Greedy Goblin

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Morons of the week 2

At first: NO MORE RESILIENT PARCHMENT PICTURES PLEASE!!!

Yerishan sent a chatlog created by the great addon Automated Goblin Therapist. Of course only the addon makes sense, the moron (by definition) does not:
10/3 12:56:30.625 Beaveronn has invited you to join a group.
10/3 12:56:54.437 To Beaveronn: can't group, doing ah stuff
10/3 12:57:02.015 Beaveronn whispers: plz
10/3 12:57:08.250 To Beaveronn: OK... "plz". Tell me more.
10/3 12:57:22.062 Beaveronn whispers: i have question for item
10/3 12:57:28.359 To Beaveronn: I'm not sure I understand you fully.
10/3 12:57:34.546 Beaveronn whispers: w8
10/3 12:57:40.359 To Beaveronn: OK... "w8". Tell me more.
10/3 12:58:03.687 Beaveronn whispers: i nid epic item.
10/3 12:58:08.562 To Beaveronn: Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.
10/3 12:58:13.625 Beaveronn whispers: in goin to ah.
10/3 12:58:20.578 To Beaveronn: Can you elaborate on that?
10/3 12:58:42.484 Beaveronn whispers: ?
10/3 12:58:48.703 To Beaveronn: OK... "?". Tell me more.
10/3 12:58:53.515 Beaveronn whispers: i tell you what i nid*
10/3 12:58:56.703 To Beaveronn: Oh... what i nid*?
10/3 12:59:24.265 Beaveronn whispers: dow you want help to train
10/3 12:59:32.828 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 12:59:39.468 Beaveronn whispers: ill help you
10/3 12:59:40.843 To Beaveronn: Oh... ?
10/3 12:59:53.625 Beaveronn whispers: you want help
10/3 13:00:00.875 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.
10/3 13:00:21.437 Beaveronn whispers: you want yes or no
10/3 13:00:28.953 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:00:43.453 Beaveronn whispers: in talk about you
10/3 13:00:45.000 To Beaveronn: Oh... ?
10/3 13:01:22.562 Beaveronn whispers: you want help to train you
10/3 13:01:29.140 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:01:46.578 Beaveronn whispers: im talk about you want help
10/3 13:01:49.218 To Beaveronn: Oh... want help?
10/3 13:01:55.828 Beaveronn whispers: you
10/3 13:01:58.796 Beaveronn has invited you to join a group.
10/3 13:02:01.250 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.
10/3 13:02:17.953 Beaveronn whispers: you want yes or no
10/3 13:02:20.437 Beaveronn: Level 42 Undead Warrior - The Barrens
10/3 13:02:20.437 1 player total
10/3 13:02:25.296 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:02:44.906 Beaveronn whispers: ???
10/3 13:02:49.328 To Beaveronn: OK... "???". Tell me more.
10/3 13:02:50.625 You are now AFK: Away from Keyboard
10/3 13:03:11.796 Beaveronn whispers: YOU WNAT HELP TO TRY YOUR SELF
10/3 13:03:39.015 To Beaveronn: try what, Define what
10/3 13:04:09.812 Beaveronn whispers: you are lvl 1 wou want help to be lvl 10
10/3 13:04:21.515 To Beaveronn: Perhaps you would like to be lvl 1 wou want help to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:04:48.015 Beaveronn whispers: you are lvl 1 dow you wnat to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:04:57.609 To Beaveronn: Do you sometimes wish you were lvl 1 dow me wnat to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:05:16.765 Beaveronn whispers: dow you know french
10/3 13:05:25.656 To Beaveronn: You're not really talking about me, are you?
10/3 13:05:49.562 Beaveronn whispers: dow you wnat help to be lvl 10
10/3 13:05:53.750 To Beaveronn: Oh... wnat help to be lvl 10?
10/3 13:06:43.390 Beaveronn whispers: you ...you wnat to be lvl 10
10/3 13:06:49.921 To Beaveronn: We were discussing you, not me.


My long time commenter, Carl Lewis sent me this. I always tell you to try to sell your "underpriced" stuff to the moron who complain about it, but it's the first time when the fool actually buys them! Well done!


It's one thing to try to sell a single runescroll of fortitude for 40G. You can even be lucky and find some mindless being who pay for it (after all they buy parchments for 10G). It's quite different to be mad at those who undercut you (by Rob):


Phaye has the nice addon TooltipWealth and the addon says it's unlikely that Ultimatmage (what a creative name) sold 40 bags... in his whole life.


Bobii of US Draka is offering his JC services for 20G fee. Someone doesn't approve:


Griphook of Darksorrow is offering low prices on trade, knowing that the "I farmed it, so it's free" kids sell for any price. Please note how thoughtful this gentleman is about his gold/hour:



19 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first one made me want to cut my eyes out of my sockets.

Marc said...

Dear Gevlon,

about the last one who does not care about his gold/hour:

Well, why not? For example I am sometimes watching a movie on my 2nd monitor (or talking with some finds in skype) and farming nodes in the meantime. Thats really a no-brainer, it can be done easily without distracting me and it gets plenty of gold into my bag.

Making "real" gold by crafting items has some limitations...one has to concentrate on that and crafting netherweave bags for over 2 hours would left me with too much bags to sell :P

Unknown said...

first off; you do somewhat need to pay attention while farming to ninja, defend or otherwise. this brings about how crafting in a city is more for the afk playstyle as it is automated in game legit.

"real gold" such an odd term.. tell me say you got every single node in a 2 hour farm session. all saronite: lets figure a good estimate of about 200 stacks to be nice.

200 x20g = 4k gold; now we prospect and sell the uncut and sometimes cut gems for usually 60-80% profit above the 4k....


now taking your logic; you;d have to bot to watch a movie effectively and to get that type of income to match the afk* prospecting macro click once every 3 seconds.. hell i dont even watch that monitor while I do; who is the fool here?

*-to which cutting and batch posting is the afk part, as well as hitting the trade macro every 2 minutes-

Unknown said...

to elaborate: that is also in extreme circumstances assuming you were alone in the valley; prices stay at that range, and also no competitors what so ever.. in the real "world" that isnt true so you get half that intake for the same amount of time, yet ... the buying from trade and prospecting or otherwise transforming into a useful byproduct is by far more afk savvy than your letting yourself believe.

go on try and have a conversation while flying node to node [msn] or watching a movie. 1) you miss half the movie because you got to fight and navigate, or 2) you fly hazardously and miss more nodes which results even less income for you the ore farmer.


and to note the too many bags... yeah they sell like candy, so you can throw up 20+ bags once you've established a presence and check in on them every few hours if your paranoid; smaking money without even being on... astonishing
- sorry for the double post;

Goth said...

I still say that their are two morons in these screens.

Stabs said...

I watched some great conversations between pesky players and the therapist.

Probably the best one was where a guy got so cross he told me his entire guild was going to put me on ignore. I then got a tell from the GM asking what it was all about and said "dunno, he was talking to my bot."

Many thanks for the heads up about that add-on several months ago.

N said...

Gev, would love to see your advice re: coping with sudden influx of huge numbers of continuous undercutters.

Anonymous said...

re: sever competition

diversify into a bluer ocean, wait it out at your lowest acceptable price until they give up, or give up yourself

ilikegold said...

What addon is that that shows the gold earned in the tooltip :o

(Netherweave Bag one)

Belsebub said...

TooltipWealth, there is a link to it right above the picture. Unfortunantly it only shows the maximum amount of gold that player ever had.

Phaye said...

The Addon is Tooltipwealth.

Basically it taps into the wow achievement API and pulls out the wealth information. You can toggle it to show "Most Gold Ever Owned" or "Total Gold Acquired" which shows more/less the flow of gold through the account.

In the screenshot, I've modified the addon to show both. This way I can see their maximum values and keep an eye on gold flow for some competitive sellers.

Yerishan said...

Do you mind posting the code of that modification? I'd definitely have a use of it

LaminatedSmore said...

Buying Resilient parchement from the AH is not the worst example of MS, but rather the 'best'.

Buying resilient parchment for 5 to 10 gold , and then buying an ink can be in some cases cheaper than buying the glyph.

Is it a stupid thing to do? Undoubtedly. But it can be the cleverest thing a MS will ever manage. Lets use the wowhead average ah price as an example, as it trascends servers.

Glyph of Circle of Healing: 15g
Resilient parchement from AH: 5-10g
Ink of the Sea: 2g

By buying the parchment and ink from the AH, they have saved themselves 8 to 3 g. At least they checked an alternative to simply buying the glyph.

So prehaps instead of featuring m+s buying resilient parchment for 10g, you should have featured m+s buying glyphs for 20g+

(I do not have inscription on a character, so maybe I am way out on the prices and my point becomes irrelevant.)

Unknown said...

@ marc - it's nearly impossible to post "too many" bags... I've had days where I was on all day leveling on the toon I post my bags with... and sold upwards of 100 bags in a day...

the nice part with posting bags is that it's extremely rare that anyone buys just one... usually they are outfitting an alt or bank - so they are buying 4 or more at a time...

if you are finding them not selling - drop your price by 1g or so... currently I post at about a 2g undercut from everyone else - and sell a TON (especially with people "smart" enough to buy mine to repost)

@laminatedsmore - the person is not saving money... they are losing it... they may be not paying as much as they would for the crafted glyph... but why would you spend an extra 10g instead of running to a vendor?

your big problem is that you are forgetting opportunity cost...

option : buy said glyph for 15g from AH
option 2: buy ink for 2g and parchment for 10g from AH
option 3: buy ink for 2g from AH and parchment for 50s from vendor

so I could spend 15g, 12g or 2.5g - not to mention that the last 2 options most likely have crafting costs if they have to find a scribe to make it for them...

there is only one of those options that makes sense... paying me 10g for running 20 feet to a vendor (or summoning my mammoth outside the AH) is STUPID, that's why these people are included in the m&s tag

LaminatedSmore said...

@ Zach

I never said that it was not stupid, and I am not forgetting oppurtunity cost.

It is less stupid than buying the glyph

On a scale of stupid to not stupid -

Buying a Glyph for 20g
Buying Resil parch for 10g + ink for 2
Buying Resil parch for 50s and ink for 2

Even an average player will take the third option. But we are talking about m+s. If they don't have inscription (unlikely they have it maxed anyway) or they don't check wowhead (again, unlikely), all they see is the first two options.

To re iterate - stupid, but as stupid as they could be. The m+s buying 13g+ glyphs are more stupid than the m+S buying the 12g mats.

Your example is from the pov of a non ms. We know that resilient parchment is worth 50s. The m+s dont. So, (again, this is just for an M+S) they are being >relatively< smart.

LaminatedSmore said...

And I am not saying that they are not m+S, but that to be amazed at 50s parchment selling for 10g is missing the point. They are the smartest M+S.

Gnome of Zurich said...

Except it isn't really less stupid than buying the glyph except in the rare case where you have a scribe who will work cheap right there and available.

Buying the glyph gets you what you need right now, with no hassle or travel finding a scribe. For a single glyph (outfitting an alt, as opposed to stacking for glyph swapping on a raider) that's worth at least 5g to me. In fact, it's worth around 10-15g to me or to anyone else who has no trouble making gold. Which would be why in a relatively non-competitive market you can sell a shitload of glyphs for 10-15g ea. It's the reason for you profit. The fact that you (goblin) are willing to invest 4-5k and a 1/2 hr to an hour a day in a glyph business that keeps a big inventory up on the ah all the time at reasonable prices, means that when I need a glyph, I can just buy it.

Anything under about 20g is a reasonable price on these terms. And yes, 20g glyphs mean a huge profit to the glyph seller when multiplied out a couple hundred times a day, but IMO, you've earned it. If you are the only big glyph seller on the market, you are making everybody's lives a *lot* easier by posting your stuff.

So it really is stupid to buy parchment for 5-10g, you've saved yourself 5 seconds on wowhead and a 10 second walk to a vendor, but you *haven't* saved yourself the more time consuming task of finding a scribe, yet you've already given up 60-80% of the gold savings from just buying a relatively expensive (20g) glyph.

LaminatedSmore said...

I wrote a long post I thought I had posted >_< I will try again.

View the M+S like a child. You are viewing them like an adult. It is tough to think of an anology, but think of it like this. Say, a 7 year old child, who is picking a chocolate bar to eat.

IF your kid were to choose thier favourite chocolate bar, and they noticed that it was 20p cheaper closer, and they went for the cheaper option. You would be proud of them for understanding that they can spend their money better.

OF course, the best way to spend your money is to buy a cheaper, prehaps non branded, chocolate bar which is not actually inferior in quality.


That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but my point is, you would be proud that the child grasped the concept of saving money, even if they did not pick the 'best' option.

Treat the m+s like children. Sure, they can get a far better deal by buying the resil parchement from the vendor. But they took the medium option, and we should be proud of the m+s for that. It's almost like they're learning. Instead of buying for more than the material cost, they are buying for less and crafting themselves.


Now, as to the time issue. IT is difficult to think about the m+S guild. In my guild, I would get something crafting during wipe recovery, or before the raid officially starts whilst many are standing around the raid entrance.

But bear in mind the m+s is in a friendly social, /w for invite guild. Far less people are going to have inscription. However, a guild full of m+s is sure to fall apart, there have to be a few average players to support them.

So, I think it is not unlikely that the m+s can get a guildy with inscription to come to dala. OR even come straight to wherever the m+S is, as they are in a 'nice friendly' guild, so the guildy will be 'nice and friendly' and come straight to them.

So yes, it does depend on if the m+S knows someone with inscription. I think it is likely that they do.

LaminatedSmore said...

Plus, m+s:

They will not check wowhead.
They will have no idea what resilient parchement is, let alone that it is worth 50s.

And their time is worth almost nothing. In the time it takes them to tell a guildy to come and meet them plz, they could have done ... 1/10th of a daily? 1/8th? worth 2, 3 gold?