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
