I love playing the auction house in games. I've noticed something bizarre in Guild Wars 2. This has occurred more than once. A lot more.
I regularly hit refresh to check the supply/demand before buying stock and I've noticed this a hell of a lot.
The weird thing is I have noticed when there is an item with about 50% profit potential suddenly getting a random "sell order" of a few hundred of the item being put on the Auction House for exactly 15% above the buy orders (which is the break-even point for profit).
It's has the effect of normalizing the market and making it almost impossible to make a good return. This sell order is completely weird as it is often several copper below the current bid, BUT exactly 15% higher than the highest buy order.
For example, there will be a LOT of Ancient Bones will be on for 30copper and they are selling for 44copper. Suddenly, out of nowhere, 200 sell orders will appear for 35 copper (exactly 15% markup. The result? Everyone puts items on for 35 copper for the next while. If the demand is high, those at 35 copper are snatched up, but usually, it drives down the price considerably. Speculators can't make money at all. People can't sell their gathered items for a decent profit and it is exceptionally hard to make money in the game. Crafting is a waste of time as you can generally buy for cheaper than making a profit out of crafting.
I have been staring at the AH and hitting refresh for well over 20 hours as playing the AH is a pastime of mine. This is occurring way too often to be a fluke. I should be making a lot of money with this. I made 14,000 gold in Vanilla WoW and got gold-capped regularly in WoW. I made Billions in ISK in EvE (which IS a semi-controlled AH, but I STILL made huge profits and money)
Is ArenaNet deliberately automatically injecting stock sell orders into the Auction House to artificially keep prices low? There would be no way of telling as you don't know WHO buys your stock.
I can't see speculators like myself doing this. The result is that it is very hard to make money. Sorry to don the tin foil cap, but I have noticed this several times on several high-trading / high profit potential items. I've made a bit of cash, but this anomoly has me very concerned and frustrated. I am definately beginning to feel the Auction House is rigged.
I love the game, but after a week of playing the AH, compared to other stock markets and auction houses I have played, something seems a bit "off".