Go look at any “unpopular” item in the AH. You’ll see (sic) 50 of that item at a price, than maybe 30 at a slightly lower price, 15 at another lower price … so on and on and people undercut each other at various quantities and various prices.
This is true for EVERY item. It’s a natural buy and sell in an open market like this.
And then the item I’ve been watching lately, where someone is MANIPULATING/ single-handedly CONTROLLING a market.
He is setting the price. ANYTHING that gets listed lower, he buys it up and relists. There isn’t true “competition”, just a person creating a monopoly. (I said that for a reason, for the shills that try and defend this with real-world analogies).
For context of just how insane this is … that first example of 50 of this 30 of that … I think most would agree that’s pretty normal.
This guy is holding back more than THIRTY SIX THOUSAND of this item.
What does it take for people to realize this is a problem?? What does it take for BLIZZARD to realize this is a problem???
Can the item not be acquired in the open world or group content?
If you limit transactions on the auction house, then you also stop a large amount of legitimate buying and selling for professions, raid preparations, and more.
This is an opportunity to farm that item and list it, since you know the buyer will buy it at any price to maintain his corner of the market. But you’re not smart enough to see that, unfortunately, and would rather cry here and forgo the money you could be making.
In the past, this has been my approach. I normally use a number like 50 or 100. There tends to be some heavy pearl-clutching when I suggest this number.
And in watching a guy buy up THIRTY SIX THOUSAND of something, it highlights what a “normal” person feels is plenty, and what is OBVIOUSLY being abused by degenerate behavior.
Note: I’ve been having this talk for a LONG time. My “50-100” range, as I learned in another thread recently, doesn’t really apply in DF with the current 3-tiered approach to mats. Please keep that in mind.
The point of this thread isn’t self-enrichment, but to support the overall community. You and the two people that gave you a like should try looking beyond YOURSELF for once.
Buy 'em all up and list 'em at an even higher price.
That’ll show 'em.
Remember, I don’t know what the item is, but if they’re hoarding 36,000 of them, that mean they have 180 bag slots dedicated to the item. That’s a lot of commitment for something that they’re likely making marginal gold on (since anyone who undercuts them are going to do it my 1g or 50s…lot of work to earn 50s profit).
Even if they stack to 1000, that’s 36 bag slots – that’s still a lot of space to dedicate and post and relist etc. etc. constantly, every day.
I remember back in the day seeing someone on my server try to do this with thorium ore. Anyone selling below his price had it gobbled up by him, and his price was way, way higher than the going rate had been for quite some time.
I spent HOURS and HOURS running laps in Un’goro Crater farming up thorium ore and selling it just a tad below his “price” only to see him quickly buy it up. I made so much gold off that guy.
Sadly, he gave up the effort just short of a week of his market monopolization efforts.
But when he literally dumped his massive supply at way below the previous market rate to get back something from his efforts, I bought up a ton then at a fraction of it’s prevailing market rate before he came along.
I made more gold that week off of him than I had in two months of anything else I was doing at the time on the AH.
And that’s the problem with trying to crate a monopoly in this game. Anyone can farm up or make the items, given enough time, effort, and luck, not just a few folks. The only time the “monopoly” can succeed is right at the start of a new expansion or patch, but those initial phases of new content releases are temporary and quickly resolve in the first few days and weeks.
You posted that a guy is cornering the market and buying literally every unit of this item for anything less than exorbitant prices.
So, you farm it and sell it to him for slightly lower than his set-point and profit. Or use it yourself, whatever. It’s not rocket science. It really is hard to penetrate some of the thicker skulls around here, such as yours.
One thing is for certain, 100% of the time you spend crying here is wasted.
I do not see a problem worth solving here. This is just the market at work.
The dude will get bored or busy eventually and it’ll quickly be as if nothing has ever happened. Probably just ran short on gold and found a nice way to pay for a WoW Token for a few months.
One way would be to introduce inventory maximums. You can only own so much of any particular item. The max would be the type of item. If it is a commodity like a recipe ingredient the max should be based on how many recipes require said item, and what is the average amount those recipes used and then figure out some multiplier for it.
Yeah part of me wants to make some egalitarian effort out of it, and encourage everyone to go farm some and break this person … but… I seem to be a dying breed of player that doesn’t mind farming a little here and there.
It feels like 99% of players just … buy a Token and ignore everything.
