For Great Profit
I think some people are trying to take advantage of an automated buying system in World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft has a marketplace for buying and selling in-game items for in-game money. The auction house (AH) works much like ebay. Sellers list items for sale, and buyers can bid on those items. With some patience, you can make in-game money using the age-old method of buying stuff for cheap, and selling that stuff for more money.
To aid me in my money-making efforts, I use an add-on for WoW called auctioneer. It scans a snapshot of items for sale at the AH and builds a database of the items and costs that it sees. by scanning enough times, you can start to see an average listing price for the items that are for sale. This allows you to make more educated guesses about what listings are good buys. If it's for sale for less than the average, then it's a good idea to buy it so you can sell it for an average price.
There are, of course, limitations to this method. The most significant one being that, apart from what you yourself buy, you never know what people actually pay for something. All you know is the prices that sellers were demanding. On average, sellers want to demand what buyers will pay, so this means that on average you can use Auctioneer to your benefit. But I think that you can also take advantage of these limitations.
Here's the interesting bit:
I think there are people that are gaming auctioneer. Consider an object that you can buy from in-game vendors for one gold. (That means there's an infinite supply of them available to buy without going to the AH and giving your money to other players.) Now suppose I list a lot of these items at the AH, and I ask people to pay a thousand gold apiece. Nobody will pay that much money. However, if you're using auctioneer to scan, auctioneer is going to assign these items an incredibly high average sale price. Now I can try listing these items for ten gold. Auctioneer is going to say that's a great deal, because they're usually listed for a thousand gold. You may buy it because it's such a great deal. And I just made a 900% profit on some crap that you could have bought much more cheaply elsewhere.
Anyway, I've seen absurd prices for cheap vendor merchandise, and I think this is what's going on. Savvy WoW players won't be easily duped by this method. However, given that there are thousands of items in the game, it's unlikely that the average player will know what every item is good for, or where you can get it. Also, people are lazy. They use auctioneer to automate research, and possibly even buying. They may not take the time to consider if something is really a good buy or not, beyond the simple numbers presented by auctioneer.
World of Warcraft has a marketplace for buying and selling in-game items for in-game money. The auction house (AH) works much like ebay. Sellers list items for sale, and buyers can bid on those items. With some patience, you can make in-game money using the age-old method of buying stuff for cheap, and selling that stuff for more money.
To aid me in my money-making efforts, I use an add-on for WoW called auctioneer. It scans a snapshot of items for sale at the AH and builds a database of the items and costs that it sees. by scanning enough times, you can start to see an average listing price for the items that are for sale. This allows you to make more educated guesses about what listings are good buys. If it's for sale for less than the average, then it's a good idea to buy it so you can sell it for an average price.
There are, of course, limitations to this method. The most significant one being that, apart from what you yourself buy, you never know what people actually pay for something. All you know is the prices that sellers were demanding. On average, sellers want to demand what buyers will pay, so this means that on average you can use Auctioneer to your benefit. But I think that you can also take advantage of these limitations.
Here's the interesting bit:
I think there are people that are gaming auctioneer. Consider an object that you can buy from in-game vendors for one gold. (That means there's an infinite supply of them available to buy without going to the AH and giving your money to other players.) Now suppose I list a lot of these items at the AH, and I ask people to pay a thousand gold apiece. Nobody will pay that much money. However, if you're using auctioneer to scan, auctioneer is going to assign these items an incredibly high average sale price. Now I can try listing these items for ten gold. Auctioneer is going to say that's a great deal, because they're usually listed for a thousand gold. You may buy it because it's such a great deal. And I just made a 900% profit on some crap that you could have bought much more cheaply elsewhere.
Anyway, I've seen absurd prices for cheap vendor merchandise, and I think this is what's going on. Savvy WoW players won't be easily duped by this method. However, given that there are thousands of items in the game, it's unlikely that the average player will know what every item is good for, or where you can get it. Also, people are lazy. They use auctioneer to automate research, and possibly even buying. They may not take the time to consider if something is really a good buy or not, beyond the simple numbers presented by auctioneer.