Purposely Ruining the Economy

[Surihn]

Recently, there as been a player on my server who is purposely ruining the prices of the gem market. It doesn't matter what the price is at, they put their gems up for hundreds and hundreds of gold less. Many people would say, just buy all of their gems and re-post them, the problem is they just re-post more gems immediately after at the same extremely low price. What can I do about this? Wait until they get bored of ruining the economy and move on?

I recall reading somewhere that Blizzard generally frowns upon people ruining the economy and will take action if it is to an extreme enough extent. Please don't misinterpret this as me whining about being undercut; I understand that is a completely normal thing when playing the Auction house, as is is the main aspect of the game that I enjoy. It just seems to me that undercutting like this is an attempt to pretty much troll people, supported by the fact that this player is often starting fights, and being generally abrupt in trade chat whenever I look at it.

Would just like to know if anyone else has seen/dealt with something like this, I have the bankroll to buyout all the gems but no time to sell them after due to immediate re-post.

[usiris]

You've encountered a goblin....best to just move on.

[Felrane]

you said hundreds and hundreds of gold less, sounds more like he is doing everyone a favor and doesn't really care about the gold.

[Deleted]

It's possible to get banned for manipulating the economy but it's very hard to prove. The cases I've heard about are usually when players form a monopoly on the auction house, rather than just one person who has a lot of stock to sell. Surely eventually he will run out of gems if he's constantly doing it?

If he's posting them literally the second they're sold throughout the day, he may be running a bot - and that's definitely something you can report for.

[Linkedblade]

Perpetually buy him out. Then we he no longer has gems, profit.

[Surihn]

Perpetually buy him out. Then we he no longer has gems, profit.

This is what I planned to do, but it seems like he just keeps making more, and as Felrane said doesn't seem like he cares about the gold. Yet again, they could run of out of money sooner or later because I can't see how they are making more than possibly at the most 5g a gem.

[slime]

you said hundreds and hundreds of gold less, sounds more like he is doing everyone a favor and doesn't really care about the gold.

Gotta agree here. Hundreds and hundreds of gold less on a single gem means this guy is the only non-asshat JC on your realm.

[MrExcelion]

What server? And that's odd with gems, given they go for 50-100g on my server. Don't see how it'd be hundreds less. Haven't seen those prices since DS epic gems.

[pucca]

blizzard doesn't care about the auction house + he isn't ruining the economy by selling affordable gems

there's a great spreadsheet on stormspire to calculate prices, even if you buy everything (ore + golden lotos) you can sell them for less than the lotus costs and still make profit:
http://stormspire.net/tools-programs...readsheet.html

[Alroxas]

Recently, there as been a player on my server who is purposely ruining the prices of the gem market. It doesn't matter what the price is at, they put their gems up for hundreds and hundreds of gold less.

Is this not capitalism? Lest we be in a communist state or engage in price fixing?

[Rayaleith]

Maybe he just wants to get rid of his huge stock. Do him the favor buying all his stash :P

[Anzen]

If he has the stock and availability of gems you say he has, chances are he's botting. It's common to bot gathering (easily the best way to make money from botting) and then just sell all the mats really cheap to whip up a quick profit (the fact there's no time investment means whatever price you sells them for is a profit to you).

Botting is of course against the ToS and so is abuse of economy, though the latter is in extreme circumstances.

[Tenjen]

check his behaviour if he's a bot.

this behaviour isn't actually "helpful" and "non asshat". Collapsing a means of earning gold, means there is less gold around to buy other items with.

ofcourse with the general glut of gold, this doesnt matter as much..but gems aren't the only market bots target.

[Deleted]

Gems for hundreds and hundreds of gold less?

Sounds to me like this guy is doing your server a favour. Gems on my server average around 50g, anymore than that is just daylight robbery.

- - - Updated - - -

This is what I planned to do, but it seems like he just keeps making more, and as Felrane said doesn't seem like he cares about the gold. Yet again, they could run of out of money sooner or later because I can't see how they are making more than possibly at the most 5g a gem.

If he's making around 5g profit per gem then he's not going to "run out of money", lol.

- - - Updated - - -

this behaviour isn't actually "helpful" and "non asshat". Collapsing a means of earning gold, means there is less gold around to buy other items with.

It's very helpful actually. You can go down 2 roads.

1) Buy him out and relist.

2) Adapt to the new gem prices and have more overall sales (people buying for alts or temporary replacements, etc), and make the game a better place.

[Anzen]

It's very helpful actually. You can go down 2 roads.

1) Buy him out and relist.

2) Adapt to the new gem prices and have more overall sales (people buying for alts or temporary replacements, etc), and make the game a better place.

The guy you posted is referring to his behaviour if he was a bot, and I don't think there's any denying that bots ruin the economy.

[Noima]

If it was me I would be buying him out until I had a good stockpile of low priced gems waiting in my bag to tide my AH activities over for 2 weeks or so. Then just wait him out until he gets bored of it, and start listing them up once they price is back to where it should be.

At 5g / gem you can get yourself 2000 cut gems for only 10k/g. Quite a small investment for potential HUGE profit in a couple weeks or so. Plus if you can't unload them all before expansion they vendor for 4g anyway so you won't lose much at all.

[Anzen]

If it was me I would be buying him out until I had a good stockpile of low priced gems waiting in my bag to tide my AH activities over for 2 weeks or so. Then just wait him out until he gets bored of it, and start listing them up once they price is back to where it should be.

At 5g / gem you can get yourself 2000 cut gems for only 10k/g. Quite a small investment for potential HUGE profit in a couple weeks or so. Plus if you can't unload them all before expansion they vendor for 4g anyway so you won't lose much at all.

Following from what this guy said, there is huge opportunity from this. If he is botting, likehood is that flooding the AH like this will get him banned pretty quickly. If he's not a bot, he'll get burnt out -eventually- so if you can wait out this point, you could potentially make a killing from being able to buy out all his gems.

Pretty big project though with a lot of patience needed.

[Vargur]

Is this not capitalism? Lest we be in a communist state or engage in price fixing?

It's Blizzard and it's not sandbox. Players don't have the ultimate word, it's a dev driven economy instead

Many gems just means he bought/mined/botted a lot of ore and can't sell that ore fast enough. It does takes space you know.
Also, some people aren't informed enough about expac dates, it's possible someone missinformed that person about the release date being earlier.

[Mosotti]

I did the same thing when a motherfucker made all the glyphs 500g. I flooded the AH with 75g glyphs

[Lubricious]

Having toons on multiple servers, if your server has individual gems going for hundreds and hundreds of gold in the first place, the prices are way overinflated. This sounds a lot less like market dumping, and a lot more like he's the only guy not engaging in price fixing practices to artificially inflate gem values.