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Cornering the World of Warcraft Markets

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-a-lot-of-dosh dept.

Terra Nova has a post up about a financial development on the World of Warcraft server Elune. From the article: "two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price." They go on to discuss the event in the context of Massive Game economies and the results that tradeskills can have on monetary inflation.

7 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. talking about a market economy.... by ebrandsberg · · Score: 2, Informative

    Stuff like this happens often in Eve. People are cornering various products all the time in order to drive prices up, and it works, as long as people will pay the prices.

  2. I've been doing this for months.... by Dr.+Bent · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ok, it's time to spill the beans...I'm too busy to do this anymore.

    Trade goods (Linen, Wool, Silk, Iron Bars, etc...) will consistently sell at the AH if you set a decent buyout price. For example, on my server, you can sell stacks (x20) at these prices:

    Linen: 25 silver
    Wool: 40 silver
    Silk: 45 silver (which sucks!)
    Mageweave: 1.2 gold
    Runecloth 3 gold
    Copper Bars 45 silver ...

    and so on and so on. My guild would buy everything we could below that price and resell it. We'd get it from other players, from low buyouts at the AH, poorly priced auctions, wherever...At one point, as a level ~20 mage, I was spending maybe 2 hours a week doing this and making ~80 gold for my efforts. It was huge.

    Then I leveled up to the point where 80 gold a week isn't that special.

  3. Re:I fail to grasp the (perceived) problem by NinjaFarmer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Our guild has a member who made epic mount money this way by level 38, selling some things huge profits. I think her record was 37500% profit on one item.

  4. Re:Tradeskilling in general by Komarosu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also happend in UO, with popular blacksmiths inflating prices for a week, worked well, lots of money made then the undercutters came in and made a killing. Usually the system adjusts for any arranged price fixing.

    --

    "What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
  5. Re:Tradeskilling in general by tacroy · · Score: 2, Informative

    check out http://wow.allakhazam.com/ they have a history of WoW auctions, dynamically updated. Granted it isnt "in game" so it does give a leg up to those that want to do the research, but there are sources available.

  6. Re:I fail to grasp the (perceived) problem by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 5, Informative
    There is no Alan Greenspan to offset the economy with whatever adjustments.
    Uh, yes there is. Blizzard may not have anyone as smart as Alan Greenspan, but they can tweak the market a billion different ways. They can make it easier to acquire raw goods, or harder to sell large quantities. Obviously.
    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  7. Re:Alts by C0rinthian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Depending on what he's running, it's not a hack. There are a lot of perfectly legit UI addons for tracking Auction House and Vendor prices.