Thanks to a very nice GM I got my name back after putting in a ticket.  So from here on out I’ll be Suna (again) on Malorne.

Well, at least my server is…  For some reason Blizzard singled out Darrowmere as the first US server to force over to PVE.  The end result…  A mass exodus of all PVPers, most of the raiding guilds, and of course… my customers. They were however nice enough to offer free transfers over to Malorne.  So, that’s where I am.  I’ve been forced to take on a new name…  Goldfinger, after one of my favorite Bond movies.  Luckily free transfers do not have a level requirement or a gold limit so all 10 gbank tabs and all 550k gold came with me.

More updates to come!

People love to vent and release their frustration about things with this game, myself included…but lets be real, unloading on someone for doing something that pisses you off will not make them stop doing it.  More than likely it’ll make them do it more.  A guy on my server recently told me that he doesn’t care about making gold anymore.  The reason he undercuts so hard and lowballs the competition isn’t to make sales.  He does it because he enjoys the hate mail.  This made me think…  What exactly would I accomplish for mailing or messaging someone and telling them off?

The answer?

Absolutely Nothing!

Losing your temper and telling someone off will cost you gold.  Don’t do it.

The number of people who seem to think that a high # of sales automatically equates to high profit continues to amaze me.  It seems like every other day there’s a new “player” lowballing and killing the price of gems, enchants, inscriptions, or whatever else they’ve managed to figure out how to make just so they can sell more than me.  Take last night for example.  I get on to my enchanter just before bed and check the AH for scrolls and find that I’ve been undercut by 20% or more on half my scrolls.  So…I send the guy a message asking why he undercut me so hard.  (Note: I don’t mind being undercut.  I expect it…but dropping a scroll that costs 90 gold in mats to make down to 80 gold doesn’t make sense.)  His response: “More sales!”

…

again…”More sales!”

…

This is where people who don’t play the AH much fail horribly and in doing so manage to kill profits for the rest of us (or give us cheap stuff to sell).  Making a sale is not the same as making profit.  You’re not going to make gold if you don’t maintain a certain % of mark up from the cost of materials.  Lowballing the price of an item in an attempt to sell faster won’t necessarily do anything for you other than lose potential earnings when you do manage to sell something.  People seem to think that cheap items sell faster but in my experience this is for the most part WRONG, at least with final products.  With ore, herbs, and enchanting mats, low price = quick sales.  That’s a fact…but in my experience, you can sell a reasonably priced item for double what others do if you simply keep it on top (ie. the lowest price) of the AH at times when people are buying.  You don’t need to drop a 1000g enchant scroll down to 800g (under the cost/value mats) just to make it more appealing.  People looking to save money will buy the raw mats and get an enchanter they know to do it.  The AH is for the impatient or wealthy buyer who doesn’t care about price.  Use this to your advantage.  Find out when these people buy and make sure you’re on top!  Let the lowballers drop their prices and when they go lower than your cost of mats, buy them out.

It’s really not that difficult a concept to understand yet half the WoW population fails to do so.  Since the creation of daily quests WoW gold has become really easy to obttain and because of this people buy items when they need something, not when it happens to be cheap.  The only people who wait and buy cheap are AH players who will buy and then resell for significantly more.  The only thing lowballing the price does for anyone is kill profit overall and give AH players like me stuff to sell for gold (thanks!).

I’ve tested this idea many times.  Mostly with gems…

A few months ago I had a huge surplus of rare gems.  I decided to play around and list them all at just above cost (ie. the value of an uncut version).  For 3 days, all rares that I listed would be listed at around 12-15g each.  This was well under the market average of 30-70g (depending on the cut).  Strangely enough my sales didn’t increase much at all.  Sure I sold gems, but I made a fraction of the gold I did when I maintained a “fair” price.  People stopped undercutting me and some bought out my gems to relist.  That being said, if I dropped the price of a rare gem by 75% and sales were truly based on price, shouldn’t I sell a lot more gems?  What’s going on here?  Where’s my gold?

Around the same time of that experiment I decided that one particular gem I knew was a good seller should be worth more, so I started buying out the lowballers and selling higher.  Within a day I had [Solid Sky Sapphire]s which previously averaged 15g selling for about 55-60g each.  For 2 days I maintained a price of 55g or so.  For 3 days I made an average of 30g in profits just from buying out the lowballers and relisting at a time I knew people would be buying them.  Someone later complained about how stupid I was for trying to sell for that high and how I was just wasting my time.  Oh well…

Of course, the lowballers may trick a few people into not undercutting/listing against them…but chances are if the other AH players aren’t listing, they know something the lowballers don’t and are just letting it go because higher profits are just around the corner.  There’s another method involving the constant lowballing of other players out of the market which supposedly works.  I don’t agree with it or want to play it.  I don’t feel a need to dominate the market by cutting everyone else out.  I am perfectly happy losing sales to someone who undercuts me by 1 copper at a time when someone needs something.  I would rather sell an item for 59.9999g and let someone else sell something for 60g than force that person to stop listing and sell 2 or more of the same item for 30g each.  I do not care about mazimizing sales.  My technique involves maximizing profit.

Networking with other traders is as important to a gold collector as joining a guild is to a raider.  Sure, you can do things on your own… farm your own mats and force your way into a market, but why not socialize and make it easier on yourself?  This is a social game after all.  Communication is good.  Try it.

There’s absolutely no reason you can’t talk to the competition.  It’s not a race to sell your stuff (unless you want it to be).  Take some time to talk to people.  Who knows, you may just learn something or better yet find a way to work together to make even more gold.  I personally like to keep an eye on the markets I’m listing in.  I try to learn who’s listing what and how they tend to undercut.  If someone does something that doesn’t make sense to me, I talk to them…  If they drive the price down, I stop listing for a while and let them blow their inventory or I buy them out.  I don’t expect them to stop listing or to stop undercutting me.  I simply try to help them see how the auction house works before they list.  Some are idiots and disagree, suggesting I piss off while they continue to waste time/gold to make quick sales.  Others will agree or at least  see the logic of my system and instead of trying to maximize sales by working against me, work with me and attempt to maximizing profit.  Profit is the goal here…not sales.  Be mature and work together!