Avoiding the Auction House in World of Warcraft

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Here's a question and my response that you may find interesting:

"Recently I've found that while many players abuse the auction house, some do not at all, and simply sell outside of it. I think this is because the Auction House seems time consuming, unfair, and unsure to many players, and they turn to a more "controlled" "hands-on" option. They advertise erratically, sometimes for hours, sometimes maybe only for a few minutes, some are dead-set on a certain price, while others do not know what they are doing at all, and will settle for anything you offer. Here's an example for you...On my server, I'm currently buying Frozen Orbs outside of the auction house any time they are advertised. About half the players that want to sell them, are thinking they are going to get AH price, which is bullshit, because usually there is around 3-4 postings up there, split two ways between me and my Alt, so it only takes about two seconds to figure out if I can drive them downwards. I usually confront them with a very low price, like "Hey, I'll give you 30/a pop for those." they will refuse at first and say "No, man they're 80 on Auction House." so I go "Oh, what? That's BS." Don't you realize that there is only one guy selling those things?" I go like this for a couple of minutes, haggling. Usually I can get them for no more than 40, sometimes even less, for maybe 25 each. I then go to Auction house, and resell them for 80 gold within a couple of hours, a pretty quick and easy profit. If anyone goes to undercut me at the normal price, such as 60, or maybe even something so bold as 40 or 50, I buy them out immediately, and then put them back up for much higher prices (+50% or more) on numerous alts. Basically, I'm starting to do the same thing with many other items, and I'm getting better and better at it. Haggling is actually very easy to do because just like the general population, the WoW population is extremely ignorant and easy to fool. I know this is a very inconsistent way to make gold, sometimes just down right frustrating and sterile, but it is very exciting at times, and it is something any proficient auctioneer can do whenever he gets tired of the normal search. destroy. manipulate. over the auction house. Hell, you can do it while your doing all those things too.

Just tell me what you think about it, I'd like to see your feedback through your website. That'd be awesome!

-Linus"

Linus, there are three 'selling routes' in world of warcraft: guild/social, trade, and the auction house. If you are a clever auctioneer you can take advantage of all three. For instance, when dealing with guildies often they will sell you items just because they don't' feel like using the auction house; do them the favor of buying their stuff! I've had countless guildies come to me because they know I have money to burn and say things like: "Hey I have a dozen stacks of infinite dust, will you buy them for 200 gold?"

The next 'selling route' is through trade. Here you can spam away (keep it to once per minute) looking for deals and always be sure to be in the most frequented city of your faction (orgrimmar or stormwind). Quite often you can make a killing getting other people's professions to do your work for you such as cutting a gem for 5 gold then reselling it for 40 gold profit. But most frequently you'll get the attention of someone looking to dump the item you're trying to buy. I find trade is most useful for buying, not selling.

The last 'selling route' is the auction house. We all know just how painful and large this can look at first, and also how rewarding it is to put that little bit of effort into becoming good at it.

That little bit of effort is what seperates a poor man from a rich one and a challenger from a gladiator.