When Numbers Lie

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:49 PM

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Mommar here.

Many of my resources when working the auction house in wow is based on add-ons.  I use add-ons to make crafting of items easier,  to tell me what is in my inventory on different toons and even obtaining information from off site pricing listings such as Theunderminejournal.com.

Would I be able to function without these?   Probably,  but then I would have to depend more on hard research than at the fingers information.  Which can be a blessing and a curse.

I was posting up items on my bank toon and had a couple of Prospector's Woolies in my inventory.  Much to my interest my add-on (http://tradeskillmaster.com/) was listing these at a value between 3500 and 4500g a piece.   That's a nice chunk of change for a low level item.   So looking at a little research I found that it was part of a semi popular transmog set Gypsy Garb (Recolored).

This definitely peaked my interest because transmog sets do sell from time to time.   So I listed the item at a 'discounted' price of 3500g.   12 hours later I relisted it for 3500g again.   Relisted the item for 3500g after 12 hours ad nauseum(you get the point).

Does this mean that it will fail to  sell for 3500g at some point    I'm a very patient person and 3500g is worth a lot of relisting.  But it did spark something in my brain about the price listing that some addons will show.   At the beginning of Mists of Pandaria there were many level 87-88 items that were being priced at 50,000g or even more.  One of my guild mates was lucky enough to obtain one of these and was asking how much to price it at.    Offering my supposed wisdom on the item I suggested he ignore what the add-on price offered and put it at a reasonable amount of gold.   The item later sold for 10,000g and he pocketed the amount.   Could he have received the 50,000g that the item was supposedly worth?  Maybe,  but it was a long shot that players would want to spend that much gold for an item that would be replaced relatively quickly as they reached level 90.

Accurate information is the plank that a gold goblin will create their view of the auctioning world.  Accurate information can come from many sources.   That information should be processed by a gold goblins wisdom and past experience.   So when something doesn't quite seem to fit,  the odds are that it doesn't.   So when that big bonus item drops into your lap,  look at the numbers and see if they are really telling the truth.

Good Luck and Good Hunting


Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Previous Entries

Arrow to the Knee
Must Have Farming Equipment
But How Much Is It?
You Just Can't Fix Stupid
Trick or Treat Time 
Can Pokewow be saved?
Buying Patterns For Investment
How Not To Influence People
Long Term Plans
The Measure Of A Goblin
Pulling the Deal Trigger
The Vikings Are Upon Us
Dailies For Second String
Flipping Out To Survive
Resetting The Plan
Discipline In the Ranks
The Professions Race To 87
Junk In The Trunk
I bought My Gear on Ebay

Addon Tweaking

Posted by Shockkmaister at 8:00 AM

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An addon can be the greatest tool in a fellow goldmaker's hands. An addon can turn hours and hours of pushing the same button into nothing. There are a variety of these addons, each with it's level of customizability, however in most cases they are not exactly what you need. Even with addons that have lot of options and settings, you can't always get what you want. Not to worry though, nothing is impossible, you just have to go deeper in the rabbithole. If you are missing a function from your favourite addon, or you want it to work just a little bit different, you can edit the code anytime. It might seem impossible for someone without any programming skills to tweak the source code, but in some cases it is very self-explanatory, and thus possible to anyone.
In most addons you will find files in .lua, .xml, .toc, and .txt formats. What you need is almost certainly in the .lua files. They are written in a programming language called LUA (shocking, right?). These files are not precompiled or encoded, they are merely script files, meaning that you can easily read them, and with a little bit of thinking, figure out how they work. Let's look at some examples.

TSM whitelist problem
TradeSkillMaster is one of the most frequently used addon for goldmakers. Everybody knows what it does, so I'm not going to get into an explanatory article about it now. However it has a function that not everybody uses. It is called the whitelist. The whitelist is a list of players that you do not wish to compete against on the AH, meaning that you don't want your addon to undercut them. In these cases TSM instead of undercutting, will post at the same price (given that the player on the whitelist has the lowest buyout price posted). This is not always what a user is looking for. If you have an agreement with a fellow trader, on not undercutting him on a product, then posting at the same price is not the best option, since buyers will buy your and his products in an even split, which is not what the agreement is about. In these cases you want your addon not to post, or post at a price higher then your buddy (so that when his is sold, yours will be up). There is no options for it, so you have to make one. The algorithm that does the posting can be found in the ...\Interface\AddOns\TradeSkillMaster_Auctioning\modules\post.lua file. The file itself is a mile long, what interests us starts in the 406th row. Let's look at the code:

elseif (isPlayer or isWhitelist) and not differencedPrice then
buyout = lowestBuyout
bid = min(max(lowestBid, threshold), buyout)

Now, even if you don't have any programming experience, it's not that hard to understand, it's almost in normal english. Following the same syntax that you can find in the whole file, you can modify this three lines to:

elseif (isPlayer) and not differencedPrice then
buyout = lowestBuyout
bid = lowestBid
elseif (isWhitelist) and not differencedPrice then
buyout = lowestBuyout + 1
bid = lowestBid + 1

It does the exact same thing, except that if the lowest price is from someone on your whitelist, it will post at his price +1 copper.

Exporting MySales data
MySales is an addon that records every sale you make on the AH, and displays them in a window in the game. This is very useful, however it lacks the option to categorize items by their nature. For example you can see how many Glyph of Backstab you have sold, but not how many glyphs you did, you can see how many Bloodthirsty Pyrium Belts you have realized, but not how much money you have made from the PVP (bloodthirsty) sets overall, etc. It is hard to determine how much gold you are reaping from your professions this way. The solution is to export the data from the addon. The data can be found in ...\WTF\Account\USERNAME\SavedVariables\MySales.lua. It might look sophisticated at first, but everything is there, and you can easily read it. Now, you can always write a small program that converts this mess into a readable format, however there is already an application for that. You can find it here. It will convert that file into a .csv format that excel can read, and with excel you can easily create all the graphs you want, categorize the items and such by using excel's functions.

AuctionMaster search problem
AuctionMaster is an addon that replaces your auction interface. It is very lightweight compared to Auctioneer, but it has just the best function. In my opinion Auctioneer has too much and too sophisticated functions, and it's so crowded that I can't even use the simple ones. That is why I use AuctionMaster (among many others). It only has one problem. There is an improved search interface in the "Scanner" tab. You can set the name, level and quality of the items you want to search for, as well as class, maximum price and such. However, if you do not input any number into the "maximum price" field, it will set it as zero, and return with no items. It can be solved easily by inputing a huge number so that it will give you all the items, but when you are doing a 100 searches on an average day it can become pretty annoying. That is why you should look through the code.
What you are looking for is in ...\Interface\AddOns\AuctionMaster\src\main\Scanner\SearchScanModule.lua, in the 73rd line. There is a function there, which the addon uses for the search. What you need to do is to tell it that if the max price is set to 0, then reset it to a very large number. Now, even if you don't know anything about LUA's syntax, and the variables that are floating around in this code, just by looking at the rest of the file, and others in this addon, you can easily figure out the rest. But just in case you don't, all you have to do is to write this to the beginning of the function (starting at line 76):

if (self.searchInfo.maxPrice==0) then
self.searchInfo.maxPrice=9999999999
end


I hope that these examples convinced you that poking around in the addon files can be very rewarding, especially if you have something in mind that you want to change in your addon. I think that minor changes can be made by anyone, since LUA is a pretty straightforward language, however, if you feel overwhelmed, try asking for help on our forums.