Cornering the World of Warcraft Markets

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.

Comments

I've been doing this for months....

[Dr. Bent]

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.

Re:I fail to grasp the (perceived) problem

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.