How some jerks succeed on the Auction House.

[Deleted]

Below is a transcript of my latest video.
TL;DR - Video link.
TL;DW:
Some players do massive undercuts on consumable items like glyphs, and make their money of getting their auctions bought out to initiate a price reset. I bitch about it (somewhat succinctly) for five minutes.

You may or may not know this by now, but I sell glyphs on the auction house.
I don’t sell nearly as many these days, but hopefully throughout Legion I’ll enjoy the same prosperity I have been in the previous five years I’ve been in this market.

The fast moving consumables market is a metagame that isn’t for everyone, but it draws some basic similarities to WoW’s main game and other MMOs. There’s what I’d call the pve market, where you’d have the usual customers that come around and make a few purchases, sometimes many purchases. Then there’s the non-combat pvp initiated between other sellers, and I’m not talking about simple undercutting to make your listing to be the most attractive sell, but deals and negotiations. And in the case I’m bringing up today, some of the outright nasty but albeit clever and perfectly legal tactics some players use to profit.

There’s only one rule in the Auction House, and that’s to make profit. And the first lesson to learn in order to conquer your market is to know that you can’t conquer your market, at least, not without burning it to the ground. In a healthy market, prices are controlled by supply and demand principles and not a single person, which allows many sellers to profit fairly, and buyers to not think that we sellers are a jackass oligarchy. I set my maximum price of glyphs at 500g, which is pretty much ridiculous but I’ve got to set it to something, so I’ll shoot for the moon. There have been a lot of bad vendors I’ve competed against and I’m not going to go into all the types I’ve encountered, but I’ll just focus on one today. I call this one the Joker, who mostly wants to watch the world burn.

As an example, I sell glyphs at 500g, but there’s the Joker with five separate auctions at very different prices, all with a 48 hour duration. It'll cost a few hundred gold for me to reset this auction.

The Joker’s intention, like all of us vendors, is to make some profit. But the Joker doesn’t have time to check and repost like the no-life Auction House whores he’d have to compete with. He goes around this. Here’s how it works.
He’ll create enough inventory to cast a net wide enough to cover the market, and with only 40 or so types of glyphs out at the moment, that’s not hard to do. Then he’ll post them all with these parameters set, then just kick back and relax.

One of two things will happen from here. One is simply, nothing. As you can see, most of the vendors could care less and will blindly undercut till their face turns blue or margins turn red. Joker ain’t making a dime off of this. The other possibility will come from who I’ll call an “enabler”, who is the actual target market of the Joker, and is in fact the center of his business plan altogether.
The enabler is a fellow vendor who’s very knowledgeable about the market and is aware of the fastest moving items, or glyphs in this case. Not one to settle for low profits, the enabler will buy out cheap auctions, including some of the Joker’s auctions, and repost them at a higher price, somewhere below the 500g I set. It’s smart move on the enabler’s part, but that’s what allows the Joker to sell anything at all.

So the enabler profits by being observant and proactive to maximize gains. The Joker profits by forcing frustrated vendors to buy out his auctions, and has the advantage of not having to actively post. In fact if the Joker posted too frequently, the enabler would probably be less likely to buy him out. No one really loses here, especially regular buyers who get to enjoy low prices. The thing is though, these prices aren’t what I’d call natural. If left alone, these prices can be higher. In fact other forces in the market will no doubt be affected, but I’ll limit my ranting to just the selling of glyphs.

So what do I, what does a Soulmachine do to profit? Play the long game. Jokers post slowly because they have to. In this case I’m trying to contact vendors that might be enabling the Joker’s behavior and if they stop, the Joker’s profits dry up. These types of players typically last few weeks, maybe a month or so, before they get tired of their minimal efforts yielding no result. Then they go away. Maybe for a while, maybe for good. Then prices slowly recover for the entire market, not just a select few items.

In an ideal and competitive market, I’ll post somewhat light; a single auction at a time with a 12 hour duration. I’m totally cool with letting the next vendor nab a sale. It makes them happy. Happy vendors make a happy market. When it’s clear that a single person is undercutting within moments of posting, vendors get frustrated and angry. Angry vendors become Jokers, or some other type of toxic vendor. I’ve learned that being cooperative and open to negotiation to other vendors pays off more than being the most frequent poster.

There’s one bit of feedback that I have for Blizzard about the Auction House, well maybe more like a question, but what if Blizzard got rid of the 48 hour option? Or just locked post durations to 24, even 12 hours? I only have experience backing up my opinion, but the 48 hour duration may be good for slow, low quantity markets like gear, mounts and pets. But faster, high quantity markets like glyphs, potions and enchants are vulnerable to ridiculous undercuts that are tantamount to, again my opinion, trolling, or damaging what I’ll call the “spirit of commerce.” Getting rid of 48 hour auctions won’t “solve” anything, but I think it’ll do a small part in mitigating this sort of behavior.

That suggestion is pretty controversial since very little about the Auction House has changed since launch, apart from how it’s accessed. But I’d like to hear some thoughts on if this old system needs to be looked at, or is even this too much? Laissez faire; the market will repair itself. Maybe.

So some jerk can play the auction house better than you and you cried about it in detail? Maybe it's just me but I'm pretty sure there are other things to waste your time on than crying after you lose.

[Deleted]

i undercut by a lot just so i can trigger these salty people like OP and have a laugh at these pathetic wall of texts

[Noxina]

There is no "normal" value there is just the price you want and whether someone is willing to pay it. If you manage to match these two things then you re a happy seller. I don't see wrong with undercutting but over 1c undercut you cut from your own gold. If you re fine with it no problem.

Of course there is a normal market price. It's the average price an item is sold for. See those percentages on the right side? 100% is the normal market value, while he post it at over 2000%. Sure he might sell it, if no one else try to contest with the prices. And if people undercut with too much, buy it up and resell at higher price. If he wanted to he could be sitting there buying out all the glyphs to resell at his 500g gold tag if he really wanted. Would it take time? Sure, but when one glyph is sold for 20g, and he buys it, he can buy 20 of those if he sells on for his 500g.

[Maudib]

Something else...

I log in 2-3 times a day and check my auctions. All the time I see people who are using TSM to undercut me by 1c. I relist ay 1c and they do the same.. again.

So I say screw it and list for hundreds of gold less. If the asshat didn't keep that relisting crap going on.. I would have sold my ONE thing and he'd have the low price again. Instead he is playing this so-called "metagame"... and stomping all over MY casual use.

So I really have NO sympathy for those people.

- - - Updated - - -

Something else...

I log in 2-3 times a day and check my auctions. All the time I see people who are using TSM to undercut me by 1c. I relist ay 1c and they do the same.. again.

So I say screw it and list for hundreds of gold less. If the asshat didn't keep that relisting crap going on.. I would have sold my ONE thing and he'd have the low price again. Instead he is playing this so-called "metagame"... and stomping all over MY casual use.

So I really have NO sympathy for those people.

- - - Updated - - -

If the OP truly believed that the market can sustain the volume... he would list his items at 1c OVER his competitors instead of undercutting... but no... it's HIS auctions he wants to sell.. .and since is online often playing the metagame... keeps reposting more items to sell... never allowing his competition to get any of the marketshare... except when he sleeps.

[xpose]

Isn't this basically self promotion?



Also I had no idea anyone took the AH this seriously :P

Making in-game currency is how some people enjoy the game. It's the equivalent of playing as a merchant


People like myself, who just want fast gold will flood the market and undercut people enough so they just purchase my shit automatically so they can list it themselves.

[Servos]

I list a pet for 10G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist
I list a pet for 100G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist
I list a pet for 1000G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist.

Eventually I will get to a price that the AHer will not be willing to do the flip. That is the 'price' of the item in the market.

So if you think the price of something should be 500G, you should have a mass buy out of anything from 475G down, and it's 'easy money' for you. But maybe the price isn't actually 500G it turns out. FREE MARKET.

[Tijuana]

I'll bet not one person complaining about the AH in this thread has ever ran a business. You are literally complaining because other players compete with you on price, and don't join in on your price fixing. You are mad that people in game are not doing something that is illegal in real life (price fixing). GG....

[Jewsco]

I list a pet for 10G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist
I list a pet for 100G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist
I list a pet for 1000G that consistently sells for 10,000 G, what would most AH'ers do? Buy and relist.

Eventually I will get to a price that the AHer will not be willing to do the flip. That is the 'price' of the item in the market.

So if you think the price of something should be 500G, you should have a mass buy out of anything from 475G down, and it's 'easy money' for you. But maybe the price isn't actually 500G it turns out. FREE MARKET.

Well said this post is exactly right. If they are undercutting you by a lot and you know you can sell x item for more buy it up and thank them for the free gold they just made you. If they are doing the 1 copper undercut let it sell and you will be the lowest again eventually. Also if one limits themselves to one market that has a limited shelf life like glyphs they can't complain about the market. Get into thjngs that sell more regularly like raids mats ,food, potions and flasks, and as long as you put your items up Tuesday thru Friday you will sell a lot of stuff. Just stay away on weekends as they seem to sell less then and part time players seem on more and undercut more often. If anything buy on the weekends to have more to sell during the week.

[crazyman2]

And the other thing here

There's two parts to every market - demand and supply.

The demand on glyphs might be high enough that a buyer is willing to pay 500g for one, but when you have something with virtually unlimited, low cost supply, it doesn't take much for the price to fall on competition.

If you're desperate to hold the market you can try controlling supply (buying out everyone and resetting), but it's so easy and cheap for any scribe to buy the herbs and craft it for a fraction of the price, if someone really felt that 25g was a fair price, they could craft them faster than you're selling them at 500g and still make profit. That's why the true market price isn't really 500g.

[risingforce]

Hi,

You need to learn TSM to compete in the Glyphs market.

The glyphs market is also quite unsettled right now, and I'm not really sure it's ever going to be as profitable as before; there are still players who think Glyphs are no longer in the game, for example which means demand is not quite as high as it could be.

I used to run a spreadsheet that pulled data from TheUndermineJournal's live data API, I'd then use that to post stuff by hand. The spreadsheet had profit margins and fancy tables -tables and tables -which I'd then export into a string for ArkInventory (addon) so when I log into WoW I'd be really organised. Such a lot of work -I was proud of it, and I have a lot of Gold from it.

But... it's TradeSkillMaster nowadays. TSM is really a diverse toolkit, and can be used in so many ways. If you want to post more than (in my opinion) 20~30 auctions/crafts then you need to take a day/weekend/week (whatever it takes!!) to learn TSM; once you have it setup across all your alts and of course for your AH seller you will be ready to compete in most markets.

Here's the thing though, JC and Glyphs require TSM. No arguments. If you want to profit from JC and Glyphs you need to Post/Cancel/Reset your markets to make regular Gold, and post at 12hr intervals. With TSM it's doable by hand.

You'll always be competing against bots, yes, but that's another argument and one which Blizzard (it seems) is taking more proactively than ever before.

TLDR get yourself TSM, you need it for Glyphs market and get your Post/Cancel/Reset on otherwise stop bitching and move on.

Cheers