Fixing WoW Economy: Buy Orders

Community General Discussion
1

Hey guys,

If you’ve been farming professions in Shadowlands you may have noticed how insufferable it is when prices are going all the way around and you’re getting undercut all the time. That does not just impact on server load, but also on player experience. Truth is, WoW Auction House is an old system, it has been recently updated after so many years, but it’s not even close to what it should be yet.

Small servers suffer the most with the bidding problem. It’s just too easy to get undercut with auctions from impatient people and the overwhelmingly massive posting from “addon noobs”. Sometimes it seems like the only way to get the economy right again is by simply buying all auctions and setting a higher price for the market (which is a risk that literally fails every time, unless you stay online 24/7). Problem is that, in many cases, WoW’s product demand is waaaay lower than product offer, which makes everything worse.

I’ve recently ran across other MMORPGs and I found a great system that can make the bid problem way better to work with. That is, Buy Orders.

What are Buy Orders? How do they work?
Well, it’s quite simple. Along with selling orders for your auctions, players are able to set up buying prices for the products they desire to buy. That means that if someone posts any auction below the maximum buy order price, that auction will instantly sell to the highest buy order, usually for a higher price.

Buy Orders expire the same as Sell Orders (12, 24 and 48 hours). This means that if no one sets up a buying order for that product and your auction expires, you’ll have to set it up again. Also, Buy Orders will only trigger if they have a higher bid than the lowest Sell Order available.

To illustrate:

  1. A random player sets a buy order for 50 Marrowroot for 90g;
  2. You set up a buy order for 50 Marrowroot for 91g;
  3. Someone sets a sell order for 60 Marrowroot for 75g;
  4. Your Buy Order will trigger, buying 50 Marrowroot from that player at your listing price (91g), and another Buy Order triggers selling the 10 other Marrowroot for the other random player at 90g.

[edit1] Another example:

  1. I set up a Buy Order for Marrowroot for 50g and it’s the highest buy order available.
  2. Someone sets up a Sell Order for Marrowroot at 90g and it’s the lowest sell order available.
  3. My Buy Order will not trigger because it has a lower bid than the lowest Sell Order available.

Ok, what does that do for the community?

  • All prices will be regulated. (Buying orders will set minimum prices for sell orders)
  • Players can have a better control over the economy and know what to expect of product demand (you need only to check buying orders).
  • Makes the auction house “noob friendly” (meaning they won’t wreck your enchantment auctions listing them below material prices).
  • Enables the money making community a smarter way to make gold (you know what to expect of the market and you can move materials over different professions with controlled risk).
  • It may move players away from botting and troll farming (like killing 99999 mobs for leather) and into the Auction House trade system with better opportunity.
  • [edit2] Shifts the money making into the buyer’s perspective, allowing goblins to stay being goblins and casuals to still enjoy the Auction House.

Along with this system there could follow better improvements like destroying items for mats at a regulated loss rate, allowing products to be taken out of the market and to be injected again as materials for other professions, making the economy work and keeping prices easier to learn.

What do you think of this system? Would it work? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Let’s have a discussion!

Thank you guys!

[edit1] Fixed the logic behind buy order priorities (minimum and maximum prices were inverted) and listed an example for failed buy orders.
[edit2] Added perspective.

13 Likes
2

I dont believe that the WoW economy is quite ready for speculation derivatives and the commodities market.

6 Likes
3

Why do you think that? Could you explain your PoV?

1 Like
4

Gladly, but first you will need to know and understand what the following terms mean:
Long
Short
Call
Put
Naked
Covered
Option
Derivative
LIBOR
ROR
ROI
Segment
POI
BO
Forwards
Spot price
Index
ETF
Future
and Contract.

If you can define half of those terms you should begin to see why it doesn’t work in WoW.

5

The system is very broken, if there were this kind of change it would be very beneficial… I liked the idea

2 Likes
6

I wish WoW had an in-game stock market.

7

Of that there is no doubt.

The problem is that once you accept the bog standard definitions for the terms I listed you also understand that none of those bog standard definitions fit a virtual commodity because there can be no physical ownership of any of the commodities so named because no one owns anything of value in this game.

1 Like
8

RuneScape has a system similar to this. I think being able to respond to demand would be a good thing.

1 Like
9

I understand most of these concepts and I get what you’re trying to say, but can you really say that WoW is a good economy as it is today?

We can’t even calculate ROI or make estimates for it. As things work right now, you’ll just be crushed under the sheer amount of auctions and undercuts without even a sense of what the demand truly is.

I understand buy orders are not the whole solution and that’s not even my point, I just desire something better to work with. As far as I’m concerned they can help.

Auctions should be simple. We don’t want to make a Stock Market, we just want to play a game and have a little fun with it. I believe Buy Orders can do that for me.

TLDR: If I’m going to print money (farm herbs, ores and leather) at least I want to have some fun with and know what to expect of it. Right now it feels like a gamble.

2 Likes
10

IMHO I don’t quite see it going down as nicely as OP wants it too; an easy implementation would be to just pick the top-most valued buy-order and fulfill it.

  1. A random player sets a buy order for 50 Marrowroot for 91g;
  2. You set up a buy order for 50 Marrowroot for 90g;
  3. Someone sets a sell order for 60 Marrowroot for 75g;
  4. Your Buy Order will trigger, buying 10 Marrowroot from that player at your listing price (90g), and 50 will be bought by the other random player at 91g.

The seller will be the one who profits most; but this does work to prevent under-cutting to some degree as those invested into the system heavily will have the ability to prevent someone from undercutting for several hours.

Though honestly I quite like Runescape’s Grand Exchange system; WoW’s new AH system is kinda partially there.

11

Not sure that I understand what you are saying here. Chalk it up to lateness of the hour or my own senility whichever you prefer :slight_smile:

The thing is that Buy Orders do not live in a vacuum. They must be countered with a Sell Order on the book. Whether or not a Buy Order is fulfilled is irrelevant. One Buy Order must cancel one Sell Order and if the Sell Order is not available it must be made up otherwise the Auction House must create a commodity from nothing.

The reverse is NOT true. Sell Orders CAN live in a vacuum as long as they are always covered sells (a person puts up X of commodity Y and it gets sold as it rises from the bottom to the top of spot price N).

12

I’m no economist, but I like to undercut my own auctions by 1 silver many times to get more buyers from the OCD market.

And yes, I am evil. Thank you for noticing.

4 Likes
13

Okay but the reality is that if that gets a nod, then how long will it be before the undercutters are given leave to sell short then buy to cover and reap profit on the downside? Do we go that far?

14

Generally speaking it doesn’t need to get that complicated; as you said above it’s a virtual economy.

I suspect… if there were to be updates to the AH again it would be to utilize a pricing algorithm and for well know goods players won’t even have the opportunity to set a price; you search for the item, select it, and you get locked in at X price until you refresh manually, all buys must be performed in bulk else you’ll drop the rate and the system just rewards players the payout (absorbing itself any cost differences).

It’s a fake economy at the end of the day; it doesn’t need to pertain to real world rules.

15

I don’t think so. You can set up a Buy Order for a product in a price so low that they just won’t trigger the Sell Order. Sell Orders will not trigger a Buy Order if the lowest Buy Order is still lower than the lowest Sell Order bid.

I.E:

  1. I set up a Buy Order for Marrowroot for 50g
  2. Someone sets up a Sell Order for Marrowroot at 90g and it’s the lowest price available.
  3. My Buy Order will not trigger because it has a lower bid than the lowest Sell Order available.

That means that Buy Orders won’t cancel Sell Orders unless they’re cheaper than the intended price. Both can coexist and be at different ranges, creating price margins we can work with.

I understand that would need WoW’s itemization to change, otherwise most Buy Orders would just be empty shells of hope. Destroying items for resources could help relocate those auctions for products that are more expensive to sell for and keep the economy healthy.

16

This would enable AH botting even harder.

17

It goes both ways, technically speaking this allows normal AH users without TSM or other tools to actually compete to some degree. You can also cap the amount of buy/sell orders a player can do a day if it really gets nasty.

1 Like
18

There’s a special place in Torghast just for you.

1 Like
19

Hehehe, I’m actually loving Torghast so far! Feels like home :wink:

/cackle

20

I just realized I had mistaken Buy Order priority, check the post again.

Sorry for any confusion to those who saw the post before the first edit.