AH Automation

Community General Discussion
1

So, about a week ago Blizzard made a post saying they added some tuning factors to the AH since a small amount of players are using addon automation to gain an economic advantage. And because of this, there have been other threads popping up from goblins, or AH sitters, whatever you want to call them that these changes negatively impact their performance, which was Blizzard’s goal I assume.

Part of the reasoning for posting here is to actually learn, what do these addons allow people to do? If I state something wrong, I apologize, I am working solely off of the changes that Blizzard has made and my personal experience listing my many auctions a day.

I will state here that I do not use an addon to do any auctioning, I do everything with the in-game UI, with pricing from a fairly popular, though old Auction House database.

If you read more of these threads where players are providing feedback about the throttles, you see in the comments you start to see sentences like “I sit at the AH afk while all my stuff lists”.

These types of sentences really bother me. I sit in front of an AH every day for about 4-6 hours, canceling and relisting auctions to get my stuff to sell as others do. I routinely have stuff to list in excess of 200 auctions, usually 400-500 items a piece for consumables, tens of thousands for ore, and never have hit the throttle this past week, for creation or cancelling. However, I want to go back to this comment that I read while going through these forums.

“i can say is i left my game running while tabbed out and watching youtube videos.”

So is the throttling that people are running into just for listing? Or is this for cancelling? A blue posted that they had relaxed these restrictions on everything but cancelling, but there are still some angry people about it. I routinely cancel 200+ auctions to relist them and have never once had the leisure of not watching my screen. I have to constantly open the mailbox that I’m directly adjacent to, reopen the AH interface, click on the item, make sure the price is right, and then click create auction.

I only bring this up, because again, I have been sitting infront of an AH 4-6 hours a day, every day for the whole week. Cancelling 200+ auctions multiple times a day, relisting thousands if not tens of thousands of items every day, and I have not ran into this issue once. Are the addons that people are using so excessive that they are checking thousands of auctions every single time and seeing if they need to cancel them? If so, why is this behavior allowed at all? If a player who doesn’t use addons can sit at the AH, for hours on end, doing nothing but cancelling and relisting not run into this, are the people running into these throttles using those addons gaining “significant economic advantage”? They are checking what? hundreds of auctions at the click of a button where it takes a regular player 5 precise mouse movements? What’s the acceptable threshhold for this? At what count of “check to see if I’ve been undercut” scans is practically exploiting? Why is this behavior allowed at all? How is it different than setting a bot to watch for listings, then cancel and relist? Does it require someone to click a button “scan to see if my auctions have been undercut”? If that’s the case, I don’t really see how that’s much better in the large view, personally.

I realize my last paragraph is a little pointed, I don’t mean to imply that anybody who uses AH addons is a bad person/cheating. I just want to open a dialogue as to: A. Do other people think addons to mass cancel or list is okay? B. Why does Blizzard think it’s okay to have significant time saving features available only to players who use addons? C. If this mass cancelling/relisting in excess of 200+ auctions exists the way it’s being portrayed by the Blues, why does Blizzard continue to allow it? D. How would some of these purported features not be considered botting?

2

They allow you to post hundreds of items, basically in one click, often undercutting the entire market and drowning out anyone who might just be selling a small batch of items trying to turn a coin.

These addons make it so only a select few have a majority stranglehold on the AH in any market, and force others to use major resources, even the SAME addons, to even be competitive.

Blizz is just trying to level the playing field a bit for the little guys, so they don’t get swamped and lost in the shuffle.

3

I am not there yet, and i am working to achieve that level of performance. but the most successful AH barons have at least 2 accounts. they play the game on their main account, while leaving their AH alt sitting infront of the AH on a separate client open. Posting auctions and managing their supply chain whenever there is a lull in their main gameplay.

I have to watch youtube video because i don’t have a second account.

These AH barons don’t have a strangle hold on the market. they frequently afk, leave, or just simply too lazy to shuffle hundreds of auctions.

Regarding addons, it’s very easy to learn and use. It’s freely available, no different that weak aura and DBM. I started BFA prepatch on a brand new server, with a single boosted toon with 10 gold to my name. One day, i sat down and told my self. Im going to learn how this works. I installed all the package, read up on the guides, setup something small for myself, and figured out how it works.

in time, everything expanded and i got better and better at what i am doing. It was a very fun journey. no different than learning a new class.

4

If that’s honestly the case how is that not considered botting by Blizzard’s terms? To list a single auction is a 2 click process minimum, if you listed 100 items, that’s 200 clicks. I guess part of the reason I’m so baffled by this is just the scope of it if that’s true. Do they retrieve items from the mailbox after cancelling? That’s just what I’m confused about, is how deep does the automation go.

DBM provides information and context, at no point during my raids does DBM perform several actions for me, that would take another player several clicks, for a single click. If the addons just showed financial data, I can see that analog being made, but to perform several actions, no.

5

It’s not botting because it still requires a human presence to make it work.

Botting, by Blizzard’s terminology, requires ZERO human interaction.

6

You still have to “click” the items themselves to make the Addon post those items to the AH. Not to mention set the prices and everything. TSM also helps you better set your prices according to prevailing ones, avoiding having the need to scroll past many other listings that vary by slivers.

TSM and such other addons exists to fill the faults Blizzard’s UI is yet to rectify. Blizzard themselves have already fixed the “fix” by instead throttling cancelling, which is more nefarious for undercutting reasons.

What does “little guy” even mean though? Addons are somewhat easy to customize and set up if you take a moment to look through them and understand them, they’re freely downloadable too.

If you want to dedicate your time learning things and optimizing your earning, why should a “little guy” leaving up a couple posts per day expect to do as good as you, the “min-maxer”? The AH, given its massive nature on populated servers, cannot be viable means of easy earnings if you put zero effort into understanding it.

7

They need to reduce cancel scans down to nearly nothing.
post your crap…leave it posted…stop trying to CONTROL the AH economy and this ‘problem’ goes away.

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8

So for every auction, a player has to click on each individual auction to cancel it/list it?

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9

yes…except that you can use your mouse wheel to ‘click’ it faster.

10

DBM and Weakaura are far more transformative for the overall gaming experience than auction house. I can set weak aura up in pvp to alert me of very specific circumstances, things that are easy to miss in the heat of battle but have game ending consequences.

11

People use TSM to find and buy items that are underpriced and repost them for a higher price to make a profit. Essentially people are using gold to make more gold.

12

Again, all of that is informational. Yes adding extra healthbars or big flashing arrows makes you notice something. If the addons just add historical data/median mean pricing/flow rate, etc. That’s much more similiar to DBM than what was said in what I was responding to. If they have to perform the same number of clicks as players with the base UI, then it’s fair. If addons actually perform clicks for the players, that’s when it becomes unfair.

I understand that functionality of it, I myself use an AH database website. However, the main concern I have is people complaining about a cancel throttle that I have not yet ran into with the base UI, cancelling several hundreds of auctions, many times a day. I was trying to learn, is this because they are flagging the addon, or are the addons doing more than 200 cancellations, significantly faster than I can with the base UI.

13

No Blizzard is trying to save server space and data usage (money) If they wanted to help the little guys they easily could with basic rule changes in the AH code that would even out the playing field AND help the market.

  1. First in first out.
  2. Undercuts require at least a 5 or 10% difference for them to be visible. If they aren’t yours only sells after the first sells or expires. Example: Anchor Weed listed for 50g each. You undercut by a copper and yours won’t even be visible until the one you undercut sells or expires. You under cut by 5 gold (45g) a 10% difference and yours is shown and sells first.

Problem solved.

14

Yeah this.

To the OP: See they revamped the AH so things like herbs, ore and cloth could be bought in any number you want. Before, if one guy had 50, you had to BUY 50. Now, you can buy 5, that guy gets some money, moves some product, and gets the rest back for another round.

The problem comes in with undercutting and people’s NEED to continually do it. They justify it by saying “hey, if I undercut you by 1c, I’ll move my product first!” Ok, fine, that’s true, but then you have people undercutting by 1, 5 10, 25, 50 GOLD for simple items like this, JUST to control the market.

I’ve literally posted a stack of 200 of something, gone to the bank to get something, come back and my auction has already been undercut by SEVERAL GOLD, basically meaning unless someone buys ALL of that person’s stuff (and I’ve seen them post THOUSANDS of items after me) my auction WILL NOT SELL.

This won’t help at all, because people are already doing that, and not because the “market can bear it” but because they are trying to cut other people out or they just don’t care what they are selling or at what price.

Great idea in theory, until one guy posts something at 50 G (and a lot of it) and you have to either wait it out until that auction goes away or buy it all up before you get to the guy selling at the more reasonable price of 15 G.

Neither of those ideas actually solves the problem.

Making HOW auctions are posted the same for everyone across the board doesn’t exactly SOLVE the problem either, but it’s a better solution than either of those things.

15

/facepalm. Are you being purposely dense. It only helps with both ideas together. The guy selling for 15g will be visible because its more than 10%, and you can buy his.

If people are selling for a significant price reduction then theirs SHOULD sell first, thats capitalism. If you can’t compete at their prices that sucks for you, but it doesn’t suck for all the buyers. The REAL problem is they can under cut by a copper and be listed first so it ends in addon wars where they constantly relist with negligible price reductions slowing the AH to a halt. Rule #2 would stop that as they wouldn’t even be shown unless their reduction is a meaningful amount of money.

16

TLDR it lets you set up your selling (or buying) criteria by item groups and operations without having to sell item by item.

Once configured you can sell to those conditions by scrolling your mouse wheel instead of placing each item into the ah window, setting price, duration, etc.

The problem is the cancel scan encourages people to sit at the ah all day long and repost every 30 seconds, putting a drain on resources and making it near impossible for people who don’t do the same to get sales.

Cancel scans need to be destroyed completely.

1 Like
17

Despite what people would like you to think, TSM, et. al are not a one button post tool.

What TSM does do is help automate the pricing part of the process. TSM scans the AH to find the current price of all the stuff you want to sell. It can then apply the pricing rules you came up with to determine the price to sell each item at. It will then enter that price for you for each of the items you want to sell. The player has to “click” a post button for each item that’s listed though. (Predominantly the scroll wheel is used for this, since every click of the wheel counts as a button click. It will still take about a minute to post 100 items.)

TSM can help with undercutting in a similar way. You can scan the AH for all the items that you have posted. If any of them have been undercut by another player, then you can cancel them. Again, you have to click a button for each item you want to cancel. Then you can go back and repost them again.

TSM can also help you decide when to craft more items. Since it knows what the prices are for the finished goods and the materials, it can calculate how much profit you’d make from crafting that.

The sniper tool worked by searching the AH for items that were below your threshold and allowing you to buy them. Thus helping you find items that had been posted for extra cheap.

The part about having to click a button for each post or cancel action is what makes it acceptable by Blizzard’s ToS.

The hard part about TSM though is figuring out how you want to price your goods and labor, and which goods are actually worth selling. Once you tell TSM what your minimum profit levels are, then it can handle the rest. But it can’t help you figure out which goods to sell or what your pricing schemes should be.

18

Thank you so much for being concise. That’s really what I wanted to know, so basically it just converts the clicks to mouse scrolls.

So what do cancel scans do? That seems to be the big gripe.

19

It isn’t botting, it just does what the default UI should be able to do and also does things better. These addons give you the tools to make posting larger amounts, much easier, and gives you a history of sorts plus a price check on items.

It’s just with the scarcity of the Brutosaur looming, and their silly ah revamp. The system is swamped so they are doing what things like electricity companies do when the usage is too high, they do rolling black outs… or ISP’s throttling some users that use their internet.

This whole making a more level playing field explanation is pure bogus and could of been done a more efficient way. This I believe was done purely for their server-side inadequacies.

20

Thank you as well for your post. The way it was being portrayed was that it basically performed actions for you, which is what had me concerned. Remapping to the scroll wheel makes much more sense. As a side note: the price matching thing is actually baked into the game’s default UI now.