I’m trying to wrap my head around an experience I am seeing on the AH for Nightslayer Alliance. I am a tailor and have been selling some high ticket crafted items for profit on the AH for a few months now. There are a number of characters who habitually undercut my items.
This in and of itself is not particularly concerning or suspicious. What is, is the amount of raw hours these characters spend in Stormwind and the rapidity with which they are able to undercut me.
Some of these characters will be in Stormwind 16+ hours a day. I consider myself to be a habitually online player with over 34 days /played since pre-patch when I rolled this character. Additionally, the undercutting happens within literal seconds of me posting my item. I typically have 1-2 of these items in stock at any given time but these characters have a seemingly never ending supply. Whereas I normally have to cancel my auction, walk to the mailbox to retrieve it and re-post it. They have posted 5-7 of the same item within seconds.
Without some addon or third part intervention, I’m failing to see how this could be congruent with normal human play. Is anyone aware of a program, addon, weak aura or otherwise that allows this? Furthermore, is such a program within the TOS?
1 Like
If I have a lot of materials to unload I will sit at the AH for a few hours and refresh constantly and undercut immediately. I will typically have a bunch of the item on hand, so that if I get undercut I can simply repost it without returning to the mailbox or cancel.
I only sell like once a month, but I could see some people who buyout hundreds of auctions when they are low and repost them all day like it’s a job. Because for some people it literally is.
I don’t think there is a bot program doing the undercutting, I just think its both competitive auction house gamblers and gold sellers.
There will always be somebody willing to do what you wont, and they will get ahead because of it. Whether that means sitting at the ah for 8 hours a day, spending all your gold on items to resell, or something else.
I’ve never really invested into the automation side of the coin, but I’m pretty sure AH goblins have historically parked characters at the AH to undercut and snipe undervalued items as soon as they go up. To some people, it’s their form of content. I couldn’t tell you what addons allow for this, but no one has ever been actioned for it as far as I know.
I can’t say for sure whether or not bots are in on it other than to say…probably, but I know lots of people will do this for day to day consumables/mats. I’ve parked my bank alt there for a few days placing some alchemy elixirs and getting herbs when they are cheap. Today someone tried to reset the Adept elixir price up to almost 6g per and I just dropped them in at 3g and people ate em up; they probably average around 2.3-2.5, but have gone for as low as 2g and as high as 2.7g. It’s kind of fun but also kind of tiring, I am making gold though.
There are many Ah bots, you can find them located at less popular auction houses, they will be sitting with the afk marker waving at the auctioneer every 30 seconds when they buy/sell something. they auto buy everything that is more than 10% below their market price and resell it, they also auto pull and put things back on the Ah at breakneck speeds.
Sadly i have reported half a dozen of these bots, even with video evidence and Blizzard refuses to ban them because they keep prices up for when they start selling wow tokens next month.
1 Like
I noticed everything I list on the AH sells
What is the purpose of doing this?
Do you continue to post lower and lower, undercutting them, they undercut you, you undercut them, etc. until the price lowers enough that they buy you out, or?
Theoretically that is the end point but the undercuts are in one copper increments so they don’t really drop in price by any noticeable margins even after 100 times. The idea is to be the technical “cheapest” when sorting by price which is the one that will be bought by random shoppers.
Botting or not, you can sit on any supply and just undercut by 1c at a time so when people go to buy they buy yours. You post under the assumption people are using Auctionator since it does a really good job of letting you buy in bulk and protecting you against price gouging or accidentally buying an overpriced item with a low bid.
I have been flipping elixirs a lot due to being elixir spec; buy herbs when they are cheap and try to post elixirs when they spike. It’s best to only post a few auctions at a time cause it can be competitive; you dump everything and within a few hours you may be far up the list even though the price has only changed by a few silver so people won’t see you unless all those get bought out. And…sometimes it does because people will try to reset the market, but that’s not going to happen every cycle.
I mean, I get that you can. I’m more curious why someone, or specifically a bot would be set to do this, and how far they would go with it. Like, is there an end-goal, and would it be long-term sustainable and profitable to do so.
I often post for higher than the lowest prices, expecting prices to fluctuate, and they do, which leads to my posted items being sold.
Short answer is yes, but it probably depends on market. I’ve been successful in marking up my elixirs above lowest price and riding the wave up as demand exceeds supply, but I’ve also been wrong and came back to a mailbox full of unsold elixirs. Then you lose your deposit and, honestly, that can be costly when you’re trying to profit off the craft. Also, I’ve seen a few times where someone dumps a bunch of elixirs in stacks of 1 so I post a small bit above theirs in stacks of 5 and they still sell cause no one wants to spam buy one at a time.
As elixir spec and lots of demand for elixirs (for some classes outright BiS and for TBCA flask prices are high this is a cheaper route to maintain even if not) you’re basically trying to buy herbs cheap as possible to make maybe a little profit on a 1:1 sale, but then you make the bulk of profit on the procs. You can even take a loss on the sale due to procs because even when you are buying herbs cheap to craft the elixir price can still be competitive with the cost of the mats.
Again, mileage may vary by market. IME elixirs is competitive cause it’s pretty easy to get into so I don’t try to game it much beyond knowing what I paid for and trying to sell at cost or hopefully get a bit more with procs representing a lot of the profit.