I was selling herbs on the AH last night, and I’ve used the AH for over 15 years, but noticed something odd and I’m sure some of you can tell me more about it. Let me describe what I saw.
The herb I was listing (and I note this was happening with all TTW herbs) I could see the listing price ranged from 67-gold per herb and up. HOWEVER, I kept seeing that someone was listing the same herb for 25-gold, then it would disappear quickly. Then I’d see random quantities of the same herb (maybe 5, 17, 45 quantity) being listed then quickly purchased.
This process repeated over and over for 30 mins. I would hit the ‘refresh’ button repeatedly and see the mass of herbs listed at 67+ gold, but that someone continually listed an herb for the cheaper price of 25 gold, THEN it was gone. The listing-then-immediate-purchase happened so fast, I couldn’t purchase it (unless my fingers were super quick, and I did manage to purchase maybe 15 over the period of 30 minutes).
I’ve not noticed this before (but I guess it’s business-as-usual). What is going on that this happens? It’s it bots? Addons that list-n-purchase items on the AH? I’m very curious.
(Goodness knows how many times I’ve not noticed this and in my hurry to list items, I inadvertently probably listed my items at the lower cost of THOSE listed items, not even realizing it. I won’t do that again.)
I’m not super up on this lately. There has been auction house addons that will let you snipe items below a price that you set yourself for years though. Pick any item you want on the auction house. Find the big block of items at the lowest price. Price something just under that. Watch it get purchased immediately. Then it will be relisted at the higher price. Pretty sure it is something like that.
It is someone putting up something for well below the current cost hoping that someone who isn’t paying attention will place theirs at a similar level and allow them to quickly buy them out and relist it at current market value. Just make to not use the lowest price when placing yours and you will be fine.
Scammer posts herb,ore, fish (I’ve seen it for all commodities) for 1/2 of the lowest price for about 10 sec to bait other players into posting at the low price then buys all of low price stuff to either repost, refine or make into something else that sells for more gold.
This scam has to be botted to be fast enough to pull off so it should be pretty easy to track who’s posting the bait items and where the gold is getting sent so the scammers can be actioned.
Sounds like they’re just inhaling everything off the AH, or that particular item.
I’ve sold pretty much everything I put up there in seconds, so I believe it.
Gotta love that profane tinderbox money.
Edit: Oh yeah these are just douchebots trying to dip the price temporarily, so they can buy up whoever posts immediately to sell higher. Entrepreneurial scum.
They use special software so that they can automate listing and cancelling quickly. They aren’t being purchased they’re being cancelled. Some is always up, yet you will never be able to buy it if you try (do try, you have nothing to lose).
They do this so others who are listing legitimately will list at the 25g price, then they can buy it and flip it.
Region wide has more people active and gold goblins setting much lower prices and they are being bought. People need to be careful what they post things at, a lot of times this practice is happening in various markets.
I was just dealing with this a second ago. Being on a low pop realm, I appreciate the idea behind new AH and having commodities across all realms but it makes it impossible to actually buy things at the low price. You can’t get in fast enough. I use TSM and flip stuff when I can but I don’t just sit there and spam purchase things…I wish they could trace some of the people on bots doing this because it’s super frustrating.
I have seen this occur over the years. It’s more noticeable now. To me anyway. Because I am almost exclusively gathering/selling old expansion mats.
The low sellers are trying to bait people into posting multiple quantities of mats at the low prices. So they can buy and then resell.
I even spent a couple of hours playing this game with Cata and Classic mats over the last week. Mostly because I was flying around leveling by battling pet tamers while gathering. So after the circuit I’d sit in the AH for 10 to 15 minutes and play the Ah PvP game.
Made a big ~100k gold! Whoo hoo. lol I don’t use an addon, and do the buy/sell manually. It’s fun to buy out ~800 copper ore for 2g a piece then relist for 15g and watch it all go before I log off.
It’s like trying to pick up quarters off of the street in front of steam roller. Some times you win. Some times you lose (get crushed).
