There are bots posting an item for sale on the AH that is about 25-50% of the cost of the rest of the items. They are doing this on stack items. They only post 1 of each item. The are hoping to get a player not paying attention and using an auction addon to post stacks at that lower price. Now while the tactic may not be a scam, the fact that its a bot doing it is.
For example:
arcane dust going for 5g each. the bot posts 1 at 2g50s. a player post a stack at that lower price and the bot buys it, trades it to the bot standing next to it, and post it at the higher price.
The original bot probably keeps a few in stock for people like me. I have stated buying all of the 1 stacks that the bots are posting cheaper and then reporting them at normal rate.
They have even found a spot they can stand on in SW outside the AH by the mailbox where they can access the AH and the mailbox at the same time.
Yeap, can confirm! They do this on dead horse server all of the time!
One bot just stands there in SW all day, every day doing this on things like arctic furs.
They stand by the mailbox and target the closest auctioneer through the wall.
How has this gone unnoticed for so long?
Or is there a legit way to target the auctioneer through the wall and use the mail box at the same time?
How is that a scam, precisely? Itâs not a scam to advertise a single item at a lower price than a whole stack of the same item. And if a player canât tell the difference between the market price of a stack versus a single item when they are selling their own product⌠well, that really is on them.
I guess you missed the part where i said it may not be a scam but it is a bot doing the transactions. And it really should be against the ToS or code of conduct as itâs not in the spirit of the wow community.
The fine print is less prominent than the big title where you say it is a scam.
But anyway, there are definitely bots that scan the AH and purchase any item that is below the anticipated âmarket valueâ. Maybe you are referring to them, and fair call to suggest those are against the ToS.
honey this isnât new. Lol. They have been doing this since vanilla. Be smarter. Use an addon like auctionator to see what the lowest price and the next lowest price is. They are essentially taking advantage of noobs who arenât aware of this not a scam but clever way to get people to post an item lower than it should be.
Firstly as many have said this type of tactic has been happening within the Auction House system for a very long time and more often than not is being done by actual players and not a BOT.
A variation of this type of tactic is to post the single item at a ridiculously high price knowing full well the item isnât going to sell. However, it is a tactic that is used which attempts to raise the average market value of the product which if done correctly will slowly raise the value of that product within the AH system for them.
In terms of what you have mentioned about posting the item at a significantly lower price you can actually take advantage of that yourself especially if they are putting that lower price as a buyout price. If they are posting the single item for buyout at that price and you have the funds to do this, you just keep buying the reduced item they are posting. If it is indeed a BOT it will likely create a new auction with another single item at that same price. Eventually the BOT will run out of its stores for that particular item, which will cause one of two things to happen and either option is an upside for you and not the BOT.
The first option is that the BOT actually ceases to post that item so it more or less effectively goes offline until the owner fixes the issue by sourcing additional product to utilize.
The second option is that the BOT is setup to acquire additional product but how it is configured to do this is the crux of all of this. In majority of cases the BOT will actually purchase the items from the AH at the current market value meaning it will pay basically the 5g each but will buy a full stack. It will then recommence posting at the lower price again after this. So it is effectively loosing money in this instance and can if not controlled correctly loose a considerable amount of gold very quickly.
The benefit for you is that you will essentially double your money very quickly by buying at the lower price and reposting at the current market value. You can even just buy it until you have a given number in a stack to post if you want to only post every so often.
If this is actually what they are doing and you can clearly see them doing this, it is by definition a form of wall hacking or in game clipping which is against the terms and conditions laid out by Blizzard.
You should most definitely report the characters in game for hacking and state what they are doing and where they are doing it. It wonât take long for the account those characters are attached too having some kind of official action taken against them by Blizzard.
In addition to that it will alert the Blizzard team to an issue in game that they can resolve in a future update or patch. It also flags that type of behavior and allows the team to set up various in game checks to potentially pick up this type of practice on other accounts as well and take action on a greater aspect.
Donât think this is new at all, I remember seeing this kind of thing for months now. Bot will list an item at like 30% of its actual value and if one were to undercut them or put a lower price than their item thatâs already at 30% of actual value they instantly buy it, itâs a clever little trick to get to buy items for much cheaper by inattentive people that just undercut willy-nilly.
Now, you could argue âWhatâs stopping you from just buying their item at 30% value?â Nothing really, you get an item cheap, but in the grand scheme of things they are winning more than those who buy their 1 flower for 2 gold then if 200+ people list their flowers for less and they buy them all.
Youâve only stated half of what they do, they set the buyout 1,000% higher than market value but then have the bid set to 10% of market value making it then show up first for people looking for that item who are using the default auction house UI. This is one of the reasons why I like TSM so much, you can set a buyout confirm threshold where if an item is x% over market price it asks if you really want to purchase that item. I have mine set to 125% iirc.
Itâs not a hack of any kind, you can interact with Auctioneer Jaxon behind the wall just outside of the Stormwind Auction House where thereâs also a mailbox. The only thing you need is to have interact bound to a key, I have mine bound to CTRL mousewheel up/down and \ .
Thanks for the clarification for those that needed it but, this is something that I already knew. I was only trying to keep it simple as I didnât think the full explanation was warranted.
I wouldnât be so sure about that just because you are able to do it doesnât mean it isnât something that could be considered to be againsts the Terms and Conditions in relation to hacking. Alternatively it could also be considered against the Terms and Conditions by taking advantage of an in game bug for your own benefit.
Just to clarify what I am getting at here⌠Youâre accessing the Auction House NPC and interacting with them through an object that is supposed to be designed to stop that kind of interaction. This is because the NPC youâre doing the interaction with is Out of Line of Sight because Itâs A Solid Wall After All. So the Hack/Bug/Glitch that is being abused is the fact that youâre able to Interact to an NPC who is technically Out of Line of Sight however, due to the ingame bug/glitch that is associated with that particular wall it is saying the player can see the NPC and interact with them.
So it is hacking or taking advantage of an in game bug which is against the T&Cs and could be something that Blizzard will take action against those players found to be doing it if they are reported by other players.
Continue to do it at your own peril is all I am saying.
Iâm going to assume that your characters are all Horde and that you donât really play Alliance because youâve been able to do this since that mailbox has been added to the game (WotLK pre-patch) and Auctioneer Jaxson isnât the only NPC that is interactable behind walls. During ToGC and even now my hearthstone on my Mage (this character) has been set to the Argent Tournement only itâs directly facing the entrance.
All I will say is just because you can do something or have been able to do something for a given length of time doesnât mean that you should. It also doesnât mean that it isnât a Clipping/LOS bug that hasnât been fixed.
It could be as simple as it hasnât been reported or raised as such by anyone to put it on the Blizzard radar etc.
Honestly you could raise an in game ticket to get a response from a GM on the matter to see what they say about it. I am fairly certain their response will be something along the lines of: âWhile this might be possible to do currently in game it is not an outcome or scenario that would be considered to be intentional. It would more likely be considered to be a current in game bug or glitch that hasnât been resolved or dealt with as yet. So on this basis I would advise that you continue to do so at your own riskâ
Line of sight has never been required to interact with an NPC; only being within interact range is required. This isnât a hack, it isnât a bug, itâs how the game has always functioned.
As long as you can get within interact range of an NPC, you can target them with a /tar macro and press your âinteract with targetâ keybind to interact with them.
Bank alts have been using auctioneer Jaxon through that wall in Stormwind since the very beginning of classic; there just wasnât a mailbox there too until Wrath prepatch.
Any NPC that is near a wall can be interacted with through that wall.
AFAIK line of sight isnât actually required to interact with ANY object; there are a number of mailboxes in the game you can access through walls by rotating your camera to peek around the edge of the wall and click them.
As to the main topic of this thread, in my experience most of the characters baiting with low priced auctions and sniping the undercuts are actual players running an AH sniping addon, although I donât doubt that there are some bots doing it as well. Itâs also not new; itâs been going on since prior to TBC on some servers.
Actually, it is a hack. Talking to people and being able to buy/sell through the wall of the auction house quite clearly a hack. Just because youâve not been sanctioned for it does not mean it is allowed.
I could rob a bank tomorrow and get away with it but that in no way means that kind of behavior is allowed.
Classic wow auction house is controlled by Bots who monopoly the market since 2019.
and in wow in general! Auction boting & automated scripts for AH have been used by player since forever, if you try to put anything worthy for 1silver It Will be bought on instant (the 0,001sec u create auction it get sniped) no matter what time of the day.
So here is what Iâve always wondered, Why doesnât vendors sell a few of these items just so you can avoid the AH. if one can sell these items to a vendor, those items should remain in the vendors inventory for a few hours allowing others to buy them. Sort of like the darkmoon vendor in classic. One min she has items then next min she has different items⌠it changes all the time. Letâs say Iâm a leather smith and I need like 6 more scraps, but itâs too far to run to the forest to farm them⌠I would head over to the leather vendor and he/she could have those scraps for a limited time.
