Round the World Ticket (from USA)

I am planning a "mini" Round the World trip for 2 months over the summer. Need help!

Not sure where to start looking for best prices. It seem every airline has deals and they range so much. Ideally, I would like to pay $1800 - $2800 for the economy ticket - is this possible?

I can fly out of NYC or Boston or even from London/Franfurt, if it is more economical. I have already traveled a lot in Western Europe and Asia, so have travel experience. However, I have never purchased RTW ticket and never traveled for more than 3 week vacation.

Basically, I started making out a list of places we would love to go to and of course, know we can't do all in 2 months. But base on these places, I would like to find the most affordable RTW ticket price for about half of the 13 locations I list. The places with an asterisk * are higher preferences . As long as we can fit 2 locations with asterisks, we will be happy. We can even rail the places, if need be.
Can anyone advise?

Places I want to go

1. South AFrica (Capetown) *
2. Morocco *
3. Egypt
4. Budapest or Turkey
5. Russia (St Petersburg or Moscow) *
6. China (Xian) *
7. Vietnam *
8. Australia
9. New Zealand *
10. Hawaii
11. Argentina *
12. Uruguay
13. Southern Spain

I have contacted 2 RTW travel agencies online and it seem tough for them to price out most affordable fare - they look at the list and will give me an outrageous cost of $XX for all the places on the list, but the only option they will offer, is if I took out AUS/NZ, it will save this much. I'm looking for more help than that, telling me the best route for best price (most bang for the buck). For example, I want advice with hypothetical scenarios like:

"If you take route NYC->Buenas Aires-Morocco-China-Vietnam-NYC, that will be your best deal at $$"

"If you start from London->Spain->Morocco->Cape Town->Buenas Aires-NYC" it will be the same as above"

However, if you add Budapest, it will add an additional $300 to the fare

I know it is too much to ask for, so I'm hoping some past travelers can offer some advice.
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I guess this is a bit late to be of use to you, but maybe someone else will find this interesting. I'm planning a trip around Asia next year and I've been doing some researching. There are a lot of bus and train routes that can save you money instead of flying. For example, China has an extensive rail net. You can get between China and Russia, or China and Vietnam by train, very convenienty it seems. Another interesting tidbit for travellers: a bus route has just opened between Lhasa and Kathmandu. This is much much cheaoer than flying and as a bonus you get a bus ride through some beautiful mountains. I believe the trip takes three days, and it is quite inexpensive.

If anyone wants any China specific information, check out daveschina.com. I'll be adding some info about travelling between Asian countries over the next few days, so check it out if you're interested. Reply to this