WoW Economic Collapse

[Torgo]

You HAVEN'T addressed the supply-side problems with your plan, that's the problem.

Bam bam bam bam. That the sound of my head hitting my monitor in frustration. You don't need to stockpile thousands and thousands of an item to pull this off. All you need is to supply enough goods to meet demand for a single day. If demand for an item is only 10 a day, then all you need is 10 a day. If you need more, then we've said that you probably need to recruit help from your guild. It's the same as any other farmer.

He'll set his auction bot to buy any fish below the price that he wants to get. So all of your fish are immediately bought up.

We've covered this. He buys me out. I'm richer, he's poorer and he has more inventory and makes less money. LIFO and all that. If my inventory is complete out, I just need to fish enough to meet daily demand and repost. Repeat. Either way I sold what I wanted.

You put your fish up at closeout pricing and cry out in dismay when Xingxou's auction bot immediately buys them all up and relists them with a healthy markup. Meanwhile, Xingxou's alt has been bot-fishing for the last two days and his warehouse is brimming while yours lies empty.

You mistake my cry of dismay of one of extreme pleasure. Not only did I spend only 15 minutes selling my inventory to Xingxou, I've got my profit, put pressure on the market and now I've got time to slap some tail in real-life. Yeeehaw! Just like in real-life, empty inventory is good as long as I don't have any backorders. One thing you have mistaken is that I have my goods priced at closeout. We've said previously to price lower, but not too lower. The idea is to slowly drive down prices, not shock the system. The maximizes any margins you have at the beginning, it also encourages others to list at a lower price, it cuts any future margins for competitors who decide to buy out your auctions and relist. If my prices are only 5s lower than his, he could buy me out, but after you factor in AH fees I'm coming out far ahead in terms of work to profit ratios.

I know that you'll say this is not accurate because auction / fish botting is against the rules and unfair. It doesn't matter though because Xingxou is not just one guy. He's an amalgam of all the other buyers / sellers in the market who, collectively, have unlimited time, unlimited capital, and perfect knowledge of the market conditions. You do not, and that is why you cannot control or crash the WoW economy.

Actually, what is happening is accurate. Botting may not be fair, but it's part of the game. I accept that. However, if it's an army of Xingxou or just one guy sweating it out in a warehouse, it doesn't matter. We're playing with different rules and goals. They want to make money. I don't, which makes all the difference. We know the only way you'll believe us is if we show evidence. We'll know in a few days if the bot gives up or changes tactics.

 

[Woofer00]

Bam bam bam bam. That the sound of my head hitting my monitor in frustration. You don't need to stockpile thousands and thousands of an item to pull this off. All you need is to supply enough goods to meet demand for a single day. If demand for an item is only 10 a day, then all you need is 10 a day. If you need more, then we've said that you probably need to recruit help from your guild. It's the same as any other farmer.

You mistake my cry of dismay of one of extreme pleasure. Not only did I spend only 15 minutes selling my inventory to Xingxou, I've got my profit, put pressure on the market and now I've got time to slap some tail in real-life. Yeeehaw! Just like in real-life, empty inventory is good as long as I don't have any backorders. One thing you have mistaken is that I have my goods priced at closeout. We've said previously to price lower, but not too lower. The idea is to slowly drive down prices, not shock the system. The maximizes any margins you have at the beginning, it also encourages others to list at a lower price, it cuts any future margins for competitors who decide to buy out your auctions and relist. If my prices are only 5s lower than his, he could buy me out, but after you factor in AH fees I'm coming out far ahead in terms of work to profit ratios.

I'm surprised that you're so frustrated by this, and so unwilling to concede a single point that you've made throughout this entire thread. Impressive that you've stuck to your guns, but unwilling to accept that the system is flawed. Over the period of two weeks (I'll admit, not a very long period of time) I attempted to implement the flawed buylow-sellhigh with massive quantities of goods (thorium bars, at first) - the auctions I attempted this with sold within two to three hours (approximately 10 stacks of 20 bars at approximatel 150% of the prior price), but limited to a small and irritating quantity, approximately 1/2 to 2/3 at best, frequently only 1/3, because other people playing the AH would come in within that time frame and rapidly undercut me. Even with auctions set for 24 hours, the goods will not sell because the undercut prices will be the new high, and continue to be undercut. On a particular day I spent persistently monitoring the AH while taking care of real life affairs, I was able to buyout all of the lower auctions and actually effect a permanent inflation of about 20-40% (the original price was in flux and hard to gauge).

Your insistence that it only takes 30 minutes to control a 24 hour fluctuating market is absurd. It just shows that you haven't actually spent a consistent amount of time monitoring the day to day, hour to hour activity in your market. For thorium bars and other goods in extremely high demand (dark iron ore/bars, dark iron residue, core of elements, savage fronds, dark iron scraps, bijous, coins - things need for rep with TB, AD) prices will dramatically decrease on weekend due to an influx of weekend warriors who flood the market and undercut each other - this is the best possible time to buyout the market and obtain inventory for high demand items.

On Mondays and creeping into part of Tuesday, the price will naturally creep back up to near it's high point on W-F, with friday night being the point at which prices will being to plummet again. As for hourly changes, inventory skyrockets beginning around 3 PM server time on weekdays and earlier on the weekends, dropping down to low levels around 3AM -6AM due to the number of people who set 8 hour auctions prior to sleeping around 9 PM to midnight.

I would also note that I'm working with high demand items. Deviate Fish are a luxury item which only lvl 60 players or the alts of 60's will feel the ability to splurge on. Every player goes through the 1-60 grind quite painfully, so your friend's experience is not unique. The better geared fellows you see running around are primarily twinks or people who have the time available to running instances until their lucky rolls do happen to come around. Try to work in a market like I've mentioned around which is relevant to reputation and you'll see that you inventory can move quite fast.

I just recently gave up working with Tier 0 sets like lightforge, valor, wildheart and dreadmist, due to the fact that the server's needs have just simply moved on - I'm on Altar of Storms, and the number of lvl 60 players running high lvl instances for rare and epic gear has diminished the demand for these set items, and most weapons and armor, in fact. Prices on these items used to be around 10-25g for the BoE pieces available, but have plummted to 5-10. It's all about the demand for the item you're putting up for sale. Like I noted above, deviate fish are simply a luxury item - the demand is artifical in that noone really needs it and is just playing around. You're competing with a bot rather than a player in a market for which there is zero demand fluctuation once a majority of players have hit level 60.

I would also note that dedicated auctioneers typically have a system in place to maximize the benefits of supply and price control - it's called a mule. buyout perhaps 80% of the auctions on the AH for the item you're working with. Give the mule perhaps 20-30% of the market you're trying to corner. Put them in the auction house at perhaps 25% above your target price. Then log onto an alt, put up more at 30% or so above your goal, same quantity. Finally on a third character, place 50% of the number typically available at your target price. The remaining few % are of no consequence - they're likely the former high price and in your target range. Then just let it go, occasionally buying out listing which are below 75% of your target. You'd be surprised at how long you can maintain market control in this manner. For high demand markets i.e. markets in which reasonably and slightly above reasonably priced items have a turn around of under 8 hours, it's very easy to maintain a control for a few days before the massive undercutter come in with the materials they've been farming. Note that the first mule is essentially the bot you've been competing with, the second is a possible sale, and the third is the one getting all the gold.

Profits? With regearing myself once I hit 60 (about 2 weeks ago) and buying out the BS recipes i needed (okay, getting all of them, I'll admit I have problems), I had approximately 10 gold when I began. This has easily turned into 400g in my possession, in addition to approximately 100 lent to others and spent on gearing my alts as they level. I earn approximately 100g per day with ease, and I've even scaled back my operation due to an unwillingness to put down 25g+ for additional bags. I've been able to maintain this level while using some of the my supply to rep up with the various factions to the point of where I'm honored or revered with most, and decked out in ZG/AD/CC epics, depending on the role I'm playing (typically healer in a raid).

I would strongly suggest you attempt to use your methods to corner a lvl 50-60 market. I assure you that although you may have a bit of success, you'll have to adjust your methods, and even become your own competition.

Oh, and as for problems with the mail system, that's laughable. The mailbox is more reliable than you'd think, each alt can hold at least 100 items slots with minimal bank/bag investment, and the 30 day limit on mail is irrelevant except for armor/weapon/recipe/bag/ammo markets. Try working in major potions and stat boosters like mongoose (rogues love it). Your 30 minute/day scheme may work, but others around you will reap the rewards of your lack of attention to the AH over the other 20 or so hours of the day (more like 22-23). I'll emphasize it just once more - deviate fish is a retarded market with a limited demand, at best. People buy it because it's there, but the rules that work there don't work in the high demand fields, and especially doesn't work on the alliance side of things.

[edit: don't feel like putting in my ingame info, PM if it really matters to you]

 

[Boardin087]

Bam bam bam bam. That the sound of my head hitting my monitor in frustration. You don't need to stockpile thousands and thousands of an item to pull this off. All you need is to supply enough goods to meet demand for a single day. If demand for an item is only 10 a day, then all you need is 10 a day. If you need more, then we've said that you probably need to recruit help from your guild. It's the same as any other farmer.
Quote:
He'll set his auction bot to buy any fish below the price that he wants to get. So all of your fish are immediately bought up.
We've covered this. He buys me out. I'm richer, he's poorer and he has more inventory and makes less money. LIFO and all that. If my inventory is complete out, I just need to fish enough to meet daily demand and repost. Repeat. Either way I sold what I wanted.

NO

If the supply of fish is 10 per day. And you put up 10 per day. And the bot buys out all 10. There is still a demand of 10 fish per day needed to be met. Guess whos auctions they are buying (not yours they were autobought).

Ya the farmer might make a lesser percentage of profit due to soaking up your inventory and not reselling enough of it but.......

YOUR NOT AFTER PROFITS YOUR AFTER CONTROL. TOO BAD YOU HAVE NONE OF THAT EITHER. lol

^^ sorry your own little phrase kinda put a nail in your theory, how ironic

 

[AceTKK]

NO

If the supply of fish is 10 per day. And you put up 10 per day. And the bot buys out all 10. There is still a demand of 10 fish per day needed to be met. Guess whos auctions they are buying (not yours they were autobought).

Ya the farmer might make a lesser percentage of profit due to soaking up your inventory and not reselling enough of it but.......

YOUR NOT AFTER PROFITS YOUR AFTER CONTROL. TOO BAD YOU HAVE NONE OF THAT EITHER. lol

^^ sorry your own little phrase kinda put a nail in your theory, how ironic

Thank you, exactly what I was trying to say. ^ ^

 

[Capt. Insano]

My head hurts...

 

[sickwookie]

NO

If the supply of fish is 10 per day. And you put up 10 per day. And the bot buys out all 10. There is still a demand of 10 fish per day needed to be met. Guess whos auctions they are buying (not yours they were autobought).

Ya the farmer might make a lesser percentage of profit due to soaking up your inventory and not reselling enough of it but.......

YOUR NOT AFTER PROFITS YOUR AFTER CONTROL. TOO BAD YOU HAVE NONE OF THAT EITHER. lol

^^ sorry your own little phrase kinda put a nail in your theory, how ironic

I have been following this thread for a while, and I find it amazing how much hostility there is towards the OP. I guess it is because he has challenged us to think about a problem in a new way. That is to say he has approached the auction hall from the stand point of control rather than profits which is how we usually look at it.

In any case let me take a crack at showing you how the OP maintains control even when being bought out by a bot.

By the bot soaking up his inventory it will constantly grow its own inventory. This is because out seller is constantly placing enough product on the market to cover demand.

So, if the daily demand is 10 and he lists 10 and gets bought out by a bot. The bot relists the 10 items on top of its original inventory but only sells 10 since that is the demand per day. The bot is still sitting on all of its previous inventory which is an expense now due to listing fees. The bot also has the expense of having bought out our seller. As long as our seller can keep up with demand the bot will never be able to sell any of its original inventory with out dropping its prices to match. Thus our seller has control.

 

[Boardin087]

I have been following this thread for a while, and I find it amazing how much hostility there is towards the OP. I guess it is because he has challenged us to think about a problem in a new way. That is to say he has approached the auction hall from the stand point of control rather than profits which is how we usually look at it.

Because he has stubbornly held on to opinions to mess with things he doesn't understand or have experience in.

In any case let me take a crack at showing you how the OP maintains control even when being bought out by a bot.

By the bot soaking up his inventory it will constantly grow its own inventory. This is because out seller is constantly placing enough product on the market to cover demand.

So, if the daily demand is 10 and he lists 10 and gets bought out by a bot. The bot relists the 10 items on top of its original inventory but only sells 10 since that is the demand per day. The bot is still sitting on all of its previous inventory which is an expense now due to listing fees. The bot also has the expense of having bought out our seller. As long as our seller can keep up with demand the bot will never be able to sell any of its original inventory with out dropping its prices to match. Thus our seller has control.

You see, thats not how it would work. The bot buys up the 10. He leaves his higher priced auctions up which are probably also set around the demand (10ish). He doesn't relist the OP's auctions. The demand has not been met for the day and the higher priced auctions are bought out. Say they cost 5s each from the Op and 7s each from the bot. The bot spends 50s and makes 70s. Netting 20s profit and since you all think AH fees are so drastic(which they aren't) he might make 19s profit(honestly they are tiny). Yes the OP made more profit if u dont consider his cost of farming. But ya, the bot CONTROLS the prices.

So the seller can never keep up with demand because demand will be temporarily spiked from the bot buying out the auctions of the OP.

You need to control the supply for this to work. You cant do that. Accept it

 

[Boardin087]

In addition to this, I'm saying all this stuff based on the standpoint of the OP, which is fundamentally wrong. As someone else said, the market has a very complex demand scheme. "meeting the demand" is virtualy impossible. Some items have such a high demand that If you put any up at a semi-reasonable price they will all be sold and for hours there will be none on the AH. Some items fluctuated from 1g-3g within a couple of hours (although usually jsut a mix of demand/undercutters).

Regardless can we just throw out the whole "inventory being an expense based on AH fees). AH fees are based on vendor price not AH price. 30g arcane crystals vendor for 50s, the AH fee is like 2s. If you sell one it pays AH fees for a year.So come on, drop the AH fees garbage.

So if you neglect AH fees and account that demand is basicly not trackable even if the bot resold everything he had he would make way more profit (and control) by making sure to cover the demand even if it spikes.

 

[MenuBoy]

/agrees

 

[sickwookie]

You see, thats not how it would work. The bot buys up the 10. He leaves his higher priced auctions up which are probably also set around the demand (10ish). He doesn't relist the OP's auctions. The demand has not been met for the day and the higher priced auctions are bought out. Say they cost 5s each from the Op and 7s each from the bot. The bot spends 50s and makes 70s. Netting 20s profit and since you all think AH fees are so drastic(which they aren't) he might make 19s profit(honestly they are tiny). Yes the OP made more profit if u dont consider his cost of farming. But ya, the bot CONTROLS the prices.

So the seller can never keep up with demand because demand will be temporarily spiked from the bot buying out the auctions of the OP.

You need to control the supply for this to work. You cant do that. Accept it

Using your example the bot is still left with 10 in inventory. If our seller comes back in the next day with another 10 listings the bot will have to repeat the process, and again be left with 10 in inventory plus any additional items farmed in the previous day. So, if the bot is constantly farming, and our seller is listing 10 items a day at a lower price the bots inventory is constantly growing. Sure the bot is making a small profit on the 10 items a day, but he is never able to unload his entire stock.

What the OP is saying is that as long as you can meet the daily demand you maintain control. Sure someone could come along and swallow up your inventory, but they will not be able to sell any more of an item than you could have in a given day. This means they will not be able to sell any of their own items with out first buying up all of yours which cuts into their profits and grows their inventory. The only way for them to decrease their inventory is to sell at a lower price than our seller. Eventually the bot is going to move on to another market where there is more money to be made since that is what motivates most people to use the auction hall.

While this strategy works against the botter trying to make money of the market it does not work against the buyer/seller. The buyer/seller would come in with no inventory of his own, but instead just buy up our sellers low priced goods and relist them at a higher price. This buyer/seller would be able to make a profit as long as people are willing to buy at his higher price rather than wait for our seller to reenter the following day.

 

[Gongo]

Using your example the bot is still left with 10 in inventory. If our seller comes back in the next day with another 10 listings the bot will have to repeat the process, and again be left with 10 in inventory plus any additional items farmed in the previous day. So, if the bot is constantly farming, and our seller is listing 10 items a day at a lower price the bots inventory is constantly growing. Sure the bot is making a small profit on the 10 items a day, but he is never able to unload his entire stock.

at that point, the OP has lost all control of the market. the inventory of the bot grows and if there is any spike in demand, the bot can meet it faster than the OP. The whole point of this was that the OP had control of the market which, clearly, he does not.

 

[AceTKK]

So, if the daily demand is 10 and he lists 10 and gets bought out by a bot. The bot relists the 10 items on top of its original inventory but only sells 10 since that is the demand per day. The bot is still sitting on all of its previous inventory which is an expense now due to listing fees. The bot also has the expense of having bought out our seller. As long as our seller can keep up with demand the bot will never be able to sell any of its original inventory with out dropping its prices to match. Thus our seller has control.

This is a good post. I understand what you're saying and it's a sound argument. It relies on a few assumptions that aren't realy safe to make though:

(1) The seller can consistently supply the daily demand of fish.
(2) The daily demand for fish is constant, and known to the seller.
(3) The seller's cost of obtaining fish is equal to or lesser than the competition's cost.

If (1) is not true then the system doesn't work. The competition's inventory will sell down even after absorbing the seller's inventory. If the demand is 10 fish / day then our seller can easily provide that. My argument all along, however, has been that one player can not provide the daily supply of any item that actually makes a material difference in the economy.

If (2) is not true then the seller has no idea how much fish he needs to put up every day to meet demand. If he doesn't put up enough the competition will make up the difference. If he puts up too much then he incurs the inventory carrying expense that is his main weapon against the other guy. There is no way that any one player can accurately forecast daily demand on a 24/7 server that is constantly in flux. Is historical sales data even available at the auction house?

If (3) is not true then the competition will simply lower the price until our seller is losing money on each sale. Eventually our seller will go broke because his pockets are shallower than the other guys'. For farmed goods like fish (which don't actually cost anything to acquire) you have to measure the opportunity cost: Time. The competition (and remember, the competition is not one guy but everyone else on the server who is trying to sell a few fish) collectively has unlimited time. The price will eventually be driven lower and lower by under-cutters who don't care and just want to get something for their spare fish. The low price shifts the demand curve and the seller is left needing to supply a higher number of fish every day. Refer back to # (1) ...

The long and short of it is that you cannot crash the WoW economy singlehandedly. To even suggest it is completely absurd. You also will never control the market for even a single high-demand item because you don't control the supply.

 

[sickwookie]

This is a good post. I understand what you're saying and it's a sound argument. It relies on a few assumptions that aren't realy safe to make though:

(1) The seller can consistently supply the daily demand of fish.
(2) The daily demand for fish is constant, and known to the seller.
(3) The seller's cost of obtaining fish is equal to or lesser than the competition's cost.

If (1) is not true then the system doesn't work. The competition's inventory will sell down even after absorbing the seller's inventory. If the demand is 10 fish / day then our seller can easily provide that. My argument all along, however, has been that one player can not provide the daily supply of any item that actually makes a material difference in the economy.

If (2) is not true then the seller has no idea how much fish he needs to put up every day to meet demand. If he doesn't put up enough the competition will make up the difference. If he puts up too much then he incurs the inventory carrying expense that is his main weapon against the other guy. There is no way that any one player can accurately forecast daily demand on a 24/7 server that is constantly in flux. Is historical sales data even available at the auction house?

If (3) is not true then the competition will simply lower the price until our seller is losing money on each sale. Eventually our seller will go broke because his pockets are shallower than the other guys'. For farmed goods like fish (which don't actually cost anything to acquire) you have to measure the opportunity cost: Time. The competition (and remember, the competition is not one guy but everyone else on the server who is trying to sell a few fish) collectively has unlimited time. The price will eventually be driven lower and lower by under-cutters who don't care and just want to get something for their spare fish. The low price shifts the demand curve and the seller is left needing to supply a higher number of fish every day. Refer back to # (1) ...

The long and short of it is that you cannot crash the WoW economy singlehandedly. To even suggest it is completely absurd. You also will never control the market for even a single high-demand item because you don't control the supply.

Your absolutely right.

The OP has asserted that he can infact consistently supply the servers daily demand, that he knows what that daily demand is, and that his cost is as low as it possibly can be. I have no idea how he can be sure that 1 and 3 are true since I have only played wow for a short period. I will go along with his assertion though as long as he can show proof, which so far he has.

On point 2 I am quite sure that an individual can accurately forecast demad. I have worked on statistical software in the past that attempts to do just this. Using any number of methods one can predict with quite a bit of accuracy how markets will behave based on past performace.

How do you think your local grocery store knows how many packages of pampers to keep in stock any given time? They use software that tracks and predicts demand. Short term trends such as daily demand could be determined in as little as a week of watching the market. Even longer term trends can be determined in a short time since they can often be easily extrapolated. For example one could predict that demand for higher level items would increase as the average player level on a server increases. It would not take long though to determine the rate of change in average level per day, which would allow you to predict the overal change per month, year, etc. The longer you watch the trends the more accurate your predictions will become, but it does not take long to get into the ballpark.

 

[Torgo]

Gauging demand is fairly easy and takes about a week to determine. You pick a market and determine some of the following key points:

• Compare the AH listings day to day. What sold? How much?
• Who is currently selling? How often and how much?
• Put a few sample listings at several price points. What sells faster?
• Is the price fluxuating constantly or is stable? Is there an upward or downward pricing trend?
• When you sell a few samples, who bought it? Someone who is also selling? Or is it random people? Is it relisted immediately?
• What game dynamics have recently changed? Is there an upcoming patch or a change that will change the item?

Answering all of these questions help determine what your daily demand is going to be. You have to allow a small variance, but overall you can pretty much nail down a number. Try it sometime. It doesn't cost anything to do and anyone can do it. The hardest part is just tracking who is selling what and who is buying. You don't need to construct a database or an Excel spreadsheet for that. You just need to keep an eye out mostly on who buys your stuff because anyone who is using you to stock their inventory isn't part of the true demand. Eventually after a few days of actually entering the market full bore you can make any minor adjustments needed to make sure your inventory is close to zero.

What about spikes in demand? Good question. Any true spike in demand is a sudden rise in demand, followed by a decrease. You can usually see these coming. For instance, Meatpuppet learned that you don't auction *anything* on Mondays before patches. That's because if anything happens to the patch, you don't regain the time on your auction. There are a bunch of people that lowball auctions for the minimum on the hopes the patch crashes. That way they end up getting some equipment cheap. If they are short term spikes, you can leave and re-enter the market without a problem. Or you can anticipate them (like announced contests or guild events) and prepare ahead of time.

The goal is to soak up as much demand as possible. If you don't quite get all of it, no big deal, you just adjust slightly. As long as people buy your goods first then you're winning in the long run.

 

[Boardin087]

Gauging demand is fairly easy and takes about a week to determine. You pick a market and determine some of the following key points:

• Compare the AH listings day to day. What sold? How much?
• Who is currently selling? How often and how much?
• Put a few sample listings at several price points. What sells faster?
• Is the price fluxuating constantly or is stable? Is there an upward or downward pricing trend?
• When you sell a few samples, who bought it? Someone who is also selling? Or is it random people? Is it relisted immediately?
• What game dynamics have recently changed? Is there an upcoming patch or a change that will change the item?

Answering all of these questions help determine what your daily demand is going to be. You have to allow a small variance, but overall you can pretty much nail down a number. Try it sometime. It doesn't cost anything to do and anyone can do it. The hardest part is just tracking who is selling what and who is buying. You don't need to construct a database or an Excel spreadsheet for that. You just need to keep an eye out mostly on who buys your stuff because anyone who is using you to stock their inventory isn't part of the true demand. Eventually after a few days of actually entering the market full bore you can make any minor adjustments needed to make sure your inventory is close to zero.

What about spikes in demand? Good question. Any true spike in demand is a sudden rise in demand, followed by a decrease. You can usually see these coming. For instance, Meatpuppet learned that you don't auction *anything* on Mondays before patches. That's because if anything happens to the patch, you don't regain the time on your auction. There are a bunch of people that lowball auctions for the minimum on the hopes the patch crashes. That way they end up getting some equipment cheap. If they are short term spikes, you can leave and re-enter the market without a problem. Or you can anticipate them (like announced contests or guild events) and prepare ahead of time.

The goal is to soak up as much demand as possible. If you don't quite get all of it, no big deal, you just adjust slightly. As long as people buy your goods first then you're winning in the long run.

Thanks for neglecting to answer the situation stated above. And no demand cannot be gauged like that. Ugh so much is wrong with what you just said. ESPECIALLY for the things that you have been selling. Like i said, show us some results of your "cornering" a market that means something, and how bout on an AH actually located in a city. Or something useful. So far you spewed a bunch of bullshit (and when I say a bunch, i mean a bunch, your multiparagraph responses which say actually nothing are great if your writing a term paper to fill space, but sorry its not going to actually convince anyone here to see your ways.), posted screenshots which dont prove anything (except that your a nothing on your server with little to no money and no control of anything, and came here and boasted about being an author of games/books/ whatever.

Tell me what server your on and what market and ill check out the AH myself. However i dnot expect to see much of anything. Post this on the wow forums, go get laughed at.

 

[MenuBoy]

Tell me what server your on and what market and ill check out the AH myself. However i dnot expect to see much of anything. Post this on the wow forums, go get laughed at.

server is Black Dragonflight
the lvl 48 toon they use is Cistasimia, UD lock

 

[MeatPuppet]

Very nice. You did not have any problem finding me, so come and get me.

Later,

MeatPuppet

 

[Torgo]

Well, Holmes it looks like we have another Sherlock in the forum. They took the obvious and figured it out.

As Meatpuppet said (but in my words), go ahead and bring it beyotch. We'd like nothing better than to prove our point. Now if you'd be so kind to share your servers and characters so we can make a special appearance in your Auction Houses. Seriously. Name the Auction House and we'll show up and give it a go. We're willing to put it on the line. That's what it's going to take to convince you it seems.

We'll work out something where we'll compete with you in a market mano-a-mano and we'll post the screenshots of the results for everyone to see.

/me plays a wicked drum solo, holds out drumsticks in your face and drops 'em. Booyah.

 

[TypeO]

This is by far the best thread on OCP even if you don't play WoW...haha! Keep it going.

/me plays a wicked drum solo, holds out drumsticks in your face and drops 'em. Booyah.

You're killing me smalls!

 

[Boardin087]

Altar of storms, alliance auctionhouse. pick a good.

 

[MenuBoy]

i just checked out the horde and goblin AH on Black Dragonflight, it was quite....

well check for yourself.

 

[finalgt]

Because he has stubbornly held on to opinions to mess with things he doesn't understand or have experience in.

I haven't been around the boards too much as of late, but allow me to make a few assumptions:

1. You are either 18 or 19 years old.
2. You either like skateboarding, or snowboarding.
3. You have, at the most, 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
4. You probably have less than 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
5. Based off of what little I know of him and his professional career, Torgo has at least some professional experience with economics.
6. Based off of previous posts of Torgo's that I have read, he likely has more than "some" professional experience with economics.
7. Torgo's professional experience with economics likely trumps your theoretical experience with economics.

Therefore:

8. You telling Torgo that he does not understand or have experience in economics is highly, highly ironic.

Revisions?

 

[Cobalt332006]

Very interesting thread.

This might work well with something like fish where it's not exactly a high demand item, but, as has been said before, I seriously doubt it would work with high demand items.

Like the guy selling Thorium Bars... his stock sold in 10 minutes flat. You say you have limited time each day in the game, which means there is no way you can control the market of a high demand reasonably end-game item. (You can't anyway because the farmers will outdo you on resource gathering for high demand end-game items) You put your stock up and log off, 10 minutes later your stock is gone, which leaves probably 20+ hours each day for somebody else to sell stuff. And if you can't control a high demand item then there is no way in hell you can collapse the WoW economy.

Let me put it this way... there is no possible way you are going to collapse the WoW economy selling cheap fish. And collapsing the economy is what this thread started to be about and what the title still is.

 

[AceTKK]

I haven't been around the boards too much as of late, but allow me to make a few assumptions:

1. You are either 18 or 19 years old.
2. You either like skateboarding, or snowboarding.
3. You have, at the most, 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
4. You probably have less than 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
5. Based off of what little I know of him and his professional career, Torgo has at least some professional experience with economics.
6. Based off of previous posts of Torgo's that I have read, he likely has more than "some" professional experience with economics.
7. Torgo's professional experience with economics likely trumps your theoretical experience with economics.

Therefore:

8. You telling Torgo that he does not understand or have experience in economics is highly, highly ironic.

Revisions?

Who are you, Torgo's girlfriend? How about you try reading and understanding the debate and making a well-though-out contribution, or just not posting. Nobody is attacking Torgo or MeatPuppet personally, don't cheapen the debate with garbage like that.

 

[]|[ Mar']['in ]|[]

shit man, I'm about to sell my accounts, but I'd be happy to give someone a run for their money in a market

 

[Gongo]

I haven't been around the boards too much as of late, but allow me to make a few assumptions:

1. You are either 18 or 19 years old.
2. You either like skateboarding, or snowboarding.
3. You have, at the most, 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
4. You probably have less than 2 semesters of college economics classes under your belt.
5. Based off of what little I know of him and his professional career, Torgo has at least some professional experience with economics.
6. Based off of previous posts of Torgo's that I have read, he likely has more than "some" professional experience with economics.
7. Torgo's professional experience with economics likely trumps your theoretical experience with economics.

Therefore:

8. You telling Torgo that he does not understand or have experience in economics is highly, highly ironic.

Revisions?

please refrain from posting. you obviously have no economics classes or experience, or you just didnt read the thread.

 

[MeatPuppet]

This has gotten entirely too amusing !

This thread stemmed from a discussion that Torgo and I were having about my toon. As I said, he [Cistasimia] gets terrible drops all tha time and even worse rolls when I am with a party. This was forcing me to turn to the AH to make money to outfit my toon. Since I really did not have much of a choice I decided to have a little fun with it and started experimenting with how the AH worked and WoW economy on my server.

The server itself has a very weak economy. Transmuting Archanite as a service runs around 5g. That sucks... I can get 20g for transmuting on other servers, like Darkspear [where I have other alts].

SD Fish and Gold Bar is what I used to get started. They were test market because they have characteristics that I felt make them good candidates for generating a steady income with little investment. In addition, they have easy points of entry into the markets, but require a little skill or cash to do. With these I was able to determine that I could influence a market enough to eventually be the only seller.

Torgo and I speculated and subsequently tested this on other goods as my toon advanced. We have found some markets to be real dogs that require high maintenance and effort to maintain. We have also found some real gems with very high return. We also identified some of the characteristics that they share, making it easy to pick which ones to pass on and which to invest in.

It at one point occurred to us if this was so easy, then why could not someone with the help of a guild be able to control key markets to draw all the profit out of the game. Would this work against all forms of players? Bots? Without profit, would farmers move on... Could we then effectively cause a collapse of the servers economy by artificially controlling the prices? That is the debate.

I jump in and out of markets depending on my cash flow. This generates a steady income for me, above and beyond what I get grinding or questing. When I say that I invest a minimal amount of time, I mean it. I want to play and have fun with the game. My tinkering with the AH is just an extension of what I believe to be fun. Otherwise, it would be work.

I have been playing with the fish to provide you with easily replicated example. Remember these were the first markets I tried this on. Do not assume that this is the only market that I work. Again, it is an easy market to turn a quick buck.

Fixation on what it does not work is not productive. Why would I invest anytime in something that does not work or perform as advertised?

It is incredible the extent to which some of our trolls will go to disprove our premise, but they fail to produce proof to the contrary. Furthermore, they caterwaul about what will not work without giving credence to what we can prove we do. Their argument, “It’s just fish!”; “You can’t make a profit!”, and my favorite, “But is just won’t work with the self flagellating module that is key to end game…” Duh! Did I ever say we could?

Who cares? What does that have to do with the premise of the thread? I love the argument that I don’t know about end game either. As if they know me and are experts about me. This is not an exercise in self gratification. If it was, I would have posted it myself under the six most frequently uttered last words of someone from Arkansas, “HEY, look what I can do…”

So now, a little about me would help. I have been writing software over 20 years. I come from a decision support programming background. I am currently one of the technical leads in Supply Chain Systems for the company where Torgo and I work [my job]. I have written software that has been sold and marketed internationally that did data and trend analysis. It was the primary software title for that company for 3 ½ years. I am also a member of the founder’s list and executive team for a fiber optic and content provider startup corporation [my other job].

Thanks goes out to all of you that are starting to get this. I hope that you will put it to good use. Give it a shot. Post your results. If you have problems, I will try and help you out when I can. Let us know if you find any mods that you feel helped you out. I will stick with the thread; I hope you will too .

Have fun,

MeatPuppet

 

[MenuBoy]

5g for a arcanite transmute is pretty standard, 20g on darkspear? wow

i briefly checked your server and its not that bad a for a 4 month old server.
its definately not a mature economy and i agree with you that its a weak economy at least on horde side. (couldnt check out alliance, but im sure its better there)

and speaking of your savory deviates, goblin ah means nothing. i hope you and torgo can understand why its not good place to showcase your theorycraft in action. try again on horde ah, where you seem to have at least 2 major competitors and a bunch of regular people competing. and maybe move on from deviates to something better...

 

[Warrior]

this reminds me of the trick i used on Need for Speed porche unleashed back in the day.

if you had a good supply of money in the beginning, you could buy a used beat up car for real cheap and do full repairs to it all costing way less then what you sold it for on the market brand new. After doing it over and over, buying more and more cars at a time you can get to a million dollers in about an hour.

 

[MeatPuppet]

I am glad you are looking. If you ever want to pst me in the game, I am usually on between 10PM and 1AM Central. Lately, you also will catch me in the Barrens when I am not grinding or questing. You can speculate on what I might be doing.

I am finishing the Feralas and Hinterland quests currently. Then I will move on to the next region. Any hints or strategies you can offer would be welcome for discussion . If need be we, can open another thread for that.

For reasons I have mentioned before, this has been one of the most challenging characters I have developed. This is my first warlock ever. I decided to go affliction spec, which I can not tell you whether that is a good idea or a bad one.

I agree that the economy on the server is not mature. This is why we have experimented on other servers as well. This one is just easier to demonstrate our efforts on and where the need and concept developed. That is how Cistasimia makes money, good, bad or ugly. None of my other characters have to do this.

I am hoping that others will give it a go and report what they found, success or failure. If nothing else than to refine the concept and arrive at a model that will work on any server under most or any conditions. If I think that it is moving that direction, I will share more of the details yet unshared and give us all something more useful.

See you there,

MeatPuppet

 

[Aelfgeft]

I did something similar to this in a 2D RPG called RPGWorld Online. You were allowed to buy traders (which just looked like other characters) and place your items for sale on them, and then place them somewhere in the world (that was within the rules of trader placement) and people could just buy the items off them. Later, you would collect the gold, restock, and move the trader if you wished.

Most of the people in the game were fighting or magic oriented, and not many focused primarily on the utilitarian skills, including farming, cooking, fishing, carpentry, blacksmithing, tailoring, and so on. These skills were the key to providing nearly every item in the game. I managed to secure a couple of parcels of land and set them up as a key farm. Instead of building a standard house, I planted rows of trees on the perimeter of my land. Had to wait a few days, but eventually I had forest walls enclosing the land I had. Moreover, these were all food-bearing trees that were part of my materials. All of the interior part of my land was used for growing various crops in rotation (food plants, alchemy plants, etc) and I would also save some area for livestock. Underground I placed my workshop and various tools and implements. I was adjacent to a large lake which left plenty of ore mining since nobody bought lake land.

Essentially, I set up a system of producing just about every item I could think of, particularly the ones that were in short supply. Much like the earlier made Wal-Mart analogy, I could use volume to create profits while maintaining a low price, primarily since my main cost was in time. All the resources I needed to survive in the game I was able to provide for myself.

Eventually, I realized that I could curb inflation by first selling everything for peanuts, since I had no actual overhead to pay. At first I slightly undercut everyone, and heavily advertised it. When I had enough capital, however, I just sold for the lowest price above free. I drove plenty of people out of the market, and then had the only providers of certain very important resources (combined with strategic placement of traders at well-traveled routes or near areas where certain items were always needed). I even had some of the old providers supplying me for a small amount of money to curb the tensions about driving them out of business. After a while, I started slowing increasing the prices, and my profits began to sky rocket. This allowed me more room to expand my operations, and eventually even opened up the first player-made superstore.

I started taking in so much money, that I started trashing some of it. After a couple of months, I had eliminated half of the world's money supply. Some people thought I was crazy, but one of the admins commended me on my ingenuity. Inflation had already gone through the roof and up to the clouds, so it turned out I was doing the world a favor.

The key is to be willing to sell anything for a minimum price and not get greedy until you have total control of a certain good. It also helps to have every other supplier in your pocket. It's not easy, and in a lot of games can be very tedious, time-consuming, and require considerable investment at first. Plus, most people just want to go kill monsters, not start a business. You need to take advantage of that.

The OP seems to have the similar idea down. In a far bigger game like WoW, I would really like to see him cause a stir.

See? This is why Communism never works. Free enterprise is just too damn much fun

 

[AceTKK]

I still assert that:

A. You will never control the market on any high-demand item

B. You will never crash the economy.

The very first post outlined a fundamentally flawed plan to do exactly those two things. I say you cannot, and have already discussed the reasons why. The onus is now on you guys to prove us wrong.

 

[Aelfgeft]

B. You will never crash the economy.

For what it's worth, if you see my above post, in one game I nearly did. I have no doubt it can be done in WoW as well.

 

[Crazylikeafox]

you sceam will work until you saturate the market and screw yourself over

 

[Cobalt332006]

I still assert that:

A. You will never control the market on any high-demand item

B. You will never crash the economy.

The very first post outlined a fundamentally flawed plan to do exactly those two things. I say you cannot, and have already discussed the reasons why. The onus is now on you guys to prove us wrong.

QFT

You stated you could crash the WoW economy. The only way you are going to do that is to take control of at least one essential item that is sold in mass quantities. Controlling an item that almost nobody end-game uses is not going to do it because the majority of players will just ignore it. So you need to control an essential end-game item, such as thorium bars for example. I've already stated why that's not going to happen, not when you're online 3 hours a day and certainly not without a large team backing you up. The farmers will simply out-produce and out-sell you in the 21 hours a day you're offline.

Cornering the gold bar or SD market is impressive but hardly threatening to the world economy. BTW the game doesn't really start until you hit 60 as others have already stated.

 

[Woofer00]

If you could pull this off in a high demand market for high priced items, it is actually quite feasible. However, this possibility relies on the assumption that your demand remains constant and the gold supply is relatively constant, which it absolutely is not.

The economy of WoW has absolutely nothing to do with the buying and selling of goods. Gold income is generated through instance running and questing at lvl 60, with an extremely minor amount generated in the progression from levels 1-59. Items which show up on the AH at all are the ones that are in demand (ever see coal on the AH?), but they're also items which people can easily farm; if you destroy a market, people will simply turn to farming for them instead - not a hard feat, and actually extremely common. The commodity you've destroyed the price of will simply be sent to guild banks for whomever may need it when the time comes since there's no point in selling it any longer, or simply vendor trashed.

There's also the other problem of changing demands. The very nature of the means of your achievement of driving others out of the market means that you spent a very significant amount of time giving out your product at rock bottom prices. However, it also means you just fulfilled a massive piece of the world's demand, and it will slow down in the future. The theory works well for developing servers, but once people lvl to 60, the need for AH items other than potions or recipes/tomes to skill up drops dramatically. Alts get twinked, but anyone who's worked to 60 knows what a reasonable price is for an item, and will avoid obtaining gear from the AH if it's too high. if noone can get what they want, twinkers still win because they can just find the top of the line of the next best thing that's still available.

You should also consider guilds - they establish themselves and people begin to give away expensive items to each other for free (i've given away just as much dark iron residue before it was my turn to rep up with TB as i did getting others up there).


Fact is, every player in wow has the opportunity to be an entrepreneur, and to some extent all are. Someone will see the market die and take that opporuntunity to make a quick buck - if it were me, i'd buy out your inventory, and relist at 15-25% above your price, as well as reserve a few for sales in /2. Sure you'd make money, but I'd make more. In addition, you'd have no idea what I had done because you only spend 30 minutes per day monitoring the situation, but your mailbox would imply that you'd been successful. win-win situation.

 

[finalgt]

please refrain from posting. you obviously have no economics classes or experience, or you just didnt read the thread.

Clearly, from all of the economic misinformation in my previous post, I know nothing of any "economics." Nor did I read the thread at all, I just randomly scanned posts until I saw one that I could make fun of easily, thus enraging the poster's supporters. I'm a crafty one, alright.

 

[CodeX]

Economics is the study of wealth. The entire point of the study of economics is to make money. If what you are trying to do won't make money you are not practicing economics, instead you are merely practicing a non-technical form of hacking. You are being malicious for the sake of being malicious.... "WoW Economic Collapse" sounds pretty malicious to me... I hope Blizzard bans you

 

[AceTKK]

Clearly, from all of the economic misinformation in my previous post, I know nothing of any "economics." Nor did I read the thread at all, I just randomly scanned posts until I saw one that I could make fun of easily, thus enraging the poster's supporters. I'm a crafty one, alright.

Haha! Well played sir!

 

[Banyan]

i would stop patting myself on the back... wow gold will not get you laid, buy you a nice pad, new car or anything. if you have such a brilliant knowledge of economics go make some real money in the real world.