GW2 Auction House Rigged/Fixed?

[Zdrasti]

It's what the Greedy Goblin would call M&S (morons and slackers) affecting the market.

After seeing the Goblin's commentary in EVE, I don't think he's worth echoing.

---------- Post added 2012-09-18 at 10:13 PM ----------

why does it have to b Anet thats doing this and not some gold selling company?

Exactly. It's easy (lazy) to blame the company than to envision other entirely practical explanations. The same is true with many encounters in the game. People will immediately shout that its bugged without even trying to see if maybe they are doing something wrong (and in a number of cases its actually the latter).

[carnifex2005]

After seeing the Goblin's commentary in EVE, I don't think he's worth echoing.

So he's moved on from WoW? I haven't followed him in years. He did help when me make a ton of gold when he reported about how under served the glyph market was but he was always a one trick pony. I'm sure he's getting killed by EVE.

[Ashnazg]

If they are doing it, it's probably just to stop people from, like you said, buying copper at 30s and selling for 44c. Activity like this, while very popular among market-savvy gamers, really takes way from the full game experience. It's almost as if they want people to play the actual game, rather than just playing the market. ANet has been pretty big on the whole 'just play the game' concept since the beginning. Just a thought.

Don't be ridiculous. Anet doesn't want you to play the actual game, they want to eliminate ways of getting gold quick, so that people buy gold with gems, and not gems with gold.

[parcus]

Don't be ridiculous. Anet doesn't want you to play the actual game, they want to eliminate ways of getting gold quick, so that people buy gold with gems, and not gems with gold.

Sure, because by making the masses able to buy just about everything they need with worthless silver they are surely putting pressure on them to buy the gems.

If you want to make profits off speculation, you'd better be willing to take risks, blaming Anet is not going to take you anywhere.

[carnifex2005]

Sure, because by making the masses able to buy just about everything they need with worthless silver they are surely putting pressure on them to buy the gems.

If you want to make profits off speculation, you'd better be willing to take risks, blaming Anet is not going to take you anywhere.

True. This is starting to sound like the people who blame the Bilderberg Group for causing their stock picks to go in the toilet.

[Zdrasti]

So he's moved on from WoW? I haven't followed him in years. He did help when me make a ton of gold when he reported about how under served the glyph market was but he was always a one trick pony. I'm sure he's getting killed by EVE.

From what I understand he makes a decent profit there too, but it's not hard if you know market basics. But he doesn't make enough to matter to anyone but the impoverished (After nearly a year I think he's almost saved up enough to pay for a titan, which I guess would be the equivalent of a single rare mount run). Yet since he doesn't leave Jita, he doesn't understand the basic fundamentals of the game. But still tries to preach to the masses and embarrasses himself regularly. Might make for a funny killmail once he finally buys a titan and takes it for a spin =-p

[Galaddriel]

What is odd, is the rare dyes, Abyss, Midnight Ice, Midnight Fire and Celestial. The most sought after ones.
So whats so strange?

Verify this yourself, there is always no matter time of day or night, 1 or 2 of each, no more, no less, and price fixed between 2g - 5g.
Kinda impossible to always be only 1 or 2 in stock, and the price fluctuates between that gold number, so it's not like they're not being sold.

I'm of the opinion that this is fixed pricing by ArenaNet.

What you are seeing Snow, is the number of listings at that price.
If you drill down you will see all the listing for a particular dye.

[scudder5000]

What is odd, is the rare dyes, Abyss, Midnight Ice, Midnight Fire and Celestial. The most sought after ones.
So whats so strange?

Verify this yourself, there is always no matter time of day or night, 1 or 2 of each, no more, no less, and price fixed between 2g - 5g.
Kinda impossible to always be only 1 or 2 in stock, and the price fluctuates between that gold number, so it's not like they're not being sold.

I'm of the opinion that this is fixed pricing by ArenaNet.

I just checked those dyes and there is over 20 of each one on the tp right now.

[Zdrasti]

I just checked those dyes and there is over 20 of each one on the tp right now.

Clearly Arenanet is monitoring this forum and has responded quickly to thwart your uncovering their evil scheme!

[Cthulhu 2020]

I see a lot of people have very avid experience with a small market that is easy to control by individuals with small amounts of money (WoW) but have very limited experience with massive markets that are much harder to control. I do think there are a few bugs that people are taking advantage of, and arenanet has yet to work them all out of the system, but I seriously doubt arenanet is doing much in the way of price fixing or diddling of the market.

If anything, the 5% listing fee and the 10% sell fee is probably there to discourage people buying low and posting for gratuitous amounts.

[Remilia]

With the sheer volume of trades, "gaming" the AH is extremely hard without a massive starting capital, just like it was in most games. Starting capital needs to be big enough in relation to entire AH. In games with many separate AHs like EVE and WoW, your starting capital could be far lower to effectively play the AH, while competition was far weaker.

Not really, it's a slow and needed patience process in order to start gaming the trading post. I know a friend that has started playing with it at level 30. Starting only with about 25s and slowly making gold and eventually able to move up to higher rewards higher risk. Afterwards at 80 is gaming for 25-50s gains sometimes.

There isn't really a need to inject anything into the market.

WvWvW siege items cost money / keep upgrades / whatever else.
Repair costs on any death including PvP.
5% posting, 10% tax in trading.
Reducing money gain from dungeons.
Very poor vendor.
25% tax on gem selling.
No more currency conversions.
High waypoint fees.

There is no such thing as controlling the economy in a free economy except by forcibly injecting or forcibly reducing the gain and increasing the payments for things. Whether they do this for gains, no idea, no point speculating, but it shouldn't be needed with the already implemented above.

[SirRobin]

Yeah, I'm not saying that Arena Net wouldn't do it if they felt the need too. Just that when you have hundreds of thousands using the TP and "third-party" players on top of it? I don't really see any need for Arena Net to manipulate the market.

[Deleted]

If the market's running well enough then there will tend to be just a 15% spread between the buy and sell orders - that would be the market running at 100% efficiency (in a perfect market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_market.

The market isn't there for you to make a fast buck - if it is then there's probably something wrong with it. As people have said the bigger the market, generally, the tighter it's going to be. If there's no margin at all then people won't bother but that margin could be very small.

I've never played the market in Eve but I do put in very competitive sell orders on items I obtained through play where the spread was big enough because I could make more isk that way but competitive enough to sell quickly as I was only allowed to place so many orders concurrently. Likewise, I would place competitive bids for big items I knew I would need 'soon'. People used to moan about this type of behaviour too but it made complete sense - just not to the people who were trying to 'play' the market.

Just remember not everyone is playing the same 'game' as you .

[Kerath]

I've given up trying to understand the Trading Post. I've never been much of a one to play the auction house etc, but even this just boggles my mind - people putting up buy orders for lower than vendor price (sellers physically CANNOT sell for lower than vendor price, the system doesn't let you - I've noticed this when putting something on trading post and it first shows you the existing buy orders), also those people selling for 1 or 2 copper above vendor price - resulting in a net loss due to listing fees and the TP cut.
Makes absolutely no sense >.<

[Kelimbror]

What is odd, is the rare dyes, Abyss, Midnight Ice, Midnight Fire and Celestial. The most sought after ones.
So whats so strange?

Verify this yourself, there is always no matter time of day or night, 1 or 2 of each, no more, no less, and price fixed between 2g - 5g.
Kinda impossible to always be only 1 or 2 in stock, and the price fluctuates between that gold number, so it's not like they're not being sold.

I'm of the opinion that this is fixed pricing by ArenaNet.

I think you would be confusing something that is rare with a company running a scam.

I got the Midnight Ice Dye on my warrior and at the time there were two others on the AH. I put up my auction and then there were 3. There's nothing fishy about it. I even thought hard about using it myself, which would have kept 2 on there and reinforced the tin foil hattery. Until people find multiples of the same rare and try and post them all at the same time with documented proof, there's nothing that can be gained by thinking it works any different.

[Snowmist]

Clearly Arenanet is monitoring this forum and has responded quickly to thwart your uncovering their evil scheme!

lol - yeh i know my tin foil hat is rusty.

[ceno]

All I know is that it's near impossible to make a decent return buying low and selling high. I tried on multiple occasions. What is weird is how fast the price changes when you want to resell what you bought. I kept an eye on gold ore for about 30min. The price stayed within 24c-25c for the entire time. I bid ordered 3000 gold ore at 19c and then checked the price of gold ore again. Suddenly without warning the price drops to 20c each. At the price I was bidding, there would be no way for me to make any money off that ore so I cancelled the orders.

I decided to go small and buy 250 gold ore at 19c just as a test. I bought it and put it back up for 24c. It all sold within 15min. I only made like 2s profit. Now based on such a small profit I would have to buy thousands and thousands of ore in order to make it worth the effort. In 15min I could do like 2 quests and make 2s plus anything I get off mobs.

There are things that also make me think something isn't quite right with the TP. You would think with hundreds of thousands of players playing this game you would see more than 3 of any given item in the TP. It just seems odd that certain highly sought for items in the TP fluctuate around 3-5 at any given time but never go any higher. It's hard to believe with so many players playing this game we don't see way more of those items. Like the TP is artificially being controlled to force you to spend money on gems to get gold instead of making in-game only. Example: Only 3 Dusk swords in the TP at any given time and how many players playing GW2?

Seems to me the only effective way to make money in GW2 is to either buy gems and convert to gold or work your ass off hour after hour farming everything you can and selling it in the TP or vendor it. Because right now the TP is so tight with prices to the point where it's within a copper or two of vendor price it's not worth the effort to play the ah. I'm not saying no one can, but it's extremely difficult.

[Karizee]

The same is true with many encounters in the game. People will immediately shout that its bugged without even trying to see if maybe they are doing something wrong (and in a number of cases its actually the latter).

Lol, this is so true. I can't tell you how many times I've come across players thinking that an event is bugged and I say did you interact with this doohickie here/talk to that NPC there? And they run off THANKS!

95% of the events that people are saying are bugged are really people not knowing how to do them. Why just an hour or so ago I went to Malchor's Leap and some people were trying to do the Lyssa event, some were saying it was bugged that they had been trying it for 1/2 hour. Well, they weren't holding the seals, lol. Me and a couple others went over, held the seals and poof, finished the event. Big fat chest, fun had by all ;-)

Quite hilarious really.

---------- Post added 2012-12-09 at 12:15 PM ----------

It's almost impossible to control a market with millions of players. We've seen a couple players try, but it doesn't last long. One market I watch is Giant Eye(s). Every couple days someone will buy up everything under 2g and relist. Lasts maybe an hour before it equalizes back out again.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24370

There is very little money to be made from crafting, there are very, very few unique recipes/patterns and you've got millions of people leveling the same crafts - remember we can each learn all of them!

Things selling for just a copper or two above vendor price is because there is SUCH a glut of loot in this game. People will unload their bags onto the TP rather than wp-ing back to a vendor.

[Barcasaur]

I like guild wars 2 a lot, and i came off of playing 7,736 hours across my 10 characters in warcraft.

is it sad that i just wish the market was not like this? i just want to play guild wars 2, but have a TP per sever, have a monthly fee instead of a store currency.

When i play guild wars 2 i have fun, but i feel like short of just buying gems it takes far to long to get what i need or want, and if i bought gems id damn sure be spending more then 15 a month on those things.

[Lolsteak]

All I know is that it's near impossible to make a decent return buying low and selling high. I tried on multiple occasions. What is weird is how fast the price changes when you want to resell what you bought. I kept an eye on gold ore for about 30min. The price stayed within 24c-25c for the entire time. I bid ordered 3000 gold ore at 19c and then checked the price of gold ore again. Suddenly without warning the price drops to 20c each. At the price I was bidding, there would be no way for me to make any money off that ore so I cancelled the orders.

I decided to go small and buy 250 gold ore at 19c just as a test. I bought it and put it back up for 24c. It all sold within 15min. I only made like 2s profit. Now based on such a small profit I would have to buy thousands and thousands of ore in order to make it worth the effort. In 15min I could do like 2 quests and make 2s plus anything I get off mobs.

There are things that also make me think something isn't quite right with the TP. You would think with hundreds of thousands of players playing this game you would see more than 3 of any given item in the TP. It just seems odd that certain highly sought for items in the TP fluctuate around 3-5 at any given time but never go any higher. It's hard to believe with so many players playing this game we don't see way more of those items. Like the TP is artificially being controlled to force you to spend money on gems to get gold instead of making in-game only. Example: Only 3 Dusk swords in the TP at any given time and how many players playing GW2?

Seems to me the only effective way to make money in GW2 is to either buy gems and convert to gold or work your ass off hour after hour farming everything you can and selling it in the TP or vendor it. Because right now the TP is so tight with prices to the point where it's within a copper or two of vendor price it's not worth the effort to play the ah. I'm not saying no one can, but it's extremely difficult.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's people flipping precursers, there's probably a small amount of profit in it.

As for making money, i've been averaging around 5 gold per Fractal run so i wouldn't call it that hard.