Why do people do this?Follow

I honestly believe those people are speds that are doing it just to annoy and waste the time of buyers as the items that they'll inevitably put 100 singles onto the AH of are items that you're only going to want a single of maybe 5% of the time at most.

IMO Over-Undercutting someone else's price is due to impatience. I usually list my prices a little lower then the lowest prices just so that the item will take priority listing and sell first(hint: if your using a bankalt make sure their name is Aaardvark or something like you come first alphabetically too).

As far as selling in stacks over single I do it because I'm just lazy. Why sit there and seperate all those essences, dusts, leathers, ores into singles when they will sell in stacks of 5, 10 or 20 for the same price? The same goes when collecting the gold in my mailbox afterwards. I hate having three pages of single items that have sold when I could have one page of stacks with the same amount of incoming gold. I think people buy my stacks for the same reason too.

In retrospect though if I looked on the auction house and saw there were no singles I would list 5 or so of said item at a higher price than what it was selling for in stacks as some people will only need one of the item and will pay more due to the fact that they don't want a whole stack. I rarely see this but when I do I have made some good profits.

Edited, Feb 10th 2009 3:30pm by arthoriuss

I think they do that in an effort to skew prices for those of us who use helpers, such as Auctioneer. By putting up many auctions at very low or very high prices, they could drive it down or up. Now, I'm not sure that Auctioneer looks at just the number of auctions or if it takes the number of items in a stack into consideration, too. If it works like they think, it will move the median price. Of course, there are others who are listing at 300 to 1000 percent of median, which drives it the other way. Quixotic of them, isn't it?

One thing I've noticed is that very few people list auctions with useful amounts. I don't know how many times I've bought stacks of Saronite bars at up to 60% and when I re-list stacks of 4 at 95%, they sell out within the hour. A couple of times, they've sold out before I get out of the AH.

Auctioneer has a shift click option that makes it fairly painless to buy mass amounts of singles if need be. Yeah, it takes time, but far far less time than doing it the original way.

As for pulling all these singles out of your mailbox, you really ought to get an addon. I use Mailbox complete. Be warned that Mailbox complete is slightly broken. You'll get an error message when you first start WoW and if you try and send mail. The good news is, you'll only get these errors message once per session. Anyway, Mailbox Complete takes all the mail out of your mailbox with a single click. No more clicking over and over again. There are other things like Mailbox Complete, so look around for one. It'll save you lots of time.

@Goggy: When I said diversify, I didn't mean you HAD to go to an alt. You can diversify with Blacksmithing and still find decent profits. Its just a matter of doing a little homework. If X isn't going for a decent profit margin, move on to Y or Z.



1.) That's exactly what capitalism IS. Free markets are run almost entirely on supply and demand. If someone is underpricing something (meaning it will sell at a higher price), then people SHOULD by it and relist it. Easy money, and very free market-like.

2.) No one plays 24 hours a day. And most people are impatient so they're not willing to wait either. Try the trade channel, try asking your guild, try your friend's list. There's going to be SOMEone online that can make what you're looking for.

3.) I've never bought gold. And I play about an average of two hours a day. I have more money than I know what to do with. I play the markets, I use auctioneer, and I make sure the stuff I'm producing will sell for enough to get me more money. If you seriously cannot make money in this game, you're doing something very very wrong.

4.) Undercut away. I'll generally undercut right back, if I'm making a profit. And if I'm not, neither are you. I can wait till your stock clears. When it does, mine goes right back up at whatever the market will bear. Undercutters don't bother me, I'm way to diversified and way too patient.

5.) I'll lower my prices if/when the market says I should. Hmm, those 10 Flasks of the Frost Wyrm have been returned 3 times now? Time to lower the price. Hmm, those 10 Flasks of the Frost Wyrm sold out in 15 minutes? Time to price it a bit higher.

You should bend to the economy, not the other way around. The economy has how many hundreds of thousands of gold being spent daily? No one person can deal with a force of that magnitude. Duck and weave, flow flow flow. Its all about your ability to adapt to change.

I disagree, when people have little value in something then they can sell it for what they wish. If they had real money invested in it, they would not dream of putting it on the AH for 1/2 or a 1/3 of the price.

If there's an item which is rarely for sale, like these shoulders were at one point, and someone new has just started making them, they're going to set their own price. Without access to the market information the experienced seller has, sellers of rare goods have a hard time determining price. How are they supposed to know you sold those one at a time for 150g? Their banker sits at the AH searching all night? That's not reasonable for most players.

If you're going to post one item at a time or arrange to be the only seller of an item, you are not creating a real market and you're not in a position to talk about supply and demand, you have a monopoly. Good for you, it's not going to last.

If you're selling something which is always available and someone undercuts the market, flip it for easy profit and stop complaining... they handed you a gift.

exactly. the thing that some people don't understand is supply and demand. that's why game's economies fail. if someone is churning out 100 items a day then the people that want that item are not going to worry as much as if there was only 10 or 20 of the item comming into the AH.

Caia is exactly right in every way.

Yes, it is true. Some of us do play the auction house. I, for one, find it to be a very fascinating mini game. I enjoy it. Some days, I don't even bother with the same old "kill the monster, take the treasure" or "Get me 20 giant sewer rat tails." Instead, I go play "What kind of deal can I find today?".



Really? What happens if you are in a raiding guild with a raid scheduled in 10 minutes, or even want to go on a PUG raid, and you spend your hypothetical 150.25.6 on a vanity pet without buying raid buffs, supplies and armor repairs? Does the PUG raid allow you to come along? Not unless they are really nice people. A raiding guild would probably call your dedication into question, and if you did it more than one or two times, you might just find yourself without a guild. I'd call that a pretty serious in-game consequence. Players of this game have expenses that they have to take into consideration, if they want to experience all the in-game content.

Raiders have buffs, supplies and repairs.
PVPers have buffs, and equipment (not sure if they have repairs, also)
Non-raiding PVEers have equipment to buy, repairs and sometimes buffs.
Anyone who wants to get to certain places in Northrend needs a flying mount and winter flying.
Yes, these are all pretend items that are bought with pretend gold. That pretend gold is gotten with real time. I, for one value my time, and want some return on it. That is why I don't go and buy much of the bling that is out there, and focus on the items my characters need, and most players do the same.

I know. I even agree with it but you will always know, at the minimum in the back of your mind, that you will still be able to get by. Will you be unable to feed yourself IRL because of spending your last gold? Will you be unable to pay rent/mortgage because you bought the vanity pet? There just aren't the same concerns in a game that there are IRL.

Those concerns (ie being able to afford food, shelter, etc) play a major role in our purchasing habits. Those problems don't really exist in a game. There are their virtual counterparts but they don't hold nearly the same weight. That's why I don't like the comparisons between a games economy and a real one. The most important influences that exist in our real decision making processes don't exist or don't carry nearly the same weight in a virtual world. I usually try and be frugal with my in game purchases. I try not to spend willy-nilly but when something comes along and I decide that I must have it (even if it leaves me broke) I can do so with out nearly the concerns a similar decision IRL would involve.

If all you have is 150 gold + change, you have no business buying a vanity pet. Sorry, but it works a bit like real life - you don't go buy a show poodle without enough left over to feed yourself (much less the pet). I consider anyone who is raiding and only has 150 gold so poor at making gold that they should go to Ironforge and beg on the AH bridge for better reputation. Perhaps it's because of spending habits like this.

Thank you. That is one more bit of information for me to keep in mind when I finally get around to raiding. (No, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm a newb. I've also turned into an econ geek since taking Macro last semester.)

I think your definition is a little off.

There's no real loss in WoW, so it doesn't work in a true capitalist fashion. People sell their items for prices which would not work in a real-world scenario. Furthermore, the test for capitalism is for a "profit", so your quotation from whatever on-line dictionary you found is off as well.

I'm happy'ish in the UK.

Welcome to the boards.

Edited, Mar 4th 2009 9:04am by Goggy