Greedy Goblin

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Proper attitude towards friends

Anne wrote it in a letter:

After a 2 months absence, i came back to wow and needed 10k gold quick. I want to raid with a dps char, not healer anymore. So I logged in and listed glyphs. I list about 1000 glyphs, which takes some time. I undercut by about 20% (im on Bronzebeard, a server with so many scribes, it makes you scream, and many active and obviously using Auctioneer [you can tell by the prices which are like 15g 67s 25c, no one would ever have the patience to complete those silvers and coppers manually I think]). A good friend, that is also a real life friend, comes and says I ruin the market, buys a lot of my glyps (lol ! i go and make like 20 more...)

That's what friends for!


I got lot of "someone undercuts me, please help" letters, but none of them were funny enough for posting. They are rather sad monuments of human stupidity.


If you see moron activity in the game (other than simple failing), please send me a screenshot, let's give a purpose to the existence of these beings: to give us laughs.


Just arrived from Matthew:

25 comments:

Mike said...

So she gets quick gold and the friend makes 20% relisting the glyphs. What's so bad about that?

Quicksilver said...

That the friend won't make any gold while she's around :D

Laudrim said...

@Everwrath


If you think trying to monopolize is going to work, sure...

Anonymous said...

I'd love to send a screenshot, but my newly found best customer sadly writes in English (second time now) that I'm destroying the market, that I could make soo much more profit and that I'm stupid. And he buys my glyphs. :)

Anonymous said...

Most glyphs sell for around 5-6g on my server, and I still make a ton of profit (considering they cost me ~2g to make). Even with one nutter logging in every 12 hours to relist his glyphs.

I've yet to encounter someone who complains about my low prices and buy them, though. Still hoping it'll happen one day :)

Anonymous said...

> 11 July, 2009 14:30
that should have been " sadly writes in *German and not in* English

sorry.

Anonymous said...

This is a link from Nordrassil forums EU , it's just a screenie of trade chat , It's quite amusing but I guess it may fall into the simply failing people.

http://www.larserik.com/tradechat.jpg

The Rokk said...

Someone cue up Dionne Warwick!

Keep posting', re-listin'
Knowin' you will always buy from me, for sure
That's what friends are for
For buyin', without tryin'
I'll swim in your gold forever more
That's what friends are for

Yazilliclick said...

Haven't gotten any complaints yet but there sure is a lot of undercutting on my server. I'm just leveling up my inscription though and selling what I make as I do well keeping and inv of some of the better ones. Just undercut them right back. I expect prices are going to be pretty horrible soon.

I'm interested to see what the prices are on some after a couple weeks though. Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth was selling for 23g at the start of the week apparently, already down to ~15. No idea how it was so high before, I even sold two at 20g.

Anonymous said...

The guy in the screenshot actually is correct to a certain extent. If you lower the price on glyphs down to 5-6G, the overall profit in the market becomes MUCH lower, because demand for glyphs is always about constant.

This is because glyph buying is almost always spontaneous, people don't sit there and plan out their glyph buying and rarely go "LF SCRIBE". When they need a glyph, they need one NOW.

If say each Glyph of X sold at 30G before, and there are 30 buyers of that glyph in a day, that's a total of 900g spread amongst all the sellers. If some Gevlon-type character comes in and lowers the market price to 5g, now there's only 150g profit coming into the Glyph sellers.

This is why I actually buy out all the cheap glyphs and relist at 30g everytime I post mine. I only need to sell ONE glyph to make equal profit to the other Walmart-type selling 10 glyphs. I easily make 2.5K a day doing this, and I'm now up to nearly 300K gold in 4 months of using this strategy.

Brian said...

@"Anonymous" saying the screenshot guy is correct:

Whether or not he's right about the impact on the overall market, that's not the problem of an individual seller. Maximizing personal profit and maximizing profit for everyone are different things. What do I care if I have 150G profit of a 900G market, or 150G profit out of a 150G market? In fact, having a larger portion of the market to myself allows me more control over the selling price in the long run.

But that aside, I think you're wrong about the impact of price on the demand for glyphs. People are more likely to buy a glyph just to play around with if the price is lower. In order for the glyph market to be as inelastic as you suggest, everyone who buys glyphs would HAVE to do so right when they do. I don't think that's the case at all. You might be right about glyph buying being spontaneous, but that doesn't mean buyers will pay any price. Nothing stops a spontaneous purchase faster than seeing a ridiculous price attached to it.

William said...

"Whether or not he's right about the impact on the overall market, that's not the problem of an individual seller. Maximizing personal profit and maximizing profit for everyone are different things. What do I care if I have 150G profit of a 900G market, or 150G profit out of a 150G market? In fact, having a larger portion of the market to myself allows me more control over the selling price in the long run."

Yes, but what happens when there's two, three, or even four Gevlons on a server (like on mine)? Now it's four of you fighting over a 150G market, when if you just undercut each other by 1 silver each at a higher price there'd be plenty more to go around. Reducing the price on glyphs to sell more is much like the "tragedy of the commons dilemma". It can backfire.

"But that aside, I think you're wrong about the impact of price on the demand for glyphs. People are more likely to buy a glyph just to play around with if the price is lower. In order for the glyph market to be as inelastic as you suggest, everyone who buys glyphs would HAVE to do so right when they do. I don't think that's the case at all. You might be right about glyph buying being spontaneous, but that doesn't mean buyers will pay any price. Nothing stops a spontaneous purchase faster than seeing a ridiculous price attached to it."

I don't think people "playing" around with glyphs is a significant portion of the glyph market. I'd say the majority is to cover buying for a new PvE spec (tanking, dps or healing), or for switching between PvE/PvP specs.

The way I see it, every time someone buys a glyph for 5g, that's a 25g profit that's potentially being lost to the market.

And by wanting it NOW, I don't mean spontaneous like seeing candy bar on the counter. I mean like "Oh shit, raid starting in 10 minutes, better replace my PvP glyphs with PvE ones", or "My 2s partner just came online and I gotta do some games, better respec". These people will pay ANY price for the glyph.

I sell minimum 100 glyphs at 20-30g price every day, and it works, if you look at the size of my bank account.

Tegi said...

I don't get how one can post 1000 glyphs at the same time, I have all of the book-researched glyphs, and many of the northrend ones, I always make 3 of each profitable, and I never end up over 400 auctions, and I have never sold all of them.

Anonymous said...

@Tegi

Check Wowhead, there are 341 Glyphs available, if you post every 48 hours on a large server you will need far over 3 glyphs to supply the entire demand in this 48 hours. Some glyphs will sell like candy and Gevlon said he posts about 7 of the popular glyphs, about 6 of the less popular glyphs and about 3 of the others (as long as the market price is at 10g or more). So averaging at 5 per individual glyph means that when you make around 250 individual glyphs you would end at around 1250 glyphs total.

On my high populated realm some glyphs sell far over 10 times per 48 hours. If I wish to scare away competition and get a high profit I should make more then this amount of glyphs to be sure people buy my glyphs and not these of my competition.

SiderisAnon said...

Unfortunately, the glyph market is highly variable on some servers. I know this both from my own server and having seen postings from other people about their server.

Many glyphs on my server have a market price of less than 1 gold. Even ones which have a market price of 10 or more gold can often be found selling for only a couple of gold because of how crazy the undercutting has become. There are people who are canceling their auctions several times a day to post again and make sure they have the lowest possible price, driving the price lower.

I'm just trying to wait it out until the market settles down. Until then, I take what profit I can make.

Anonymous said...

You see so many copy cat goblins now that try to control a market by posting item under market value. Their problem is that #1 they don't have the funds to support that strategy. Never buy out their supplies because all that does is put gold in their pocket and the idiot actually think they are accomplishing their goal. Undercut their glyphs and flood your undercut. Even if its for a lose you are fighting for a market. Make it so their eyes bleed everytime they think of undercutting you.

i am willing to take a 50% loss because I am stupid like that, are you? You better have deep pockets if you are.

Please none of this I'm gold capped this and I'm this and that. Your a punk and punks are easy, just make them bleed a bit and they run away like the little girls they are.

Lee Quillen said...

"i am willing to take a 50% loss because I am stupid like that, are you? You better have deep pockets if you are."

Have someone doing that on the glyph market on my server right now. He is putting up a ton of glyphs at 1 gold each. Am I willing to undercut that? No. Am I happy about that? Yes.

There's a huge market out there besides glyphs. I am perfectly content being patient and buying what I need of his 1g glyphs to keep myself stocked up. Why compete to own the market in a situation like that when you know he is taking a loss? Perfectly happy playing in enchanting mats and other markets while he thinks he is teaching some lesson losing 50silver to 2 gold a glyph. I appreciate his saving me money on inks of the sea quite honestly. :)

Point is, careful when thinking you are controlling a market by taking heavy losses no matter how deep the pockets. You may just be losing money for no reason while supplying your server a great community service.

Anonymous said...

While most competition acts (semi) rationally to maximize their profits. What do you think about a guy who posts 250 different glyphs, 2 each all at exactly 8g1s1c. He gets undercut left and right, but effectively caps the market at 8g... So he makes no money, nobody stops selling because of him, he just takes away profit.

Carra said...

Research your prossefion, hah.

But I've received a similar mail once myself. "You're undercutting our good prices, stop doing that please". I didn't pay much attention to it. I was quite happy to list my glyphs at democratic prices. At 15g a piece, you can still make 7 a 10g for some glyphs. Enough for me if I list a few hundred.


And outbuying someone is only smart when the supply is very limited (rare epics for example). Outbuying an item which can be mass produced is going to backfire hard. You can't buy all items...

Lee Quillen said...

"He gets undercut left and right, but effectively caps the market at 8g... So he makes no money, nobody stops selling because of him, he just takes away profit."

Answer the question with a question:

If it is true that he will not sell any glyphs because everyone is undercutting him left and right, then he would have made no money whether he sold at 8 gold or 20 gold. I personally sell at the price that maximizes my profits, and if I am selling zero at 20 because of a ton of undercutters I will happily sell only a handful at 4 gold so the auction manipulators will move to another area of high profit. I lose nothing by doing so if I was selling zero at 20 gold due to undercutters.

Or are you suggesting that no one undercuts if you sell glyphs at 20 gold a peice? Because I would humbly suggest the opposite is true and that people are more likely to play the undercutting game at high profits when cancelling auctions isn't nearly the impact against profit.

Anonymous said...

@Lee

I'm suggesting that the 8g-guy may be a AH-griefer. As his prices make no sense and he used to be a very competitive seller just a few months ago. Glyphs sell independent of their price up to maybe 30g, so posting everything at 8g, without regard of the market price (be it 1 or 30g) or competition looks to me like a (minor) griefing strategy.

Or maybe its just a VERY long term scheme to drive people out of the market, but that can only fail.

Since all the price calculation is done by Auctioneer, i doubt he does it to simplify his posting.

Lee Quillen said...

I understand what you were getting at now.

I will suggest, however, that sometimes you can make more money that way than trying to beat the undercutters to a sale (meaning I post at 21g and 3 people watching the AH undercut me at a copper each). If it is obvious to me that someone is buying up low priced glyphs to drive up prices I will try to find the highest price I can at which I am sure they will buy me out as well. That will often guarantee me the 20 gold in sales that I may not have gotten by pricing similarly. I think it's a valid strategy if you have limited time and can't camp the AH to compete with people undercutting.

That said, if it's someone griefing just to drive down prices and drive you batty, there is only so long they can do it if they are not selling glyphs. As I mentioned earlier we have someone selling typically high priced glyphs at 1 gold each when Inks of the sea are going for over a gold and a half. I'm sure he's trying to drive people out but sadly doesn't realize all he is doing is supplying me with cheaper stock than I can make my own. Even got a message of "please buy more lol" and could only reply with "I will thanks!".

If they are selling at a loss it benefits me long term. If they are selling such that the market is driven down it (to me) simply means there are too many suppliers in the market. My perspective is that of being on a server with 5 or 6 regular glyphmakers however, and as such is skewed. Average glyph prices on my server peak at about 5 gold for even the most expensive of glyphs. It is a narrow, but steady profit and there are no glyphs I list which don't have at least 1 or 2 coming back unsold (I post maybe 5 a day of each give or take depending on sales). heck, I think the only time I have seen a glyph not already on the AH was following an obvious buyout to drive up prices.

When glyphs get really bad, there are always other trades. Glyph selling is so quick that it really leaves time for other money making methods while still maintaining a profit. I much prefer making 1000 gold for 30 minutes of work to 5000 gold having to watch the AH for hours on end and thus my personal strategies reflect that.

Anonymous said...

I found this funny, I have been getting the same of kind of messages in my mailbox as well as getting in-game whispers from several players. I am currently listing as many as 1400 glyphs a day (representing 35-40%) of the total market on my server. I still don't have all of the recipes available through research but every day I add one more glyph to my repertoire. I have been happily selling glyphs anywhere from 3g up to 14g or so and making lots of profit every single day. My competitors are now buying up as many of my listings as possible, which just funds my activities even further.

Anonymous said...

I could swear if your talking about the 8g a glyph guy, you must be talking about me. Costs me 2g to make a glyph. If I sell 100glyphs a day (small task) I make 600g. I also cut the market down to a price that other competitors feel like they won't make profit at, and more often than not, find a different market.

Then after, 2-3 weeks at 8g a glyph, I let the prices stable out back to normal, (with much much less competition)

That means, 100glyphs a day, ~10g a glyph, profit up almost 100%. People leave the market if they find they aren't making enough profit. It is extremely easy to push people out of a business if you nickel and dime it.

Gaelex said...

Simple market fact: more of same item > lower price of item > less profit of item > less people doing the item > less item on AH > higher price on item > more profit > more people doing the item
And so on, and so on for ever... or at least the next patch.