I’ve already given them my data about sellers continually (and constantly) posting low price “bait” listings. That, in and of itself, is fine. But the ability to instantly purchase anything listed at that price is funneling tons of gold to these bots.
Why not do something about this that is so easily tracked? All this is doing is sending more gold to bots, and has been going on for months, if not longer.
To everyone else: Do you part. Don’t fall for the bait. List your items at the going price (at least check the next highest price listing).
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You cant skip buy materials like in the past, if I didnt want to my gold to go to someone I could specifically pass them over and pay a little more to the next person. This current AH you have to buy from the lowest sellers first, you cant skip the list.
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Oh I meant don’t list items at the same price as the bait. I try to buy their bait as quick as possible to waste their money, and it almost always is something I can buy. It’s when others list at that same price that suddenly they are purchased with inhuman speed.
Thats another thing, I dont think the majority of players have addons that scan the AH, I dont. Cant tell what is listed from a bot vs a real player. I am not watching prices every waking moment either.
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In some cases and even I have done this, I listed thing just slightly better than what a vendor will pay just to make a tiny bit more and didn’t care who I undercut in doing it. Some times its not about botting in the AH, its about not caring to play the AH game to move a product.
I mean I’m sure some humans do it or are involved in the process it’s simply that ah addons can make this way easily. You’d have to remove the ah api so addons can’t mess with it if you want solve this and I don’t think many ah goblins would be happy if you do even if I think for most people it would be better.
Are you taking about herbs, ore and other such things that sell MILLIONS of units per day?
Cuz those will sell at the average price, most likely before you can even close the AH UI.
No need to undercut anyone. They’ll still sell nearly instantly.
Gear and stuff like that I can see, but not high volume commodities.
Which is where the AH bots are exploiting.
I don’t think addons are the issue here, because, even with addons, it requires a button click to perform a transaction.
This is being able to buy the items so quickly as to necessitate it being at inhuman speed.
To reiterate:
AH bot lists 1 item at half price: I can usually purchase this, no problem. Ore, herbs, doesn’t matter (9 out of 10 times, I can get this one stack)
Others list multiple items at the same price: I almost never can win these. (1 out of 20 times, or less, I can win this)
While it’s not solid proof, certainly Blizzard can look at the listing time and the purchase time, and if we’re talking < 500ms difference, it’s probably a bot. There’s just no way people can move that quickly, even with addons, to press a confirmation button. If anyone else has a different experience, I’d love to hear it though (as in, being able to immediately, and without a confirmation click, purchase an item from the AH)
If all you click is next and it does multiple actions … 
It’s not fully automated but it’s semi-automated.
But what I am saying is that both are using the same system even if one is a bit more honest than the other.
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Bump.
I’ve goten into the habit of making sure I never just carelessly put something on the AH and assume it’ll be a decent (non ‘bait’) price.
It’s gross that this isn’t being taken care of. It’s one of the easiest things blizz can detect.
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Just an update.
I’ve tried seeing if macros will work, as it would be quicker to just press keys as opposed to click.
This does work (in terms of allowing you to buy faster):
Once you click on the lowest cost item (I’m still checking to see if that can be a key press), you do
/run AuctionHouseFrame.CommoditiesBuyFrame.BuyDisplay.BuyButton:Click()
and
/run AuctionHouseFrame.BuyDialog.BuyNowButton:Click()
I put those on separate buttons (as macros) so I didn’t accidentally press it too many times or anything but they would probably work together as one macro.
No real surprise though, it doesn’t help me win any more auctions, as bots have it all automated in milliseconds.
Blizz doesn’t seem to care, so … whatever, I guess. Good luck winning those bait auctions if you want some free gold, but it’s not much of a help.
Not always bots doing that. It is to compete with other people to trick their AH addons into thinking that stuff is worth a lot less than it actually is if you post lots of the same item for a very low price then you can have the addons have it set to always suggest that you post it at that price, then you can come in and buy out all the low posted stuff and flip them by selling them for a lot more.
I was thinking today. It could be multiple people working together. One keeps posting 1 at a time, while the other buys it, and if they get another post under what they post they snag it.
Seems like an annoying way to make gold, but I guess with thousand of transactions they get a decent return to keep doing it.
Yea, I didn’t mean to infer that only bots are doing this, just that it’s a high likelihood that the superspeed buyers (if not the baiters) are bots.
Yep, absolutely could be, since most of the time I was able to snag a low-priced item it was a single person that listed it. And it was different depending on the item. So Person A listed Bismuth Bitterlilng, another was one star Ironclaw Ore, etc. There were certainly other people doing single listings, but these same people would show up as the seller >60-70% of the time.
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I can’t even imagine how this is an issue. Maybe I am missing something. I want to sell stuff. I take it to the AH, undercut by 3%, and someone’s AH character buys it in less than 60 seconds. Usually in the past I got most of what I posted back in the mail. So I am draining someone’s account of gold from all these sales.
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There’s two issues - one of which is a “it’s your own fault” kind of this.
One is that people are being baited into posted well below normal price (like 50% or more) through their inattention. That’s on them.
Two is that these super low auctions are being bought by bots where humans cannot compete in terms of reaction time. They then turn around and sell for the “normal” price.
The bigger issue is simply using the bot to buy the low-priced auction. The fact that people can’t take two seconds to look and see if it’s a bait price before selling is on them. Either way the auction would get sold because it’s a 50% discount. Bots are not buying your “normal” or “3% off” listing. There’s no profit in that.
And yet somehow, every time I put 10 to 15 current items in the auction house with that 3% discount I get spammed that a buyer has already been found and I have a full mailbox 65 minutes later. I get that botting violates the terms of use in this game and those players should be punished.
I also know that the only other reason to be angry about this is because they are simply cornering the market faster, which seems silly in a game because it is just a game. What Blizz needs to do to eliminate all of this gold hoarding and inflation is to put a cap on items that go into the auction house at a 500% vendor markup.
So whatever you can vendor it for you can only sell it to another player for five times that value. this would prevent over inflation and it would squish this so-called free market so that every player didn’t have to run out and buy a token just so they could afford 10 potions so they can raid.
I already know that’s an unpopular opinion and that people are absolutely gonna hate it and shred it. But at the end of the day, if nothing can be marked through the roof and people don’t have to buy tokens to survive in this game wouldn’t it be worth it to actually put the power back in the players hands so that all they have to do is use the gold they’ve earned endgame to be able to afford anything they need?
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Blizzard should ban gold buyers to suffocate the gold farming bots. Ban enough people doing RMT and the bot farms will starve, bots will always find a way into the game, and its the demand for gold by players BREAKING TOS.
Not enough apparently, the bots are still going strong, obviously the gold sellers still have a market.