The Bots Are Back in Town!
The first thing I noticed this week is that the farming bots are obviously back in WoW. The average price of Whiptail on my server is 50g per stack. This is what I found this week:
Yes, that's only 2 different posters, one posting 285 stacks and another posting 357 stacks at less than half the normal price. I've been hearing people saying that the SoR's are just getting bored and farming now. I'm sorry but no human being is going to farm 300+ stacks of Whiptail, let alone 2 of them on the same (small) server, and willing to post at those ridiculously low prices. For Example the top seller here sold 285 stacks of whiptail for a mere 4061g25s after AH 'taxes'. I don't think anyone in their right mind would be pricing like this. I did enjoy buying it all up, but I don't even know if I'll EVER be able to go through it all. This puts my price point of MFC's at about 3g each, so...lots of barking in my future!
Kindness in WoW
This week I was faced with a unique problem. If you read my 1,000,000 gold post, you'd know that my main source of income is selling gems, and it's something I enjoy. This week though I was faced with a new competitor who was CONSTANTLY posting his Inferno Rubies (all cuts) for a measley 100g, which really cuts into my profit margin. I tried buying up what he had off the AH but by the next time he logged they were up at the same price. In my eyes I had 2 options: Sell at a loss, and hope that the other gems bail me out, or start going on a war path, pricing my gems as low as 50g to get him out of the market. This was a tough one and for a day or two I just stopped posting Inferno Rubies. Then on twitter, after asking about what others would do, @msherretz suggested that I whisper the guy and figure out why he was doing this.
So I did. I approached the guy and politely asked "Hey I was just wondering, why are you pricing your Inferno Rubies so low?". He replied with something along the lines of "My guild had half a bank tab full of them and asked me to sell them off". Now to me that doesn't make sense, but that's irrelevant. He was selling for 100g each so I said "If you want I'd be willing to buy them all for 90 g each." He Replied: "The 100g point is the lowest that I'd be willing to go, but I have 25 stacks left." "I'll take em" I said.
After we traded the ridiculous amount of Inferno Rubies, he whispered me and said "Thanks for being so nice about it, most of the people who whispered me were doing it just to be rude or call me names. If you approached me like that I wouldn't have sold to you."
So try to remember guys, your competition are people too. Just like IRL, people like to be treated with respect. We've all vote kicked the level 62 frost DK who won't stop Death Gripping, but there are real people behind the characters, and some younger and less experienced than we are. Be an example of the WoW community you want, not the one we have.
Cheers,
Phat Lewts
Excellent post. My server as well is experiencing a botpocalypse! Such a double edged sword on the one hand cheap mats are nice on the other so many related markets tank.
ReplyDeleteI am playing the waiting game and hoping Blizz do a clean out and prices normalize.
Nice work with the infernals :)
On my server (Darrowmere) there were huge amounts of elementium ore at less than 20g per stack. Stacks were easily going for 60g before Monday. It definitely hurt our economy. Luckily people bought them all up and hopefully the prices should be fixed soon.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDeleteIt's ironic that to you low priced items are unacceptable. Your desired state is where prices are "fixed" at a higher level so that you personally benefit while the 99% of the rest of the people on your server suffer by paying that higher price.
I'm happy when low cost mats flood the market. But gold grubbers are so greedy they buy all of the mats so no one else can benefit.
Just saying
Your view is pretty skewed. Low priced mats means only the lazy who don't use their professions to make some gold benefit, and no one else. The real people that farm mats (ore, herbs, leather) get hurt by low prices. They make less gold per hour they farm for their work. Assuming that prices of crafted goods go down as a percentage of raw mats, crafters now get hurt as their profit margins dwindle and they have to work more hours to make the same amount of gold.
DeleteThe only one that benefits is the lazy guy who gets his gold through dungeons/quests only, but according to you that's 99% of all servers.
Just saying
Although a good chunk of the fun with having a lot of gold is being able to throw your weight around I might have /w him and once he let on the 100g figure priced mine at 99g and won lol :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I just liked the "Well...I guess I'm not going to have to prospect for a while" feeling. Shuffling is tedious to me lol, well worth the investment :-P
DeleteI saw 1g per Whiptail on my server tonight (Quel'Dorei). So, I bought it... all 182 stacks. Over 1000 BLACKFALLOW INKS when I was done. That's from 182 stacks. if you bought ALL of the 600+ stacks then you have a problem that the rest of us would love to share with you!
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