Staying Above the AH Dog Pile

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Markco here with another one of those fancy-smancy new terms about the AH for you to think about.

Dog piling is my fancy term for when a player sees a great opportunity on the auction house and they dump all their product at once for the lowest price at the moment. This is almost always going to result in a fail, even on patch days. Look, you may sell a few but it is certainly not the best utilization of your resources. Why is Dog piling not a good idea, especially since it usually results in a few sales?

1. Dog piling results in way more supply which counters the demand of the item. If there is one item on the auction house and you post three more, you've quadrupled the supply. If the demand has not quadrupled then yours and your competition's items will not sell completely.

2. There is a psychological effect that takes hold of people when they see a hundred of your item for the cheapest price and a handful of others for slightly more. I kid you not, some people will buy theirs because they feel that you are trying to monopolize the market. Crazy huh? It happens every day.

3. The funny thing about dog piling is that everyone seems to see it and get drawn into it, hence why I call it "dog piling." You could also probably call it the bandwagon, but I like dog pile because of the urgency that participants feel towards getting on the pile. Once someone sees you dumping your items, there is a chance that they will do the same. Undercutting wars follow.

4. Especially with items that people buy in designated stacks, such as hypnotic dust, you're better off selling it in those stacks than individually because of how fierce the dog piling is. What's more, you can actually sell for slightly more than the individual price per item and still have happy buyers. I call this staying above the dog pile.

5. If there are a handful of items on the market and demand is high, you can safely assume that your  normal priced items (even if they aren't the lowest) are going to sell eventually. Why spam a bunch of items and ruin the market by encouraging dog piling?