AH brokerage shutting down -- all three bankers

[--Pete]

Hi,

A number of recent events have removed the pleasure from playing the AH.

One is that it seems getting mail, appraising items, checking the AH, and posting items all seem to take quite a bit longer than they did. With about 3000 items total, a one second per item addition to any operation adds almost an hour to the total. Over the last six months, my AH routine went from a couple of hours (which I did while watching TV) to over five (which cuts into time I'd rather devote to other things). I don't know what has changed, but sometimes getting the mail (for instance) is quite fast (each item in less than a second) and others it takes three or more second per item, or stops entirely for ten or twenty seconds.

A second reason is that recently it seems much harder to get items worth buying for a profit. I am often outbid on the items even before I've finished bidding on the day's list. While I used to get twenty or so items a day, now I typically get less than five. And usually these are the high end, slow moving items that take a long time to move and are risky because of their posting fees. Consumables and materials, which used to represent the bulk of the income, just can't be obtained for the amount that makes it worthwhile to buy. Whether this is due to farmers camping out on the servers or to the out of game AH utility, I don't know. What I do know is that it has become frustrating trying to generate funds at the AH.

There are other reasons, both having to do with changes in the game and personal. Whatever, the upshot is that effective immediately, I am closing down my AH operations for all three groups. Please do not send me any more materials to sell, I'll only be returning them. Nor will I be trying to find bargains in the AH for stuff people want. I will continue to post the items I presently have until they either sell or it's time to vendor them. As they sell, I will put that money in the GB. However, I will do this at a much reduced pace (although, recently, I've been going very slowly already).

Sorry to bail like this, but I was doing it for fun, and the fun just isn't there anymore.

--Pete

[Tal]

Thank you Pete for taking that on for all of us.

[shoju]

Thanks for all you have done Pete.

[Sabra]

Pete, thanks for everything you've done for Lurkers and for Goofball Gals. Above and beyond, as always.

Personally, I wouldn't want you to be doing anything that wasn't providing fun and challenge, but I gotta admit, I sure will miss our chats.

Oh hey wait! I have your wife's cell phone number! I can just call you up! So I'm good! You be good too, Pete.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Personally, I wouldn't want you to be doing anything that wasn't providing fun and challenge, but I gotta admit, I sure will miss our chats.

Oh, I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be here, and part of my reason for getting out of banking is to have more time to actually play the game.

Oh hey wait! I have your wife's cell phone number! I can just call you up! So I'm good! You be good too, Pete.

Heck, I'll send you *my* cell phone number if you want

/hugs

--Pete

[Sabra]

Hi,

Personally, I wouldn't want you to be doing anything that wasn't providing fun and challenge, but I gotta admit, I sure will miss our chats.

Oh, I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be here, and part of my reason for getting out of banking is to have more time to actually play the game.

Oh hey wait! I have your wife's cell phone number! I can just call you up! So I'm good! You be good too, Pete.

Heck, I'll send you *my* cell phone number if you want

/hugs

--Pete

Well this just gets better and better!

Magi has been aching for you to start playing again. She must be thrilled! I will look forward to having you on line playing and chatting with us.

I wanna raid with Pete!

Happy news indeed!!!

[Crusader]

Well, I'm not in the guild, but I like the fact that auctionhouse prices are more or less normalizing. Probably because more people use tools like auctioneer and now know what the normal going rates for items are. So now I know that when some guy named Evilpete bought out and reposted saronite ore at twice the normal going rate I'm getting ripped off. :p

[--Pete]

Hi,

Well, I'm not in the guild, but I like the fact that auctionhouse prices are more or less normalizing. Probably because more people use tools like auctioneer and now know what the normal going rates for items are. So now I know that when some guy named Evilpete bought out and reposted saronite ore at twice the normal going rate I'm getting ripped off. :p

The normal going rate is whatever a seller and a buyer agree on.

Tools like Auctioneer require daily or better AH scans to be useful. Most people don't have the patience. Old servers, like Stormrage and Terenas, are full of experienced high level players. They typically can figure what things are worth.

Cornering the market is mostly a myth. Pretty much any material that is useful can be farmed in huge amounts. If some fool tried to do what you suggest, people would flood the market with farmed product at 3/4 his price. Then he'd either have to buy out all that and go broke or get undercut and go broke. To quote the big T, "I pity the fool."

To play the AH successfully, all it takes is a year or so of watching what sells and what doesn't. A year to build up your settings, what to ignore, what to snatch. Then all you have to do is look for stuff that is undervalued enough so you can make a profit after purchase price, posting fees, and the AH cut. Nothing to it.

And, if you get ripped off, it only means that someone else was smart and you were stupid. But it wouldn't be me ripping you off. I sell at market price.

--Pete

[Mavfin]

Hi,

Well, I'm not in the guild, but I like the fact that auctionhouse prices are more or less normalizing. Probably because more people use tools like auctioneer and now know what the normal going rates for items are. So now I know that when some guy named Evilpete bought out and reposted saronite ore at twice the normal going rate I'm getting ripped off. :p

The normal going rate is whatever a seller and a buyer agree on.

Tools like Auctioneer require daily or better AH scans to be useful. Most people don't have the patience. Old servers, like Stormrage and Terenas, are full of experienced high level players. They typically can figure what things are worth.

Cornering the market is mostly a myth. Pretty much any material that is useful can be farmed in huge amounts. If some fool tried to do what you suggest, people would flood the market with farmed product at 3/4 his price. Then he'd either have to buy out all that and go broke or get undercut and go broke. To quote the big T, "I pity the fool."

To play the AH successfully, all it takes is a year or so of watching what sells and what doesn't. A year to build up your settings, what to ignore, what to snatch. Then all you have to do is look for stuff that is undervalued enough so you can make a profit after purchase price, posting fees, and the AH cut. Nothing to it.

And, if you get ripped off, it only means that someone else was smart and you were stupid. But it wouldn't be me ripping you off. I sell at market price.

--Pete

Yeah, the only time I 'buy up' something and repost is high-traffic enchant mats. I can make some quick short-term gains if people undercut too far, because of the high traffic and no deposit on said items. Besides, if you're posting 500 infinite dust, buying up the bottom 100 of them that are 50s below the rest and reposting them isn't that big a deal. It increases the price I got out of my 500, and I make a quick 50g off the ones I bought, 90% of the time.

[Chesspiece_face]

Hi,

Cornering the market is mostly a myth. Pretty much any material that is useful can be farmed in huge amounts. If some fool tried to do what you suggest, people would flood the market with farmed product at 3/4 his price. Then he'd either have to buy out all that and go broke or get undercut and go broke. To quote the big T, "I pity the fool."

--Pete

As someone who just got into playing certain markets on the AH about two weeks ago this very fact alone is one of the reasons most markets in WoW are hard to profit from. Most sellers in WoW have no concept of opportunity costs or even protecting their investments. Particularly in the gem market. The second you cut a gem you've made an investment. It is in your best interest that the profit margins on that gem stay as high as possible. If you cut a Fractured Cardinal Ruby and then someone undercuts you by a ton you can't recut that gem.

I started playing the gem market two weeks ago tuesday and the idiocy I've seen by many of the "big" players is really absurd. Last wednesday I made over 3k buying up Cardinal Rubies for between 115-125 per gem and then selling the cut gems for 180-190 each. I logged off happy about the evening and left an assortment of gems up there at those prices. What do I see when I log in the next day? My gems up there for the prices that those gems sell for, right below me I see one person post a single gem for 115 and all of the "players" start undercutting from there when all it would take is to buy out that single gem priced FAR below market and repost it undercutting my prices. It's like these people are adverse to making gold! And that's coming from someone that was able to make 20k gold over the last two weeks even with this idiocy.

I routinely see people posting cut gems for 20-50g below the going prices for the uncut gems. People are under the illusion that the hours they spend farming for gems have no cost to it. "HAHA! I didn't pay anything for these gems it's pure profit!" Nevermind that farming is probably the most unproductive way of making money in the game and they could do just about anything and still make more money for their time investment.

Applying real world economic models to WoW will always be fishy at best because most of the people creating the market (even ignoring the previously mentioned ideas of opportunity costs and protecting your investment) value their most valuable resource: Time at zero.

[RTM]

I routinely see people posting cut gems for 20-50g below the going prices for the uncut gems.

Momsgem!!! *shakes fist*

I got into a conversation with someone who was doing the same thing awhile back. I tried to explain that you could sell the gem for 50g more than what they posted it at if they would only undercut by 1g instead of 50g. Their reason for undercutting by so much boiled down to the fact that they are a nice guy selling them for so cheap. So I bought them out and posted them at "regular" price. I guess that makes me a jerk. A rich jerk, though.

I see the same thing in the Inscription market, although the major players there are generally better about undercutting by smaller amounts. I especially get a chuckle out of the guy advertising his services in /trade with a macro that reads along the lines of, "[Inscription] looking for work. All glyphs 1g. Overpricing is overrated." You can't even make glyphs for 1g after factoring in the herb cost. He is losing money.

[Treesh]

I routinely see people posting cut gems for 20-50g below the going prices for the uncut gems.

Momsgem!!! *shakes fist*

I got into a conversation with someone who was doing the same thing awhile back. I tried to explain that you could sell the gem for 50g more than what they posted it at if they would only undercut by 1g instead of 50g. Their reason for undercutting by so much boiled down to the fact that they are a nice guy selling them for so cheap. So I bought them out and posted them at "regular" price. I guess that makes me a jerk. A rich jerk, though.

I see the same thing in the Inscription market, although the major players there are generally better about undercutting by smaller amounts. I especially get a chuckle out of the guy advertising his services in /trade with a macro that reads along the lines of, "[Inscription] looking for work. All glyphs 1g. Overpricing is overrated." You can't even make glyphs for 1g after factoring in the herb cost. He is losing money.

This is me, for both JC and Inscription. =) I don't flood the market, I usually don't sell much of anything. I just want some quick cash for <insert new shiny thing here>, put up my auctions, snag the cash in an hour and then go get whatever shiny thing caught my attention. I maybe put stuff on the AH one or two days every few months. I really don't care about stockpiling a lot of gold. I just don't see the point in the game; it's just not a focus for me. I just want to have enough to be able to go get the new shiny quickly. =)

I got into a HUGE discussion about it in trade because someone was offering a fairly low tip just to cut a gem using their mats. I cut it for him since I was there anyway. He tipped me twice what he advertised in trade. I was happy. He was happy. Trade gave both he and I grief because OMG! UNDERCUTTING MY PROFIT! I saw him asking for that cut for about 10 minutes (I wasn't on my JC when he started asking). If they were really concerned about profit, they would have just done it anyway. No AH fee, no time beyond a minute at most, it's not your mats you're burning, there's no cooldown burned. Pure profit so you really shouldn't expect hundreds of gold for just a tip. And apparently the concept of still just being nice to folks and helping someone out because you can, easily, at no risk to you is completely foreign.

[LochnarITB]

So I bought them out and posted them at "regular" price. I guess that makes me a jerk. A rich jerk, though.

That doesn't make you a jerk, it makes you my target customer. I am just as happy to have an AH player buy my goods on spec as anyone buying them for use. As Treesh said, piling up gold isn't my goal, killing stuff is. Play the game, gold happens. I only ever farm mats to level a profession (man I hate knothide leather right now!) or to make something for one of the toons. Other than that, as a wise Lurker on Stormrage said just a couple days ago, "matts happen". I build my stocks from general play and, once I have a reasonable stock, I post extra for sale. If I post crafted items, it is only to attempt to get some return on the mats for making items to level or cut or scrolled to enhance the value of the raw mats. I post them at undercut prices, but not stupid undercut. I do find it amazing when obvious AH players then come in and post a whole page of items undercutting my few already undercut AH dumps.

[--Pete]

Hi,

And apparently the concept of still just being nice to folks and helping someone out because you can, easily, at no risk to you is completely foreign.

Right. Because helping a guild get money for repairs and what not when you're not even actively playing any avatars on those servers is totally selfish.

--Pete

[Treesh]

Hi,

And apparently the concept of still just being nice to folks and helping someone out because you can, easily, at no risk to you is completely foreign.

Right. Because helping a guild get money for repairs and what not when you're not even actively playing any avatars on those servers is totally selfish.

--Pete

My comment wasn't directed at you Pete. You did great things for both the guilds. It was more of a comment about the folks in trade who called me various names (and in whispers too) because I said in trade that I wanted to help him out since he had been trying to get help for a little while. Sorry about the confusion. Most of the time my posts are generally more me getting thoughts out of my head than properly explaining my point of view to folks. =) The ones in trade weren't doing it for their guilds (or at least none of them once mentioned helping out their guilds). It was all about themselves - how I was hurting them, how they were flat broke and me helping out a guy that they refused to hurt their individual pocketbooks.

After being the ONE person (wait, GG helped too. Make that two people) who went out and farmed up mats for fire resist potions for the 40 man molten cores without a word of thanks from the folks too lazy to even think about getting the potions on their own (but boy did they thank the person who took up that job after I stopped doing it), I have nothing but kind words to someone who took so much of their time and effort for a guild, much less two of them.

[Chesspiece_face]

I routinely see people posting cut gems for 20-50g below the going prices for the uncut gems.

I got into a conversation with someone who was doing the same thing awhile back. I tried to explain that you could sell the gem for 50g more than what they posted it at if they would only undercut by 1g instead of 50g. Their reason for undercutting by so much boiled down to the fact that they are a nice guy selling them for so cheap. So I bought them out and posted them at "regular" price. I guess that makes me a jerk. A rich jerk, though.

The undercutting by a ton isn't really the thing that gets me though. What baffles me is the people that come along next and instead of buying them out and reposting them at the higher cost they just start undercutting from there. These are people that are obviously heavily invested in the gem market. They post gems every day and when they undercut they do so by 25s. This is their way of making gold, and they fail at it totally.

If I come along early enough in the chain I'll buy out one or two gems and repost them because I know they will sell. But if I get there too late and the "players" have all posted undercuts below that I'm not buying out eight gems just to get the cuts back to being profitable.

[--Pete]

Hi,

My comment wasn't directed at you Pete.

Sorry, I was being too touchy. I've gotten a lot of negative in-game comments and mails about my AH activities and it has become a sore point with me. But I should have considered the source and realized that you didn't mean me.

The undercutting by a ton isn't really the thing that gets me though. What baffles me is the people that come along next and instead of buying them out and reposting them at the higher cost they just start undercutting from there. These are people that are obviously heavily invested in the gem market. They post gems every day and when they undercut they do so by 25s. This is their way of making gold, and they fail at it totally.

Part of the problem is the limitations of Auctioneer, which most serious traders use. Unless one is focusing on only a few items, he can't take a long time on each one. So, if the undercut items aren't below a given threshold, the trader doesn't even see them. And if they're above another threshold, they're automatically posted as a deeper undercut.

I have toyed with the notion of redoing Auctioneer to make it smarter. I've even gone as far as to learn a bit of lua and build some simple (and useless) add-ons. But it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

If I come along early enough in the chain I'll buy out one or two gems and repost them because I know they will sell. But if I get there too late and the "players" have all posted undercuts below that I'm not buying out eight gems just to get the cuts back to being profitable.

If you're willing to take the extra time, you can often sell things better if you buy out the market and then repost the items a few at a time. This is especially true of items with a posting fee, but seems to help even with free to post items. But if you're going o play those games, you'll end up needing two bankers and using the mail capability as storage. I went that route early on, but it just takes too much time.

--Pete

[Kevin]

They post gems every day and when they undercut they do so by 25s. This is their way of making gold, and they fail at it totally.

I think this is actually because it's a mod with bad settings doing the posting for them. They aren't even paying attention to it.

[Chesspiece_face]

Hi,


Part of the problem is the limitations of Auctioneer, which most serious traders use. Unless one is focusing on only a few items, he can't take a long time on each one. So, if the undercut items aren't below a given threshold, the trader doesn't even see them. And if they're above another threshold, they're automatically posted as a deeper undercut.

I have toyed with the notion of redoing Auctioneer to make it smarter. I've even gone as far as to learn a bit of lua and build some simple (and useless) add-ons. But it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

--Pete

Auctionator is my god. It allows me to quickly post my wares, check for undercuts on my auctions (while at the same time showing all the listings for that same item so I can see at a quick glance if I'm being vastly undercut), and cancel all my auctions that have been undercut and need to be reposted.

If anyone is serious about making money on the AH I would recommend Auctionator over Auctioneer any day of the week.

[Tal]

Hi,

Sorry, I was being too touchy. I've gotten a lot of negative in-game comments and mails about my AH activities and it has become a sore point with me. But I should have considered the source and realized that you didn't mean me.

--Pete

I do hope that they weren't from a SR Lurker. If they were I will be very angry.