Just when I thought every annoying way to scam people on the AH had been done, someone's found a new level to sink to.
A player on my server has been posting THOUSANDS of auctions of 1 copper bar each every few hours for a high but not completely unreasonable price. The result is the complete suppression of all trade. If anyone else puts copper bars up at a lower price, their auction rapidly gets shoved to the 20th page or further. To find these auctions, shoppers must page through 20-80 pages of identical 1 copper bar auctions.
I'm assuming this person is not an idiot: i.e. that he's making a profit despite all the money he loses on deposits. He might even be making a good amount on it, depending on how many people are willing to pay his premium rather than page through to his competition.
How, then, can we undermine this unfair marketing tactic, which has nothing to do with supply and demand, and everything to do with the AH interface?
P.S. The gajillion auctions also play havoc with Auctioneer's response time.
- Forums
- World of Warcraft
- Trade Skills
- Hateful New AH Tactic: Can We Stop It?
Hateful New AH Tactic: Can We Stop It?Follow
Two ways I can see to get around this, or at least sell still:
Option 1:Auction YOUR copper bars at a lower price and hope people sort by BO price.
Option 2: This one requires a guild, but basically: Corner the market on copper bars. Purchase every bar he posts, mark them up 5 - 10% and resell then in stacks of 20. The more he posts, the more you buy and resell. When he finally realizes that his ******** up your AH is only making you money, then let the copper prices fall back to what they were pro-bonehead.
Option 1:Auction YOUR copper bars at a lower price and hope people sort by BO price.
Option 2: This one requires a guild, but basically: Corner the market on copper bars. Purchase every bar he posts, mark them up 5 - 10% and resell then in stacks of 20. The more he posts, the more you buy and resell. When he finally realizes that his ******** up your AH is only making you money, then let the copper prices fall back to what they were pro-bonehead.
Seriously, who cares. The deposit is no more then yours. If its a 20 silver deposit for 20 bars, he's paying 1 silver for listing singles. And if you're selling 20 bars for 1g, he might list singles for 7.5 silver (1.5g a stack). Just undercut him by a single copper when you list your bars. Sell for 7.49 silver.
Also if you dont know how, get auctioneer and you can easily split stacks to sell on the AH. I like selling singles when I dont have full stacks. I sell in stacks of 1, sometimes 2, 5, 10 and 20. If I have 17 herbs, I'll usually list 1x7 and 2x5, or 1x2, 1x5, 1x10. Trying to sell a stack of 17 never sells.
Also if you dont know how, get auctioneer and you can easily split stacks to sell on the AH. I like selling singles when I dont have full stacks. I sell in stacks of 1, sometimes 2, 5, 10 and 20. If I have 17 herbs, I'll usually list 1x7 and 2x5, or 1x2, 1x5, 1x10. Trying to sell a stack of 17 never sells.
Where does he get thousands of copper bars? That's a lot of copper ore to mine.
No offense intended, but posting thousands of auctions seems a little...impossible. When I scan my server (fairly new server) with auctioneer, I only get about 5000 auctions total. Are you sure you don't have an add-on that's gone retarded on you? Can we get someone else on your server to confirm this?
vyodar wrote:
Option 1:Auction YOUR copper bars at a lower price and hope people sort by BO price.
Unfortunately, only individual pages are sorted by price. Since he's filling scores of pages with his auctions, prospective buyers don't see the cheaper copper unless they go through many, many pages of his stuff.
vyodar wrote:
This one requires a guild, but basically: Corner the market on copper bars. Purchase every bar he posts, mark them up 5 - 10% and resell then in stacks of 20. The more he posts, the more you buy and resell. When he finally realizes that his ******** up your AH is only making you money, then let the copper prices fall back to what they were pro-bonehead.
Could backfire *badly* if his reserves of copper exceed our supply of gold, which if "he" is actually a guild or cartel is very possible (see below).
bgredsox wrote:
Where does he get thousands of copper bars? That's a lot of copper ore to mine.
I personally doubt it's one person mining it all, although I suppose it could be a single account using a cheat bot like Glider. I assume he's amassed it by buying out other, lower priced copper auctions over the months. One of the ideas I considered was posting a small number of bars at 98% of his price every hour or so, but frankly that's a pain. His auctions seem to be posted 24/7, which suggests to me that this is more than a single person's work. It could be a guild or other coordinated group's work.
mikelolol wrote:
Seriously, who cares. The deposit is no more then yours. If its a 20 silver deposit for 20 bars, he's paying 1 silver for listing singles. And if you're selling 20 bars for 1g, he might list singles for 7.5 silver (1.5g a stack). Just undercut him by a single copper when you list your bars. Sell for 7.49 silver.
Mike, you're missing the point. His enormous number of auctions make it extremely unlikely that a buyer will ever see anyone else's auctions. I could be selling copper bars for a copper a stack and never sell any, because no one ever sees the auction. Auctioneer isn't designed to handle that kind of auction volume...I get a memory exception error whenever I try to scan the Trade Goods category these days.
Caeremonia wrote:
No offense intended, but posting thousands of auctions seems a little...impossible. When I scan my server (fairly new server) with auctioneer, I only get about 5000 auctions total. Are you sure you don't have an add-on that's gone retarded on you? Can we get someone else on your server to confirm this?
I am quite sure. I have personally paged through scores of pages to find other copper sellers to buy from rather than give my silver to this jag. I doubt many others would do the same, but you're welcome to check it out: Hordeside, Garithos server...but if the tactic is successful, expect it to proliferate to a server near you.
Auctioneer HAS gone a little retarded as a result of these hijinx, but I've checked it out without Auctioneer loaded.
This happens all the time with arcane dust on my server. I've learned to deal with it. This doesn't have to be "stopped" or "shut down", theres nothing wrong with it. If people are too lazy to search through a few pages to find the best deal, then they can go ahead and overpay. If I need 20 arcane dust (or copper bars) I'm obviously not going to buy singles.
And at some point or another, your auctions will be on top. If you want to buy a can of coke, its $1.00. If you buy 6, its $3.69. If you buy 12, its $5.79.
Edited, Aug 14th 2007 6:29pm by mikelolol
And at some point or another, your auctions will be on top. If you want to buy a can of coke, its $1.00. If you buy 6, its $3.69. If you buy 12, its $5.79.
Edited, Aug 14th 2007 6:29pm by mikelolol
I'd never pay $5.72 a twelve pack (shelf price, minus tax and deposit) for Coke when I can guarantee Sam's club or Costco has pallets of 32-packs for around $8 each.
Seriously, that AH tactic is cheap and makes it extremely difficult for anyone else to actually make sales; if there truly are 200 or so single item auctions that means people will have to go through at least 4 pages of single item auctions before they get to anything with a stack size greater than one, and in the meantime someone could be posting more single stack auctions making it even harder to view every single auction for that item - which is what people typically do when shopping for common items.
Seriously, that AH tactic is cheap and makes it extremely difficult for anyone else to actually make sales; if there truly are 200 or so single item auctions that means people will have to go through at least 4 pages of single item auctions before they get to anything with a stack size greater than one, and in the meantime someone could be posting more single stack auctions making it even harder to view every single auction for that item - which is what people typically do when shopping for common items.
emmitsvenson wrote:
Unfortunately, only individual pages are sorted by price.
Exactly. Does anybody else see this as dumb. If you sorted a column in a spreadsheet and it sorted each page individually, it would be worthless.
emmitsvenson wrote:
bgredsox wrote:
Where does he get thousands of copper bars? That's a lot of copper ore to mine.
I personally doubt it's one person mining it all, although I suppose it could be a single account using a cheat bot like Glider. I assume he's amassed it by buying out other, lower priced copper auctions over the months. One of the ideas I considered was posting a small number of bars at 98% of his price every hour or so, but frankly that's a pain. His auctions seem to be posted 24/7, which suggests to me that this is more than a single person's work. It could be a guild or other coordinated group's work.
If it's actually being done 24/7, then it's either a bot or multiple people using a single account. Both are against the ToU. Report him as a possible violation of ToU, and let Blizz sort it out.
Scholar
17 posts
I think we are on the same server, I have completely stopped DE items that produce arcane dust cause I'm too lazy to keep putting up the same auction over and over.
While this may be annoying, he isn't doing anything "wrong" - nothing more wrong than people do buy low and sell high, nothing more than people who price level 19 gear at 5g each, nothing more than enchanters who sell their mats on AH and then do the enchants for free.
My proposed solution to the problem is simple: add a field to the AH UI that lets you specify the minimum number of items you want in the stack. (and while your at it maximum).
In that case you can get what you need, when you need it.
Copper bars in general are something you want a lot of of, for skill ups, so something like this, yes you want just full stacks.
But arcane dust can be a different monster. If your just buying the mats so you can get 1 enchant done, and it takes 8 - why would you buy a stack of 20 even if the price each ends up being less? You'd still lose money. In that kind of situation, your best bet is to buy the singles.
My proposed solution to the problem is simple: add a field to the AH UI that lets you specify the minimum number of items you want in the stack. (and while your at it maximum).
In that case you can get what you need, when you need it.
Copper bars in general are something you want a lot of of, for skill ups, so something like this, yes you want just full stacks.
But arcane dust can be a different monster. If your just buying the mats so you can get 1 enchant done, and it takes 8 - why would you buy a stack of 20 even if the price each ends up being less? You'd still lose money. In that kind of situation, your best bet is to buy the singles.
ohmikeghod the Venerable wrote:
If it's actually being done 24/7, then it's either a bot or multiple people using a single account. Both are against the ToU. Report him as a possible violation of ToU, and let Blizz sort it out.
Even if he's not using a bot, I'd place a GM ticket and ask that the situation be looked into. Copper Bars are one of those things that does sell quite readily in full/half stacks. That someone would take the time to split the singles and then list each one for the sake of trying to sell their product faster...well...ya no.
I reckon there's a fair bit of exaggeration behind the claim of "thousands" of Copper Bars, but I take it to mean, "a very great many." There's nothing in the ToS that prohibits selling stackable items in singles, but I believe there is a restriction on using the game mechanics (much less a bot) to unfairly manipulate the economy, which is what sounds like is happening.
12 posts
Try using the AUctioneer adon. It allows you to sort the AH by prices. Sure, it doesn;t helpo U sell yer crap, but sure helps find stuff tfast! I HATE the bliz AH UI! Each page sorts independantly... GRR!
On my realm there are +2.5k auctions of arcane dust at any given time.
Read OP's second post. He is using Auctioneer and has trouble with it.
P
P
bfe wrote:
Try using the AUctioneer adon. It allows you to sort the AH by prices. Sure, it doesn;t helpo U sell yer crap, but sure helps find stuff tfast! I HATE the bliz AH UI! Each page sorts independantly... GRR!
OT: If anyone ever does modify the Auctioneer addon to let me search by minimum number in a stack, I'd be more than willing to beta test it.
AureliusSir wrote:
I reckon there's a fair bit of exaggeration behind the claim of "thousands" of Copper Bars, but I take it to mean, "a very great many."
Just to make sure we're absolutely clear: there is no exaggeration. I calculated yesterday that 1/5 of the auctions in the auction house were this guy's copper bars.
I reported him for suspected botting and asked my guildmates to do the same. I'll report any results.
Devilwind wrote:
While this may be annoying, he isn't doing anything "wrong" - nothing more wrong than people do buy low and sell high, nothing more than people who price level 19 gear at 5g each, nothing more than enchanters who sell their mats on AH and then do the enchants for free.
I have to disagree with you, amigo. Those other tactics are fair marketing, since everyone has equal access. What he's doing is suppression of trade, exploiting a flaw in Blizzard's UI to make it extremely inconvenient to buy anyone else's products. If you had look through forty pallets of Pepsi to find a can of Coke, how many people would buy Coke, even if that can was 20% cheaper?
9 posts
nevermind about that. its a way that the guy buying gold from others.
u should put ur copper bar at lower price. One u have gold, u can make more.
u should put ur copper bar at lower price. One u have gold, u can make more.
incoherence...
if this does spread like a plague [across servers with a wider variety of items] blizz is gonna put limits on how many auctions people can make. WIth any luck it might be for each item type rather than all auctions one makes in general.
if this does spread like a plague [across servers with a wider variety of items] blizz is gonna put limits on how many auctions people can make. WIth any luck it might be for each item type rather than all auctions one makes in general.
Sounds like RMT are starting to employ tactics here in WoW, too.
You guys should see the clusterf--k they've turned FFXI into.
You guys should see the clusterf--k they've turned FFXI into.
Given that this is only viable in a few small markets (high-level enchanting mats would be another place to do it, although... hmm... I'll have to try that) it's not a huge deal. It would be nice if Blizzard just fixed their UI, though.
You guys and your RMT paranoia, its out of control sometimes.
It's not really paranoia. It depends on the situation. If the OP is not exaggerating his numbers, and there indeed THOUSANDS as stated, what single human being, who is a normal player with RL things to attend to, has the time to post that much? Such a person would have to forego the basic requirement of living; sleeping, eating, working, going to the bathroom- if they were to hope to find the time to put thousands of single copper bars up on the AH. They could possibly be using a third party tool that would do it for them, but if such is not the case, only one other source screams loud and clear in my mind.
RMT.
Those who play FFXI or have in the past can attest to this. This smacks of attempted economic manipulation by RMT, who have the numbers and resources (and the time) to do this. They don't need one single person sitting at that one acount, there can be 10 people working that single account in shifts, one replacing the other day in and day out. Some other account farms the copper 24-7, passing it off to a runner who brings it to a smelter in town, who in turn passes it off to another runner that either posts it on the AH themself or passes it to a character for that purpose. Rinse, repeat, and there you have it, an endless business of copper bars.
RMT.
Those who play FFXI or have in the past can attest to this. This smacks of attempted economic manipulation by RMT, who have the numbers and resources (and the time) to do this. They don't need one single person sitting at that one acount, there can be 10 people working that single account in shifts, one replacing the other day in and day out. Some other account farms the copper 24-7, passing it off to a runner who brings it to a smelter in town, who in turn passes it off to another runner that either posts it on the AH themself or passes it to a character for that purpose. Rinse, repeat, and there you have it, an endless business of copper bars.
2000 copper bars is 100 stacks of 20. I easily list 100-200 auctions a day. If my bread and butter was making gold off copper bars, I'd /point and /lol at myself, but anyways.
I'm the kind of person who won't believe literal claims of "thousands" of copper bars. Even if it were 2000, you can easily list singles with auctioneer at a fixed price, it splits your stacks for you.
Now I'm logical enough to believe "thousands" is an exaggeration for "lots", maybe 300, or 15 stacks of copper bars all split into singles. Buyout all stacks under a specific price (say 1.5g, about 15 stacks a day would fit this category). Split the stacks, sell bars for 29s each, thats nearly 3x the profit if they all sell (of course they wont, but who relies their income on copper bars).
Now I'm going to call the OP out on thousands.
Theres 50 auctions on a page OP, so for 1000 copper bars (in singles), there must be 20 pages of auctions, ALL FROM THIS ONE PERSON, full of single copper bar auctions. Are there 20? Really? Did you scroll through every page and count them? 20 pages? 20 pages is still only 1000 bars. I read "thousands" as about 3000-4000. Are there literally 60-80 pages of single copper bar listings, all from this one person? Seriously?
If there is, yes I agree thats too much. 60-80 pages is ridiculous. I don't believe it though.
Further with the RMT paranoia, their goal is to aquire alot of ingame gold. Selling copper bars by the single is not a good way to aquire said gold. If they truely have teams working to farm gold, there are better ways, I'd imagine they at least have the resources to aquire a high level character. It only makes business sense to have a 70 doing your farming, even if its 8 days /played to get there. About a month of 9-5 M-F work time, its a significant challenge leveling to 70, but if your business is about selling gold, it would only make sense to do so.
Especially if they have people working round the clock, they could get this character to 70 in a week. Now with a 70 with maxed out mining, why the heck would you even think about mining in durotar? Selling copper singles for 29 silver, when you can sell stacks of adamantite ore for 24g. They could even manipulate the economy with their players on the AH round the clock, buyout every adamandite auction for 24g, relist in stacks of 5 (prospectable) for 9g each (36g a stack).
So they have adamantite workers, working round the clock. They have an AH player scanning every 20 minutes for updates, buying out stacks, manipulating the economy to produce far more gold then some guy selling copper bars.
Heck I just came up with this off the top of my head, surely a team of professional gold sellers working round the clock could do better then that.
Edited, Aug 31st 2007 10:15pm by mikelolol
I'm the kind of person who won't believe literal claims of "thousands" of copper bars. Even if it were 2000, you can easily list singles with auctioneer at a fixed price, it splits your stacks for you.
Now I'm logical enough to believe "thousands" is an exaggeration for "lots", maybe 300, or 15 stacks of copper bars all split into singles. Buyout all stacks under a specific price (say 1.5g, about 15 stacks a day would fit this category). Split the stacks, sell bars for 29s each, thats nearly 3x the profit if they all sell (of course they wont, but who relies their income on copper bars).
Now I'm going to call the OP out on thousands.
Theres 50 auctions on a page OP, so for 1000 copper bars (in singles), there must be 20 pages of auctions, ALL FROM THIS ONE PERSON, full of single copper bar auctions. Are there 20? Really? Did you scroll through every page and count them? 20 pages? 20 pages is still only 1000 bars. I read "thousands" as about 3000-4000. Are there literally 60-80 pages of single copper bar listings, all from this one person? Seriously?
If there is, yes I agree thats too much. 60-80 pages is ridiculous. I don't believe it though.
Further with the RMT paranoia, their goal is to aquire alot of ingame gold. Selling copper bars by the single is not a good way to aquire said gold. If they truely have teams working to farm gold, there are better ways, I'd imagine they at least have the resources to aquire a high level character. It only makes business sense to have a 70 doing your farming, even if its 8 days /played to get there. About a month of 9-5 M-F work time, its a significant challenge leveling to 70, but if your business is about selling gold, it would only make sense to do so.
Especially if they have people working round the clock, they could get this character to 70 in a week. Now with a 70 with maxed out mining, why the heck would you even think about mining in durotar? Selling copper singles for 29 silver, when you can sell stacks of adamantite ore for 24g. They could even manipulate the economy with their players on the AH round the clock, buyout every adamandite auction for 24g, relist in stacks of 5 (prospectable) for 9g each (36g a stack).
So they have adamantite workers, working round the clock. They have an AH player scanning every 20 minutes for updates, buying out stacks, manipulating the economy to produce far more gold then some guy selling copper bars.
Heck I just came up with this off the top of my head, surely a team of professional gold sellers working round the clock could do better then that.
Edited, Aug 31st 2007 10:15pm by mikelolol
Recent Visitors: 91
All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (91)
- Forums
- World of Warcraft
- Trade Skills
- Hateful New AH Tactic: Can We Stop It?
© 2024 Fanbyte LLC