AH brokerage shutting down -- all three bankers

[Treesh]

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.

The fact that ANYONE thinks they have the right to tell someone else how to enjoy the game that they pay just the same as anyone else makes me angry, especially if it's unsolicited "advice". Probably just too many bad memories of folks telling me my priest isn't a real priest and folks telling me my shaman had no right to wear any of the gear I worked for.

I am very unhappy to hear that you've gotten negative comments about your AH activities Pete. I know you enjoyed doing the AH for a long time now. It always baffled me that you enjoyed it so much, but as long as you were having fun, that's what's important. I am sorry you aren't enjoying it anymore though. Really sucks when a part of the game you've enjoyed for years changes enough to turn you off of it.

Anyway, I'm completely rambling. They suck. You don't. =)

[--Pete]

Hi,

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.

I tried Auctionator. I think it is a very good tool for the average player who does some AH trading, or even for a player who only wants to buy and sell items he needs or farms at fair prices. While it lacks some of the functionality of Auctioneer, it would be usable by heavy traders except for the degree of interaction it requires.

Keep in mind that my three bankers had about 3000 items in the AH total. That meant that 1500 items needed to be processed daily, in addition to scanning the AH and buying new items. Adding one second to the processing of each item added 25 minutes to the daily time. With Auctioneer, my daily time had gotten into the four to five hour range. Had I used Auctionator as my AH tool, I'd estimate I'd have been at over eight hours.

--Pete

[RTM]

Pete, have you looked at QuickAuctions? It sounds like, once configured (and that's the hard part), it would be right up your alley. It lacks the trending & price tracking abilities of Auctioneer but you can't beat it for ease of relisting stuff. You can set up various categories of items and then tell it to only post items of that category if the price is within a certain range.

So taking glyphs for example, I can set it up so that it will only post a glyph if the price of said glyph is above 2g. If it is lower, it won't post. If it is higher, it will undercut the lowest auction by a specified amount. If there are no auctions of that particular item listed, it will post at a specified "fallback" amount. Once I add all my glyphs to this group, I can click a single button and create auctions for all the glyphs in my inventory. It doesn't get much simpler. Once configured properly, of course.

I also use Auctionator for checking prices of crafting materials and posting of smaller item quantities.

I just found out about this site yesterday and was blown away. Terenas Horde isn't there but Stormrage Alliance is. The graphs and charts are amazing. I guess I should have realized that it was only a matter of time before something like this became available once they released the ability to check the AH remotely.

[--Pete]

Hi,

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

Oh, no. I should have made that clear. I've never received anything but positive comments from any Lurkers anywhere. They were from people who were unhappy about AH farmers. To be fair, many thought I was a gold farmer (and I guess I was, but not a for sale farmer). At least one became a friend after he asked me why I did it and I explained.

I am very unhappy to hear that you've gotten negative comments about your AH activities Pete. I know you enjoyed doing the AH for a long time now. It always baffled me that you enjoyed it so much, but as long as you were having fun, that's what's important. I am sorry you aren't enjoying it anymore though. Really sucks when a part of the game you've enjoyed for years changes enough to turn you off of it.

Well, over the past five years I've learned that if I can't do what I enjoy, I should at least enjoy what I can do.

I haven't been able to play much, because WoW doesn't lend itself to the "Whoops, gotta stop for a couple of minutes now to put in eye drops and rest my eyes so I can see again" style of play. But when I have been able to play the game, I enjoyed it. Since neither reflexes nor continuous vision are necessary to do the AH, I found that as a nice niche that let me, sorta, keep my hand in, and enjoy the game vicariously.

Now that some of my condition is getting better, there are more things I can do, many of them which I prefer to the AH. And, hopefully, before too long I'll be able to actually play the game again.

So, it's not all bad -- more silver lining than dark cloud, really.

Anyway, I'm completely rambling. They suck. You don't. =)

Thanks.

--Pete

---

Hi,

Pete, have you looked at QuickAuctions?

No, I hadn't. Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out soon.

I just found out about this site yesterday and was blown away. Terenas Horde isn't there but Stormrage Alliance is. The graphs and charts are amazing. I guess I should have realized that it was only a matter of time before something like this became available once they released the ability to check the AH remotely.

Great link. We'll see how it works out. I hope it does, and maybe with the remote checking it will. Previous attempts, like WoWecon, weren't that easy to use nor that useful.

--Pete

[Chesspiece_face]

Hi,

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.

I tried Auctionator. I think it is a very good tool for the average player who does some AH trading, or even for a player who only wants to buy and sell items he needs or farms at fair prices. While it lacks some of the functionality of Auctioneer, it would be usable by heavy traders except for the degree of interaction it requires.

Keep in mind that my three bankers had about 3000 items in the AH total. That meant that 1500 items needed to be processed daily, in addition to scanning the AH and buying new items. Adding one second to the processing of each item added 25 minutes to the daily time. With Auctioneer, my daily time had gotten into the four to five hour range. Had I used Auctionator as my AH tool, I'd estimate I'd have been at over eight hours.

--Pete

It's been my experience that using a shotgun approach to auction house profits in WoW is fairly inefficient. Mainly for the reasons I've mentioned above. Most markets in WoW are highly volatile and prices will often shift by the hour (the few major markets that buck this trend are big ticket items like 264 crafted gear and to a lesser degree Primordial Saronite at the moment). Because of this posting anything for more than 12 hours is usually a waste as you will just be throwing away extra auction fees if you repost.

I've tried the Auctioneer method of scanning data and buying up stuff that is marked at below market and then reposting at what the mod tells me is maket value but any time I've done this I end up spending far more time and make far less than if I just focus on one market and learn as much as I can about it. Does Auctionator require a little more interaction yeah, but if you want to really know a market to the point that you can milk it for all the profit possible that is work you need to put in anyway.

At any given time right now I've got between 20 and 40 auctions posted and on average I make about 1k a day. During my key days I can make upwards of 4-5k. All the time I would have spent running Auctioneer scans for random items I now spend half the time focusing strictly on one market and in the course of two weeks I've come to know it pretty well. The problem with Auctioneer is that a scan for most of these items and an average price for them is meaningless. The amount you can get for them is always more than what Auctioneer tells you and like I said before the prices fluctuate so greatly hour by hour that posting things for 24 or 48 hours is nearly pointless. The key then is to know when the good times to sell are as well as to know the opportunities when they pop up. (Just as I've been writing this I saw five Cardinal Rubies pop up on the AH for 112g each and have already turned them around cut for 170g each.)

[--Pete]

Hi,

It's been my experience that using a shotgun approach to auction house profits in WoW is fairly inefficient.

I believe that, just by playing around, I made a total of over 250,000 gold in the last year on five avatars (not all of which I could use at a time because some of them were on the same faction and server). I did that, to a large extent, while watching TV or resting my eyes. I'm sure that I could have done better had I devoted more time or attention to it. A few years ago, when I first started, I used to track everything in Excel. I used to watch for bargains, post multiple times per day, post for short periods, post only a little of my duplicate inventory, etc. Back then, I got a much higher ROI in terms of gold speculated. But it was much lower in terms of time and effort.

I'm glad your technique works well for you. Mine works well for me. I know it has many shortcomings, hence the occasional impulse to mod the mod. And, perhaps, I'll give yours another try if I get back into banking in the future.

--Pete

[Chesspiece_face]

I'm glad your technique works well for you. Mine works well for me. I know it has many shortcomings, hence the occasional impulse to mod the mod. And, perhaps, I'll give yours another try if I get back into banking in the future.

--Pete

It's good to hear that you are able to enjoy other aspects of the game more now. I'm in sort of a reverse position. My main focus has always been raiding and I've found other aspects of the game to alleviate burn out from that. Unfortunately I'm at a point now that I've done all the quests, I've grinded pretty much all the factions I'm willing to, I've played as many alts as I want to until the expansion and the only thing left is learning the auction house while on my off time from raiding.

I'm also with you on the time investment. Most of the time when I'm logged in I'm watching tv, reading, playing another game(!), or doing work around the house. I will come in and scan my auctions every hour or so and do a quick search for raw mats that I know I can turn over. There are certain times a week where I do dedicate my full attention to it though because I know during those times things are going to be moving very fast and I need to be able to cut new gems and post them on a minute by minute basis. I don't think I would enjoy the auction house as much as I do if I needed to dedicate my full attention to it like farming requires. It's less physical repetition and more intellectual observation and abusing that information for as much as you can.

[Shaera]

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.

I don't understand that at all. If someone wants a cut with their own mats, and I have it, I'll do it for them. No matter what they tip, I'm making a profit. Boggles my mind that people would get up in arms about that.

[Crusader]

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.

Ugggh, I remember those days, I was in the top horde raiding guild in classic on The Venture Co EU and when we were doing Molten Core (Raggy in particular) we would need tons of those fire res potions. Since I was one of the few herbalists who actually would work for a raiding spot I would farm dozens of stacks of herbs in the plaguelands. And in a time without flying mounts, it was not fun... My only sparkle of joy now and then was finding a black lotus. But it did buy me a reserved spot (which meant little for me, because I was one of the three resto druids, so I pretty much got it anyhow). Yea, back in those days it was a dedicated dozen or so people who would keep the entire 40 man raids going.

And damn that hunter who accidentally pulled Raggy after we just drank our potions. That cost a fortune back then...

[NuurAbSaal]

Ugggh, I remember those days, I was in the top horde raiding guild in classic on The Venture Co EU and when we were doing Molten Core (Raggy in particular) we would need tons of those fire res potions. Since I was one of the few herbalists who actually would work for a raiding spot I would farm dozens of stacks of herbs in the plaguelands. And in a time without flying mounts, it was not fun... My only sparkle of joy now and then was finding a black lotus. But it did buy me a reserved spot (which meant little for me, because I was one of the three resto druids, so I pretty much got it anyhow). Yea, back in those days it was a dedicated dozen or so people who would keep the entire 40 man raids going.

And damn that hunter who accidentally pulled Raggy after we just drank our potions. That cost a fortune back then...

Ah, and who could forget farming the bears in Winterspring for the shards that gave you a tiny bit more fire res? I had the item needed to collect them (Cache of Mau'ari, or somesuch) in my bank still when Frozen Throne hit . Sweet nostalgia!

take care
Tarabulus

[LavCat]

Ah, and who could forget farming the bears in Winterspring for the shards that gave you a tiny bit more fire res? I had the item needed to collect them (Cache of Mau'ari, or somesuch) in my bank still when Frozen Throne hit . Sweet nostalgia!

take care
Tarabulus

My druid picked up her Cache of Mau'ari just this week. Don't forget the joy of farming Whipper Roots.

[NuurAbSaal]

Whipper Roots.

/shudder

[--Pete]

Hi,

This will be my last post on any WoW forum in Lurkers. After I finish this, I will deguild all my avatars and have nothing to do with the online guilds. It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

As to the bankers, all they've got left is a few items that have no vendor value, can be posted free, and don't really sell. I will put those items in the guild banks, where someone else can try to auction them or just discard them. I will also put all but 10 gold of what the bankers have in the guild bank.

I really enjoyed banking till it became too big for me to handle. And, by and large, many of the people in Lurkers are the type of players I want to game with. Hopefully, I'll game with those individuals in the future.

--Pete

[bonemage]

It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

To be entirely accurate, we took no exception to any of your thinking or ideas on games, only to your behavior on these forums.

[Treesh]

Hi,

This will be my last post on any WoW forum in Lurkers. After I finish this, I will deguild all my avatars and have nothing to do with the online guilds. It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

As to the bankers, all they've got left is a few items that have no vendor value, can be posted free, and don't really sell. I will put those items in the guild banks, where someone else can try to auction them or just discard them. I will also put all but 10 gold of what the bankers have in the guild bank.

I really enjoyed banking till it became too big for me to handle. And, by and large, many of the people in Lurkers are the type of players I want to game with. Hopefully, I'll game with those individuals in the future.

--Pete

And here I thought it was my achievement spam that drove you away.

*hugs*

---

It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

To be entirely accurate, we took no exception to any of your thinking or ideas on games, only to your behavior on these forums.

Whoa, I missed something somewhere.

Edit: Found what I missed. And, I have to say, while it wasn't the best choice of posting, I really have to disagree about the comment of Pete's behavior on these forums. Really, he hasn't said much out of line for the majority of the time so I hate to label all of his behavior as unwelcome. One post that really irks a lot of folks can't be a sweeping generalization.

[vor_lord]

This will be my last post on any WoW forum in Lurkers. After I finish this, I will deguild all my avatars and have nothing to do with the online guilds. It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

You've raised the ire of some folks because you directly insulted them by saying they aren't Lurkers. Many of us (including Bolty) have lamented the fact that WoW didn't lend itself well to the kind of things Lurkers have historically liked to do.

You probably could have made your point by lamenting that WoW, the game, has put us in the place of playing the game in a way you don't enjoy, rather than directly attacking people.

I think lots of people understand and even agree with your way of thinking about games. But just because it isn't feasible (with resources or time) with a game like WoW to treat it how we treated Diablo doesn't mean it's ok to now tell people they aren't Lurkers. Or at least if you do, don't be surprised if they get defensive. If people are showing a lack of respect in this conversation, it started with you.

Just my two cents, Pete.

[Tal]

Hi,

This will be my last post on any WoW forum in Lurkers. After I finish this, I will deguild all my avatars and have nothing to do with the online guilds. It has been made patently obvious that my way of thinking about games will not be tolerated or respected.

--Pete

Whoa. I missed something somewhere. I can't speak for Terenas folks but - what happened on Stormrage?

[Concillian]

Whoa. I missed something somewhere. I can't speak for Terenas folks but - what happened on Stormrage?

He basically said that asking people to read up on a raid encounter prior to seeing it was shameful and doing so disqualified us from being Lurkers. Presumably, the Stormrage guild does this to some extent, so that would likely be what happened.

I know a lot of people felt somewhat similarly a long time ago when they quit. However, I think they attributed the issue to game design and not to the people playing the game.