auction house bans

[anthell]

after being told several stories and read post regarding people manipulating the AH, anyone can further explain to me what are the limitations allowed regarding it before getting banned?

some of the stuff i have done are...

1.clearing up ah of certain professions's produce and relist them for say.. 10 times or more
2.buying raw materials and relist the crafted products for 5% of market value

while some might ask why i would do the latter, all i can say is, its extremely beneficial for me if that certain profession chain dies...
while i might lose liquid cold, my net asset rises

so.. im just wondering, are those bannable? cos i certainly havent been banned

[Sardonic]

Buying and selling is allowed on the AH.

I think the only things that would get you in trouble would be listing items knowingly bought with gold that was purchased with RL money. And that wouldn't be an AH ban, that would be a perma-ban if caught.

While I'm not as big a wheeler and dealer as you, I regularly "vacuum" the bottom of the AH of items I want to list, then relist at higher prices. That's just part of AH PVP.

[halmotors]

The first thing you mentioned would risk a ban, since it's basically a monopoly and Blizzard HATES those. The second one is pretty common and pretty much everything else is fair game by their standards. Anyone who says they or a friend were banned for anything to do with the AH other than an attempted monopoly is either lying or misinformed.

[anthell]

hmmm, so the first one is bannable? i was expecting more on the second one to get me banned.. since i would kill plenty of people lol...

on that note then.. how far can i take it?

like ive seen cases in which market value of certain items drops below say.. 50%, which then i buy everything out and relist at 300%
as soon as i do that, people undercuts me and market will stablized for a week or so at 200 -250% in which i would start to actually be able to sell stuff..

i mean, those items drops too low that its not worth my money crafting them, the only way for me to get what i pay for.. 20-30k to lvl my alt's profession is by doing AH "reset"

if thats not allowed, how am i suppose to push the price back up?

[underdogba]

This is a typical area where commonly-held misconceptions about how markets work in real life are infecting how Blizzard creates and enforces policy. The only way to hold a monopoly position for any extended period of time inside the AH economy is to charge a reasonable price, and buyout all undercutters. The problem is that this kind of monopoly essentially never happens, because the person attempting to monopolize makes little to no money that way.

The typical scenario where you attempt to corner the market on any particular item, then drive up the price, sends a strong price signal to other potential listers to enter the market. Any given player can only buyout every undercutting new lister for a finite amount of time until either they run out of gold, or are glutted with holding an untenable supply of that item, in which case the original attempted monopolizer would inevitably have to start dropping the price just to clear existing stock.

There is really no reason for Blizz to ever get involved in this behavior, unless we're talking about people exploiting real life currency transactions, the situation completely fixes itself. I suspect the reason that Blizz would get involved has little to nothing to do with actual concrete analysis, and more to do with an overall fuzzy feeling that somehow "monopolies are bad and need regulation", which is just a consequence of the theoretical failures of modern macroeconomics.

[Evolixe]

You cannot get banned for doing what you do best on the AH. Period.

Only time you can get banned for anything is when real currency is involved.

[anthell]

ive know in fact one person who got banned for

"monopoly of auction house"

at least thats what i says on the email

so im seriously curious, how far can i take it? cos id like to push my limits and have fun with the AH

while some people collect achievements, collect archeology, i do AH while not raiding

[Evolixe]

ive know in fact one person who got banned for

"monopoly of auction house"

at least thats what i says on the email

so im seriously curious, how far can i take it? cos id like to push my limits and have fun with the AH

while some people collect achievements, collect archeology, i do AH while not raiding

Read my post above.

[Sardonic]

ive know in fact one person who got banned for

"monopoly of auction house"

at least thats what i says on the email

so im seriously curious, how far can i take it? cos id like to push my limits and have fun with the AH

while some people collect achievements, collect archeology, i do AH while not raiding

I've seen multiple blue and many, many green posts on this topic, over at the official forums. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you, no amount of legit buying and selling on the AH will ever get you banned. If you seek further reinforcement about this, post the question on the official forum to be 100% sure.

[Meonerg]

No it can´t! Blizzard won´t ban you for any of those. Nothing illegal on what you are doing.

[Murderdoll]

I think the only issue you would have is if you made an obscene amunt of money in a short space of time. Lets say 100k in a few days. They ban the account as a precaution because the assumption is you have purchased gold.

One of the top guilds on my server were practically all banned (and unbanned) when the GM distributed the guild bank which was rumored to be 80k per person. But its really not hard for you to then send an email asking WTF.

[Secondbanana]

There was already a blue post concerning #1, and it is NOT ban-able, primarily because it involves decent risk on your own part.

As for #2, I have no clue, but I don't think there's any problem with it.

The only real problem would be when you introduce RL currency into the equation.

[Deleted]

I think the only issue you would have is if you made an obscene amunt of money in a short space of time. Lets say 100k in a few days. They ban the account as a precaution because the assumption is you have purchased gold.

You wont be banned for buying gold.. only selling =/

Yes.. its illigal to sell.. not to buy =x

[Myzou]

1. Buying Out Every case of a single item, then reposting the items at a much higher price - considered Manipulating the market.
2. Placing something often sold for far much cheaper, trying to catch an unsuspecting person using an auction addon to undercut your posting, allowing you to swoop in and get their items for less than what you did. - Also manipulating the market.

(By #2, I mean posting like, Emberweave Cloth for 50 silver for a stack or something)

[armpit]

You can get banned for using ah bots. There are a several different ones available. I don't mean legit addons either.

[ziggler]

I think the only issue you would have is if you made an obscene amunt of money in a short space of time. Lets say 100k in a few days. They ban the account as a precaution because the assumption is you have purchased gold.

One of the top guilds on my server were practically all banned (and unbanned) when the GM distributed the guild bank which was rumored to be 80k per person. But its really not hard for you to then send an email asking WTF.

I actually got a 3 day ban from this a couple months ago. When i reached the gold calp i sent the gold from all the alts to my main (yeah, just to get a gold cap screenshot :P ). After that i gave two guildies 18k each to buy a mammoth. A couple hours later, i get a mail stating that my account is "suspected to be involved in gold selling related activities".

(got credit for those 3 days btw, thks blizz)

[YBT]

Hey you will not get banned. Proof? http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/152220/ah-abuse

[armpit]

You wont be banned for buying gold.. only selling =/

Yes.. its illigal to sell.. not to buy =x

I think you might want to rethink that one. People are banned for "buying" gold all the time.

[Sardonic]

Hey you will not get banned. Proof? http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/152220/ah-abuse

Perfect reply to this topic. That makes it 100% clear.

[anthell]

Hey you will not get banned. Proof? http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/152220/ah-abuse

thank you, that answer pretty much answer everything