When will they learn? Maybe Blizzard should add the line "Undercutting by more than 1c is a valid pricing strategy" to the loading screen and then they wouldn't have a forum thread. Jason got his share:
I was cleaning my computer from old trash and found this gem. It was made early July. We were summoning the raid to Ulduar. There were hordies everywhere (Stormscale has high horde:ally ratio). And from the nothing this guy jumped on us and started ganking. Well... tried. You can guess the outcome of the fight. Two minutes later he ressed. We really did not attacked him. We were going to raid, the last thing we wanted is his buddies to come and waste 20 of our minutes. He jumped on us again. Then again. Maybe he would jump fourth time but everyone arrived and we were already inside Ulduar:
Dilate-(A) Sargeras US is crafting bags. Someone came up with the wonderful idea to buy all her bags up and resell on the trade chat. She made this picture from this event:
One would think that if you got in, you can get out the same way. Of course such logic (or any other) doesn't work in the M&S brain. I'm afraid Frozut will be stuck in Darnassus forever and ever:
Graylo sold another parchment (sold by vendors in every city):
Have you ever told some nonsense to a punk to make him piss off? Well, it doesn't always work, as my little banker experienced it while selling transferred stuff:
BTW how did he reached 80? And how does he find his mouth while eating?
PS: My girlfriend's reaction: "Mulgore is too easy. You should have sent him to Teldrassil hunting Nightsabers". Well, it seems Mulgore was enough for him:
23 comments:
The funny thing is, after I sent him that mail he now makes it his job to undercut me by 1 copper. Best part is he was one of my gem competitors, so while he is distraced with glyphs, im busy making a fortune with gems =D.
i have to say "lolcats" to that Carnie guy...
New protool for dealing with morons:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9780-AGT-AutomaticGoblinTherapist.html
Okay, multiple times I've been tempted to post "wow, that one is the best ever." I finally have to do it. That kitten thing is so hilarious, I can only hope to have that much fun with a dummy one day.
I'm not trying to introduce any feel-good crap here, but I get a lot more whisps from happy buyers than from angry sellers. TBH, I've only got one angry seller whisp. I think I'm on some kind of weird server.
BTW, I never replied to the angry wisp, and I never will. Responding in whatever way is the worst thing you can do. There is nothing to gain from it except perhaps the personal gratification of showing your superiority to someone. Ape-routine anyone? And what will that do to the angry guy? Encourage him to fight back as hard as he can, for as long as he can, because he has a live target now. And even if you can win that easily, it will never be good for the profit, so honestly, responding is plain stupid.
There's something about the Morons of the Week that infuriates me. In WoW (as in, say, Poker) the successful player makes money from the mistakes of the other players. You should want your competitors to make costly decisions as often as possible.
Yet you don't want to make them feel bad (this is important) so that they change their behaviour and make fewer mistakes. You should strive to validate them and reinforce their business strategies while still taking advantage of their errors.
In MotW the real morons are the readers who send in screenshots and stories of them humiliating and educating competitors in good business. Every piece of information they give out hurts profits.
PS: I won't even touch on the fact that these people show themselves up as status-hungry and arrogant, because they need to show their peers (the readers of GG) how 'win' they are by shaming and berating the ignorant M&S.
Note that I'm not talking about the Kitten story, that was rather funny and didn't educate the M&S on how to improve.
To clarify, the 'these morons never learn anyway!' argument sucks. Most them won't learn no matter how you berate them, but some will. If even one person changes because you needed to prove your superiority, you fail.
Last weeks MotW had a great example of what I'm saying.
@Mockra:
You just pretty much invalidated the existence of this entire blog, didn't you? It's "educating" people in teaching everyone how to make money. And considering the primary method (market share) is one that allows only a handful of players per server to (massively) succeed at the same time, your argument (not discussing its validity, only the scope) really hits the entire blog, not just the MotW section.
With regard to what Rem and Mockra said, I would guess that Gevlon knows he makes will succeed at goldmaking anyway, even if he teaches many people his ways. I think he counts on a certain amount of market inefficiency no matter what.
Interestingly, I do remember this being brought up before, and Gevlon's response was that he did not care about the social reward of running a successful blog, but rather he ran the blog to educate readers so that he would have a more intelligent marketplace to work in. Now that statement still does not make any sense to me. With even one additional skilled, dedicated glyph producer competing directly with Gevlon, his glyph profits would surely take some kind of a hit.
Maybe Gevlon can explain. Thanks.
@Rem
Yes, this blog loses GG some gold by educating readers. If even one person is inspired to be a Goblin on Gevlon's server, and competes in Gev's market(s) he loses gold.
Obviously he isn't bothered as (unlike my example of Poker) he makes more gold than he can spend even when making sub-optimal decisions and giving up potential profit by helping others.
The kittens in Mulgore... absolutely brilliant.
But, Mockra, the economic pie increases. Which is good for all.
@Mokra: You make a valid point, but the fact is that the supply of idiots isn't running out anytime soon. Every single person who reads Gev's blog could become a marketing genius and there would STILL be a plentiful supply of screenshots for "Morons of the Week".
Besides, educated or not there is no way I'm gonig to try competing with Gev's glyph market. Much less effort to find a market that doesn't already have goblins in it.
Duncan,
I think you raise an interesting point, and it is probably true that the economic pie is increased somewhat, but I do not think the increased pie will proportionately benefit the goblins as much as everyone else.
Logically, if there were more goblin converts, there would be more serious crafters and fewer gatherers.
So prices on raw materials would go up, and prices on crafted items would go down.
But some gatherers would see the jump in prices and be induced to gather more, stabilizing raw material prices somewhat.
But in the end, what I see is raw materials going maybe a little higher but crafted item prices dropping to the point of marginal profit. It only takes probably a handful of serious businessmen in any market segment to serious depress prices there.
So who wins? The average player who is an AH consumer. Also the gatherers win a little due to spiked demand for their materials. Who loses the most? The businessmen.
And I want to add that this is not at all like real life, where the businesses depend on each other alot more and there are efficiency improvements due to technological advances.
WoW is a much simpler world where many of the above are not applicable, so the "making the pie bigger" theory does not quite work well there.
I started loling at 'One Hour Later'. :PPP
Eaten by a Grue is quite correct.
In the real world, you can offset this by hiring employees, expanding your operation, or franchising it out. Your profit per unit is tiny, but the combined efforts of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees makes it so your profits scale faster than your efforts. At some point, a well designed business runs itself and you just collect the cash.
But in game, it's basically impossible to have employees do your work. You must make all those glyphs yourself. As such, you're a type 'S' corporation, not a type 'C'. Essentially what you own is a job, not a true business.
As profits per unit drop, your effort per unit stays the same. It still takes the same amount of time to mill each herb and make each glyph. At some point, your gold / hour will be the same as if you were doing dailies.
As a matter of fact the pie doesn't increase.
Every single piece of gold added to the game comes from grinding in one way or another.
Quest rewards and vendor sales. That's it.
All the rest are money-sinks. Even Gevlon's activities destroy gold as the AH takes 5%.
I want to see one of you guys try the opposite.
When you get ingame mail from morons demanding you stop, Send an email back along the lines of:
"im so sorry, of course you are right, ill raise the prices to match the market immediately!"
Then proceed to continue on exactly like before :)
Ellifain @ Khaz'goroth
In the past when I got angry mail Ive always responded by saying. "thank you for your advice" but they probably just think I am a bot or something now.
@Mockra,
I think what is most fascinating is that people here often do try to educate the morons, but the morons are so convinced that they are right that they resist common sense. So I do not think that the habit of telling them the secrets to success and shaming them via screen shots will hurt the 'goblins.'
Notice that most morons demand that a seller fall in line, and when the seller resists, the moron insults them and threatens economic warfare that neither than benefit from. I would bet you that most of the time, the moron makes threats that he has no intention of carrying out, he simply hopes that he can scare an anonymous trader into cooperating.
They show a near-complete lack of logical thinking because greed has clouded their ability to reason. "If you undercut me by 1c, everyone benefits!" they say, implying that they are looking to help everyone (except for the buyer, of course). When the goblin points out that he doesn't care if other sellers benefit or not, the moron is utterly confused. "People will buy them at any price!" argues the moron, not realizing that he has simply validated the goblin's approach.
That's what makes them morons, after all. Mocking them doesn't make a goblin a moron. Stupid people deserve to be mocked for their stupidity.
Mulgore cats called Stalkers, its brilliant!
thanks for laughs again :)
Wow dude, YOU are the moron here. That guy is right, being top listed is the only thing that matters. Morons undercut with 1+ gold, unless you're doing some kind of charity?
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