Inscription - Huge server problem. One player with absolute AH control.

[Deleted]

I dont understand how scribes still think they can make money at the end of an expansion. Every other profession is sitting by, waiting for mists to drop so they can level up again, every single thread about AH manipulation is by scribes at this point, and you only buy a glyph once and forget about it.

Today, my seven day audit says 105k incoming, 30k outgoing gold on my inscription char, 75k profit this week. And I'm stockpiling inks, so that 30k it's more that I needed to craft. I would be honest saying that it has been a better week than most to me, but all that comes from glyphs, so I don't know why non-scribes think there is no money to be made, because "you only buy a glyph once".

The inscription market it's smaller than gems or enchants, but that doesn't mean there is less benefit. Just that you need to have less people selling. Considering that new scribes can't really enter the market (due to glyphs books), it's not that hard to profit if you happen to be in a server without someone specially annoying, that let 2-3 people do a fair profit. Or if you are that person on your server.

Btw, there has been a ban wave of bots or something? The last 2 days there are far less herbs on the AH and the prices are going up. I had almost finished stockpiling, but... yet I wanted a bit more. Don't know if someone else has decided to stockpile heavily, and is buying at every hour of the clock, though.

[Auxora]

This is always a tough and fine line, because when you have people that are online and in the AH constantly undercutting it can be real tough to tell the people manually doing that all day long legitimately vs. the guys botting. The people botting should be reported and perma-banned. I have no problem with that. But if you have someone obsessed with making gold who just sits in the AH, as annoying and frustrating as it is there is nothing technically wrong with that. There are times I've done it simply because I'm bored in the game (especially late expansion content) and treat the AH like a mini-game. But if he isn't botting or doing something else illicit, reporting won't do anything. Your best bet in that case is to either hope he gets bored and moves on to other things, find another market yourself, or you can always xfer to another realm with a more open economy. From playing on many realms I can tell you that there are plenty of those people around those in almost every market and every realm.

[ProphetFlume]

When reading this story I couldn't help but imagine you scribes screwed him over at some point, in some way. On that day he picked himself up, fisted his hands, and made a vow: to get revenge on you all and end your stranglehold on the market. He's kind of the Scribe Batman.

[Roseietree]

why did they stop us from selling shoulder enchants one day we could make a scroll and the next we could not and the ones i maded and sent to other toons are still in game so what gives

[Barky]

When reading this story I couldn't help but imagine you scribes screwed him over at some point, in some way. On that day he picked himself up, fisted his hands, and made a vow: to get revenge on you all and end your stranglehold on the market. He's kind of the Scribe Batman.

He's the hero Stormwind deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

[Blockygame]

Wonder what would happen limiting the amount of auctions posted at one time to 10 like D3 would do to these people?

[Deleted]

Yep, it would be very funny what that would do. Hint: your average player won't be happy at all.

[Deleted]

He's not on 24/7. I see this is a lot in these types of posts and it's simply not true but used to express a feeling of utter hopelessness. I have fought many of these types of players and I can assure you they do log off. In one case I fought the guy for months and sent many tickets to Blizzard and eventually he was banned and was part of a Chinese AH setup on my realm. I spoke to him once and he told me he was 16. Blizzard were very cool in the end and thanked me.

The big twist in your tale is saying he give gold away for free. This I find extremely hard to believe. You are saying this

- there is a guy on my realm who never logs off
- he has no money as he gives it all away in trade.

Think about that for a minute. I'm sorry but it's simply not true and I would perhaps even suggest you are fabricating that he gives it away as another of your feelings of hopelessness. Be honest with yourself. If you suspect he is taking the money out of the game and you have reasons to back it up, get Blizz involved, and be persistent. If you are making things up and he's a legitimate player and not taking money out of the game, get better, you can beat them. It's time vs time though, which is another whole ballgame. Life is quite short!

[Domiku]

Nothing wrong with gaming the AH. Another good thing for him to do would be just buy out the glyps people put in cheaper than his and resell at a higher price. I do this with gems and stuff.

You can do this on anything gems, gear, patterns, mounts etc etc.. Nothing wrong with it imo.. Pick up a better proff like mining. That way if the matts wont sell you can always craft stuff and sell that.

Or if you want to make a real shit tone of gold then buy mounts from TCG and sell them on AH for stupid money!, or you can buy items like pets, or gear and trade them to other factions AH..

I often buy like say epic legs for 5k on horde and then sell them on alliance for 10k. Double money in a few mins..

[looorg]

Wonder what would happen limiting the amount of auctions posted at one time to 10 like D3 would do to these people?

That would utterly kill the auctionhouse and market. Might really drive up the prices. Tradechat spam would increase. I guess you could post 10 items per toon, per day. So if desperate you would create and delete lv1:s as they spent their quota. Would become increadibly annoying.

[Banzhe]

Quite simple to break it really.., if there's 35 other scribes on your realm, the idea might be to gather a few of them and make 100+ glyphs of the most sold, start by undercutting with 75% of his price, if he buys them all sweet, if not you've broken his monopoly on that branch and can continue on the next.., in either case you'll be making gold and your problem is / should be solved.

( If he is on 24/7 he's clear running an ahbuddy, and as such the issue becomes even easier to deal with )

[Deleted]

Quite simple to break it really.., if there's 35 other scribes on your realm, the idea might be to gather a few of them and make 100+ glyphs of the most sold, start by undercutting with 75% of his price, if he buys them all sweet, if not you've broken his monopoly on that branch and can continue on the next.., in either case you'll be making gold and your problem is / should be solved.

( If he is on 24/7 he's clear running an ahbuddy, and as such the issue becomes even easier to deal with )

How have you broken his monopoly? All you have done is undercut him. he replies by undercutting back and then you reply the same way. It doesnt mean he will be making gold. An undercutting war can carry on for ages. All it would do is destroy the market.

If you read the op you will realise he doesnt have a lot of time and he doesnt have a lot of money. His competitor is more commited, experienced and has more time and money.It is unlikely he can win a war of attrition, but that would be more likely with the help of all the other scribes.

If you read further up the thread you will see he isnt on 24/7.

[Deleted]

Unless the said guy is botting or using other, forbidden means to keep up his work, I don't see anything being unfair here. If he has the time and patience to do something like that and you don't, well, sucks to be you. What he does with his money is not your business.

[BlackZero]

No no this is not correct at all ignore this assholes statement. Hes fucking up your servers econmoy report his ass and have every scribe you know do it and report the same claims. Make sure you give the GMs the time and exact details of when he says these things and if you can proof that he gives his gold away to the sellers. He will get banned so fast if you get multiple people to complain about him giving/selling gold to the sellers. He also might be using illegal add ons to make his transactions. Theres no way he spends that much time on the AH all day, he obviously has a bot that sits at the AH and does that. Which is totally illegal to, take some action and get his ass banned dude.

Dont listen to this dumb fuck above me.

What hes doing is not against any rules as long as hes not botting. Crying about playing the ah isnt really a concern of blizzard. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6819?page=4#80

Theres been countless threads about someone "controlling the Ah" and never once has anything been done. Stop wasting your time posting and go farm for yourself.

[Deleted]

He can't be crafting and posting at the same time. He might have 2 accounts but it's impossible to do both unless there is a bot controllign one of the two.

It is highly annoying because these types don't need the gold but you can beat them. He may have 10 stacks of each type of glyph but that isn't important. What you need to do is this (it will require about 50k odd gold).

1) Drive up the price of the herbs by buying the raw mats.
2) Find out what the rare (books or research) glyphs are for various specs that are mandatory (BiS). It's easy to work out what these glyphs are.
3) Post these glyphs about 20% below cost price and wait for him to undercut. Immediately buy them out. Keep doing this. He will be posting about 2/3 glyphs at a time. Sometimes they post 1 but that's not often. It won't take long to buy out all of his stock. More than likely, he won't realise what is up until he has sold a large part of them.
4) You can then sell these glyphs at a healthy profit but you will need to keep buying the herbs to keep the cost price high.

If he doesn't undercut you then you have posted below his threshold. You will need to slowly up the price until he does. The most important thing is to keep the herb prices high. You can mill these herbs and stockpile inks for cata and you will definitely make a lot of gold back on them because the buy down ink will go from blackfallow to the ink from the new herbs. Old herbs become rare while everyone is farming the new herbs for gold and glyphs go up.

Your only other alternative is to do a server transfer.

Such a seriously bad idea it's untrue.

1) he "could" be botting the herbs - you won't know for certain either way - so trying to control him by controlling the herbs may just leave you with large amounts of herbs.
2) the monopoly seller will certainly have done this if they have half a brain, if they are making anywhere near a decent amount of gold from this, they bought all the G Mastery books months and months ago to get everything the research couldnt teach them.
3) if 1) is true, then he is always makeing a profit, and will be happy you are buying his glyphs, like 1) you run the risk of being stuck with many glyphs which you have cunningly just crashed the market on, and he'll still outsell you w/e time you decide to try and sell.
4) Even if he isn't botting, there are many ppl offering "farming" services, so the chances are he's buying in bulk at a predetermined price from one or more mass herb sellers so your control of the AH really isn't affecting him at all.

But short of that, the person that puts the most time into the AH controls it / sells vastly more than anyone else.
You can certainly crash the market, but that's almost pointless as you'll be doing lots of effort for very little financial reward. Yes you will get some satisfaction from crashing it, but even if you keep it crashed for ages at some point you'll realise it's pointless and he'll just start back up again.

[Deleted]

Such a seriously bad idea it's untrue.

1) he "could" be botting the herbs - you won't know for certain either way - so trying to control him by controlling the herbs may just leave you with large amounts of herbs.
2) the monopoly seller will certainly have done this if they have half a brain, if they are making anywhere near a decent amount of gold from this, they bought all the G Mastery books months and months ago to get everything the research couldnt teach them.
3) if 1) is true, then he is always makeing a profit, and will be happy you are buying his glyphs, like 1) you run the risk of being stuck with many glyphs which you have cunningly just crashed the market on, and he'll still outsell you w/e time you decide to try and sell.
4) Even if he isn't botting, there are many ppl offering "farming" services, so the chances are he's buying in bulk at a predetermined price from one or more mass herb sellers so your control of the AH really isn't affecting him at all.

But short of that, the person that puts the most time into the AH controls it / sells vastly more than anyone else.
You can certainly crash the market, but that's almost pointless as you'll be doing lots of effort for very little financial reward. Yes you will get some satisfaction from crashing it, but even if you keep it crashed for ages at some point you'll realise it's pointless and he'll just start back up again.

Pointed out already byt what gertryde said is correct. Gray matters advice would most likely be innefective and lose you a lot of money.

There is a point in destroying a market but I tend to think of it as vandalism. You can always make enemies and then if he wnats to make you lose money or be hampered in other areas then a player can go after you on the ah.

[Marema]

This could be me! I also control the market on gems, pvp gear, volatiles and anything else I can make a gold at. Take it from somebody who 'controls' the AH on my server; either learn how to sell or spend your time doing something else. It really isn't hard to make gold. You can also use the trade channel. One trick I love doing is I'll reset a market, post the goods for crazy prices on my AH alt, log on one of my 85's and then post in trade chat that I'm selling whatever for 1/2 the AH price, which is still way more than what I paid for that item. But yeah, unless this guy is getting his herbs by botting or something else, then there is nothing you can do. I've had countless people report me for owning the AH but since my entire stock comes from buying off the same AH there aren't any 'laws' being broken.

[Gray_Matter]

Such a seriously bad idea it's untrue.

1) he "could" be botting the herbs - you won't know for certain either way - so trying to control him by controlling the herbs may just leave you with large amounts of herbs.
2) the monopoly seller will certainly have done this if they have half a brain, if they are making anywhere near a decent amount of gold from this, they bought all the G Mastery books months and months ago to get everything the research couldnt teach them.
3) if 1) is true, then he is always makeing a profit, and will be happy you are buying his glyphs, like 1) you run the risk of being stuck with many glyphs which you have cunningly just crashed the market on, and he'll still outsell you w/e time you decide to try and sell.
4) Even if he isn't botting, there are many ppl offering "farming" services, so the chances are he's buying in bulk at a predetermined price from one or more mass herb sellers so your control of the AH really isn't affecting him at all.

But short of that, the person that puts the most time into the AH controls it / sells vastly more than anyone else.
You can certainly crash the market, but that's almost pointless as you'll be doing lots of effort for very little financial reward. Yes you will get some satisfaction from crashing it, but even if you keep it crashed for ages at some point you'll realise it's pointless and he'll just start back up again.

1) It's quite easy to bump up the AH prices on herbs. You just need to push up the prices to about 40g per stack of Whiptail or something like that. I routinely buy all of the Whiptail, Cinderbloom and Stormvine on the AH and I am on a high population server. It's about bumping up the cost price of the glyphs. You will need the herbs anyway before MoP because you will no longer be able to use Blackfallow inks to buy the lower inks. You can also make DM cards with the off cuts.
2) It's not about what he has, it's about having the best glyphs to sell and those are them.
3) They normally don't buy you out, they just stop selling or under cut you again and again. He will just make glyphs for you or you will find out what his break point is.
4) Maybe not, but it's not about what his cost actually is, it's about what his auto AH tool thinks the cost is. There is a big differenece.

I successfully forced one of these guys out of the market using the tactics above. Yes, I did need a lot of gold but it worked. I started by posting at 20g per glyph, then 19g, all the way down to 14g which was basically break even. This was for every single glyph on the AH and I can make them all. He stopped posting when I did 20g. After a couple of days, he started undercutting that so I just moved lower. Each time moving below his threshold. At 14g, I wouldn't even post every day, I just post on the AH and check back 2 days later and did it again. Yes, it hurt because I was breaking even or even losing a bit for about 2 weeks. I made it back on the DM decks that I sold from it. I made about 25 decks for the next faire or something like that.

[Vrexia]

This sounds similar to something I do on my server. I suspect we are not hearing the whole story here.

People on my server (and every server, probably) like to try to list vendor items with unlimited supply for excessively large amounts of gold, formula: enchant weapon - executioner for example. I buy thousands of these and list them for cost+deposit just so resellers cannot rip people off on those items. A small amount of resellers hate me, and an overwhelmingly large amount of buyers do not. I find this highly amusing and fun.

The guy on your server sounds like he might have some similar thing going on. Especially if he's taunting glyph sellers in trade.

His motives don't sound like they include financial gain. Some men just want to watch the world burn. That world, in this case, being your likely inflated cost glyph market.

[Deleted]

Gray matter the ah person sounds as though he has substantial resources and likely to know his way round. Your plan is poor because inflating the price of ah herbs will only affect him if he is using the ah to acquire herbs. Destroying markets is easy. The reason your plan fails is because the guy has other sources to make his glyphs and far more resources in time and gold than the op.

Imaginary has a more realistic approach by destroying anyones chance of making a profit, which is very hard to compete with. I disagree only on the fact the other guy who the op is complaining about is just an average ah addict.