Failing to Control a Market - Why Players Fail at the Wow Auction House

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Knowledge is power. The difference between a player that understands a market as well as its sub markets compared to a player who only focuses on the 'surface market' is like night and day. A lack of knowledge regarding the web of interacting markets on the wow auction house is what leads to a noob auctioneer focusing all their attention on the surface market.

What is a surface market? Why do 99% of players that try to control a market fail? Let's use some examples.

Let's just make up a name here, um how about Gevy. Little Gevy the goblin is not happy that her netherweave bags are being undercut by two people. They are posting three bags each for 1 gold less than Gevy and she's pissed. An auction house noob like Gevy will look at this situation and think that she has to undercut her competition in order to control 'her' market. What Gevy doesn't realize is that she still doesn't control the market even after undercutting her competition. In order to truly control the 'surface market' of netherweave bags then little Gevy needs to look at the markets that support it. Netherweave bags only have one supporting market and that's netherweave cloth. With a little research Gevy would realize that simply buying up all netherweave cloth below X gold would allow her to force out her bag market competition because they would no longer be able to make bags cheaper than Gevy.

This little bit of knowledge... the understanding of a sub market controling the lowest possible price of a surface market is what makes or breaks auctioneers in world of warcraft. If you understand and apply this concept then you become way more likely to succeed on the wow auction house.

Now expand on this concept and think about something complicated like snowfall inks. Just think for a moment how you would control this item. First off, you need an understanding of not just what creates a snowfall ink but what it's used for. Just because you control it does not mean people will buy it in droves. You need to force the price to your liking but also have it reasonably affordable for the buyer.

Let's see... you would need to regulate the price of every wotlk herb (by regulate I mean constantly buy it out below price X). You then would need to buy the inks themselves below your new threshold for snowfall inks. The price you pick will need to be affordable for someone buying the inks to make nobles or other items.

Ok you ready for a real mental challenge? How would you regulate infinite dust. Just think for a moment about that, really think about every single market that exists which you can create infinite dust from and then the items used to create those items and so on. For an item like infinite dust which has multiple paths to getting to the same goal, ie disenchant a dust, the answer is actually a lot simpler than you would think... find the cheapest way and regulate that.

Regulating is NOT the same as undercutting everyone with the cheapest goods possible. Regulating a submarket to effect a surface market is about taking away items from your competition which they need to craft/modify and compete with your surface market. Stop allowing your competition to set your prices and instead set the competition's! You don't want to end up like Gevy and participate in undercutting wars for minimal profits.