"Markco,
I noticed something last night when I was posting my glyphs and thought it might be post-worthy, especially if there is a way around it. I used my QA3 to post a bunch of Glyphs and I noticed that almost every type that I posted went right to my fallback price. Curious, I investigated the auctions on a majority of the different type of glyphs I was posting and found that the same person had posted 2 of each glyph at a 50 silver buyout followed by someone posted at regular market price. All of the major glyph sellers, myself included, were posted at there thresholds consequently pushing us off page or bottom page. Is this a scam? It’s hard to believe it is unintentional because it’s the same person on several glyphs and seems like they posted a couple really cheap to push us off page and then posted a few at regular on a different toon. Naturally I canceled all mine, bought out all of his super cheap glyphs, and reposted at market price. It was a clever trick if it was intentional; I wish I had thought of it. If I remember I will try to get some screenshots if it happens again.
On second thought don’t post this. It might end up like the arrows with everyone doing it LOL jk
Peace,
AynRand"
I spoke about this in my glyph wall post and you should be worried about it becoming rampant. As prices drop for herbs (I was buying 5 gold icethorn the other day) you will see people attempting to sell glyphs very low to drive the other scribes off the market. Let's look at the costs for a 5 gold stack of herbs:
6 inks = 6 one ink glyphs
Each glyph costs 83 silver then and an additional 12 silver 50 copper for the resilient parchment. I can therefore sell glyphs above 95 silver 50 copper for a profit.
Imagine if someone posted all glyphs that take one ink to make for 1 gold 50 silver. Just think about how detrimental that would be to the glyph industry. Obviously it would take several people doing it to really make it work, as the glyph industry is just too large for one person to properly control, but if enough people start doing this things could get ugly really fast. The glyph wall is one hell of a weapon :)
What you described is difficult to pull off however, where one toon posts for 50 silver and the next posts for the correct amount. If timed perfectly then your opponents will post all at their fallback rates and you can suffer the minor loss of the 50 silver glyphs selling before the ones at the correct price do, not to mention pick up a bunch of super cheap glyphs to restock your guild bank tabs should they undercut.
I spoke about this in my glyph wall post and you should be worried about it becoming rampant. As prices drop for herbs (I was buying 5 gold icethorn the other day) you will see people attempting to sell glyphs very low to drive the other scribes off the market. Let's look at the costs for a 5 gold stack of herbs:
6 inks = 6 one ink glyphs
Each glyph costs 83 silver then and an additional 12 silver 50 copper for the resilient parchment. I can therefore sell glyphs above 95 silver 50 copper for a profit.
Imagine if someone posted all glyphs that take one ink to make for 1 gold 50 silver. Just think about how detrimental that would be to the glyph industry. Obviously it would take several people doing it to really make it work, as the glyph industry is just too large for one person to properly control, but if enough people start doing this things could get ugly really fast. The glyph wall is one hell of a weapon :)
What you described is difficult to pull off however, where one toon posts for 50 silver and the next posts for the correct amount. If timed perfectly then your opponents will post all at their fallback rates and you can suffer the minor loss of the 50 silver glyphs selling before the ones at the correct price do, not to mention pick up a bunch of super cheap glyphs to restock your guild bank tabs should they undercut.
11 comments: on "Glyph Wall Revisited"
Unknown said... May 17, 2010 at 8:07 AM
On my server, Icethorn is very rarely below 20G, most of the time nowadays it sits around 30 together with all other herbs.
I used to be able to pick up Icethorn semiregularly for 12G a stack, but prices for herbs has skyrocketed ever since the Frozen Orb -> Frost Lotus patch.
The cost to make (or buy) flasks are about the same today as then, but the price dropped on the Frost Lotuses are made up with more expensive herbs.
jimmyolsenblues said... May 17, 2010 at 8:18 AM
My biggest problem with inscription is that there is no deposit fee. It encourages constant reposting. I have two JCs, a BS, Enchant, a herb, alchemist, and a miner...I make less from my 450 inscriptionist than most people. I just can't camp. i want to post something and if someone cancels and reposts with no cost...well how can I survive? I don't understand the automated process for inscription and I am not a big fan of using addons to make all my gold. Auctioneer is different because it scans better..but part of the reason I love the auction house is that its a mental game.. I don't raid well cause I don't have the finger dexterity and knowledge of macros and key bindings.
I guess I am saying I am not a fan of inscription...there absolutely should be a deposit fee to stop AH camping.
Unknown said... May 17, 2010 at 11:06 AM
@rachaels_dad: There is a deposit fee, however it's minimal. Using addons to make gold is in most cases needed to cut down a lot of time. Be it Gatherer, Skillet, Auctioneer or Quick Auctions. Anything that helps should be learned if you want to maximize profits.
And if you don't utilize the options given, you've only got yourself to blame when others are raking in money from it.
Both me and my wife are doing the glyphmarket, but on different factions, and it's a goldmine, even if you only scan twice a day. I make anywhere between 1-2K gold per day, and my wife 1.5-3K. On really good days, when I've camped though, I've seen as much as thrice that.
Anonymous said... May 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM
On my server the herb market has tanked and I'm constantly buying stacks of Adder's Tongue and Icethorn under 8g only to have another 20 stacks posted at a similar price within an hour. This has lowered the barrier to entry into the market and competition has gotten extreme. In addition, spring fever has hit people's play time so it seems demand has tanked making the situation even worse. I've changed my tactics to posting a good quantity of glyphs every 48 hours at a low buyout price because as I don't want to babysit the AH. My time spent on glyphs is minimal but my profits are a third of what I used to see.
Anonymous said... May 17, 2010 at 11:52 AM
My biggest problem with inscription is that there is no deposit fee.
The problem from my perspective is that Blizzard seems to have been dead set against people profiting by vendorring glyphs.
Because of that, I doubt they'd raise the price of the glyphs above the price to buy the parchment at exalted, plus the price to vendor the ink; which means that even the highest (1 ink) glyphs can't have a deposit cost above 4s50c .
I honestly believe they should do this. A vendor price of 45s for glyphs made with resilient parchment would be a godsend in a lot of ways, but I doubt the deposit cost would be enough to curb all but the worst cancel-repost offenders.
Adding an additional fee to cancel an option would simply mean they'd leave the auctions up to expire naturally. Someone trying to protect their market should have little difficulty maintaining a stack of 20 per glyph (or even 40) allowing them to undercut 40 or 80 times a day without cancelling an auction.
Adding the fee would make their lives harder, but probably wouldn't have any other useful effect.
For comparison, enchanting mats also have no vendor value, but except for a few vanilla shards, all of them are useful for something, so they have a value in the auction house.
There are, however, glyphs that no one in their right mind would use, but are still produced when people are leveling up. You can't even unload them for 6s, I've tried.
That's why I believe the current ridiculously low vendor prices for glyphs are a mistake; but I'm a looooong way away from being able to dictate Blizzard's pricing schemes.
Anonymous said... May 17, 2010 at 2:32 PM
I had to abandon ship on my server's glyph market, Alliance-side. One fellow came in and started posting all of his glyphs (and he knew all of them) well below what it cost to make them. I simply could not compete. I tried waiting him out, but it's been six months now. Some things seem to have rebounded to more reasonable pricing, but he's still active and still blowing everyone else out of the water with his 2g glyphs. It's great for the buyers, I guess, but terrible for other sellers.
I'm to a point where I feel it may be more "profitable" for me to drop inscription entirely and pick up ANY other skill. (Herbs on my server are rarely 50s/each (10g/stack), and more often average around 17-30g depending on the herb.)
Anonymous said... May 17, 2010 at 2:41 PM
With the pre-Cata lull and a almost saturated glyph market, I'm not sure there is much money (or super profits anyway) left to be made with Inscription.
I think it also depends on the server. My server is quite old, the AH is very competitive and all my old money making tricks are making less and less money as the knowledge of the server increases. Buying saronite ore, for example, and reselling the smelted bars doesn't work as the ore sells at almost exactly half the price of a saronite bar.
I'd like to hit at least the 50k mark for Cata but fewer buyers and a lot of competition mean I might not get there.
Markco said... May 17, 2010 at 4:43 PM
I made 1500 gold with inscription in a single batch post (12 hour posting time) yesterday. If you embrace all the markets in inscription you can really make a killing.
Anonymous said... May 17, 2010 at 6:04 PM
The thing I hate about inscription is the insane amount of time you have to spend on it. Buying herbs, storing them, milling, inking, queuing which glyphs to craft, crafting glyphs, posting and cancelling all take up a huge amounts of time even when automated. Most of these actions also require you to be on the computer at the time. And yes pressing "1" while watching a movie does qualify as work. If I want to watch a movie, I'd much rather not be doing manual labor at the same time.
Are the people posting at ridicilous profit margings actually making a decent profit for their time, or are they just betting on being able to later on dominate the glyph market for much better profits? It seems to me that at 50 silver profits or even less, you can barely make more profit than you would by farming something. Even if you manage to raise prices, it only takes one competitor to crash prices again.
Instead of being an investor, it's more like being a sweatshop worker. It's somewhat similar to the people who spend 8 hours camping the AH to cancel and relist, and then think their 5k gold profit from that day is good.
Cameron Smith said... May 17, 2010 at 7:18 PM
My biggest question when it comes to the future of glyphs is the market for Snowfall Ink.
I'm milling and selling the SI now, because I'm betting that the price of SI will drop once Cata comes out.
I wrote about it here http://woweconomicreview.com/?p=55
Jack said... May 18, 2010 at 6:49 AM
There have been a couple sellers that have tried to do this. I'll simply let them buy my glyphs for 3G (my fallback) and when they try to re-sell at market rate, I'm simply ready to just undercut them all over again and they'll be stuck with the glyphs they bought from me.
At the rate where I STILL made money.
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