign in the chaos of a live manual market than a corporate feeling GE. Maybe there's some relation to the old-school stock market floor where everyone was screaming and yelling to trade?