Another tip is, re-place your items onto the AH every 1-2 hour, so to keep them always showing 1day 11hours. This can significantly increase your chance of selling it.
Finally, I think BLZ AH is flawed, so never go with a low starting bid in the auction, you will get lowballed in most time, or if your item auction ends in the middle of maintenance shutdown, then somebody can win the bid at very low price.
Hey ya everyone! I've been running into a problem as of late. I have 5 toons full of stuff to sell and two bank tabs but I can only seem to sell maybe one item a day, and it's making me wonder if I am pricing things wrong.
What I do is check all my rares and see if they will sell for at minimum 100k and trash the rest (vendor), the items I do want to sell I will do the right click search and see what I could get for similar items and I sort by the buy out price lowest and set a buy out for half that price and then half that for the bid.
Example: I have an item that looks like it could sell for around 200k, I list it for 100k BO and 50k bid.
90% of items time out and never get sold.
So I'm wondering if it's the wrong items I'm trying to unload or this pricing system I'm using is not working and the items I'm trying to sell are actually work even less than what I see on the market.
Any help is appreciated.
I have the same problem, and this is what I've concluded about the situation...
1. The player-base has a World of Warcraft mentality. It's either the best gear possible, or no gear at all. Basically the gear your selling needs to have 100% awesome rolls with zero wasted stats or someone won't want it. I've gotten legendaries with amazing stats on them. But when I offer to sell it in trade chat, people laugh and tell me they won't pay that price for such a piece of crap weapon (I'm talking as low as 50k gold.) So I've come to the conclusion that if it's not considered "best in slot", then no one will want it.
2. You might find an item that has awesome stats on it, and try to sell it for 1 million gold.... But there is someone out there that will have pretty much the same exact stats, or even slightly better ones, that will sell it for 900k gold. Then someone comes along to undercut him with even better stats for 800k gold. That's the problem with having one unified auction house for an entire country. If anything, they should break the AH's up into 3 or 4 seperate AH's for each timezone or something.
Another tip is, re-place your items onto the AH every 1-2 hour, so to keep them always showing 1day 11hours. This can significantly increase your chance of selling it.
not necessarily true, i sell most of my stuff towards the very end of my auctions
Just adding another voice to the crowd, but yes, my AH experience is very similar to yours. I'm not sure it can be helped, really. I remember when the game was new that it was actually rather easy to sell things (even a completely casual player like myself could get by selling not perfect things). Now you need something very close to perfect.
I havent seen the suggestion to sell on weekends... Friday I usually do a few normal runs at MP10 in HC to get a load of mainstat/vit items around level 20-30. Takes me 1h to fill up, most of it sell for 50k-100k, but only on weekends, guess there are more people playing then. So give or take 2mio, which usually buys me something nicer...
I am also finding it increasingly difficult to sell anything on the AH.... I'm sure that a dwindling player base has a lot to do with it. It certainly makes it a very slow and quite frustrating process to try and upgrade...
At the risk of sounding pedantic: The solution to the problem of AH items not selling is simple. Reduce your prices and items, keep moving the price down, and eventually you will find a level that matches demand. If you find that point is below the artificial gold (vendor value) floor or that the process takes up too much of your time (ex. spending three hours modifying prices to realize a net gain of 10k gold) to be economically efficient, then you simply stop listing items of that stripe.
There's nothing inherently mysterious about the market and the basics remain constant.
You are right, of course but I think the discussion is a fair bit more complex..... The (subtle) point I was making is that as the player base dwindles, demand dries up and prices of the goodies I am finding is falling. Therefore it is taking a lot more time to generate in game gold compared to 3-6 weeks ago. Now, by rights, economic theory suggests that high end (BiS) item prices should also start to fall to meet the lack of gold being generated... BUT the fly in the ointment is that I think botters have seriously distorted the market place to the point that there is now a 2 tier market - the "haves" and the "have nots". Botters are generating enough gold (including great legendary drops) to be able to trade amongst themselves whilst the peeps (like me) struggle through requiring enormous hours to progress by very incremental margins! It was great to see the ban wave yesterday, lets hope it helps even the playing field, but I wonder how much damage is already done?
I am one of those tenacious types, so I'll keep grinding my way through but the vast majority of players are not as persistent and that imho is why we are seeing a very serious drop off in player numbers....
You are right, of course but I think the discussion is a fair bit more complex..... The (subtle) point I was making is that as the player base dwindles, demand dries up and prices of the goodies I am finding is falling. Therefore it is taking a lot more time to generate in game gold compared to 3-6 weeks ago. Now, by rights, economic theory suggests that high end (BiS) item prices should also start to fall to meet the lack of gold being generated... BUT the fly in the ointment is that I think botters have seriously distorted the market place to the point that there is now a 2 tier market - the "haves" and the "have nots". Botters are generating enough gold (including great legendary drops) to be able to trade amongst themselves whilst the peeps (like me) struggle through requiring enormous hours to progress by very incremental margins! It was great to see the ban wave yesterday, lets hope it helps even the playing field, but I wonder how much damage is already done?
I am one of those tenacious types, so I'll keep grinding my way through but the vast majority of players are not as persistent and that imho is why we are seeing a very serious drop off in player numbers....
While the discussion can become infinitely complex, with the addition of as many market variables as you can imagine, the point was that in practice it doesn't have to be so. If you took the time to map out every possible shift in supply and demand before you placed a bid or posted an auciton, you'd quickly find yourself spending days on end agonizing over every exchange. That is a fine thing to do on the macro scale, if you want to do so, but for the player who is simply wondering how to offload their stuff for gold, there's little point in delving so deep into the morass.
If I am to understand you correctly, your claim is that "BiS," items are rising in price while the price of nearly all other goods is falling. You view this as a failure of the market; a division into "haves and have nots," but like the socialist mantra you're echoing, it simply doesn't retain water. The demand for item X, as a best in slot item, is going to remain strong despite it's short supply becoming slightly greater over time. It trends this way because it is the effective ceiling on the asset side of the equation. Since there is no similar ceiling on the gold side, item X can freely fetch whatever people are willing to pay for it. The other items, ones with less than perfect stats, are in an almost endless supply, and it is therefor logical that their value will free-fall, especially with the expansion of the gold supply and the improvements in drop rate on the very high end. Over the long haul, regardless of player retention, the demand for better and better items is going to trend with the demand. If, as you insist, many players are priced out of a market they want to be in, then prices will fall as supply inexorably rises.
If what you say about botters is true, that they dump huge amounts of gold and high end items into the economy, then their effect on the economy to the average consumer who does not bot is largely neutral, if not beneficial. Botters are not violating any of the laws of supply and demand, they are simply a reaction to demand out-pacing supply. If players didn't want all those high end items, then there would be not botters. Similarly, due to the presence of so many botters, their items are constantly pushing value towards equilibrium. In other words, if you are active on the market, it should please you to see so much competition. When there are so many seperate instances of orders attempting to unite supply and demand, the odds of guesstimating exactly where the two meet are much better.
I don't know what the figures are for player retention and frankly, it doesn't matter much in my view. So long as there are more players than one, there will be a functional marketplace and that market will be governed chiefly by supply and demand. Any attempt to "level the playing field," in a meaningful sense would simply void the necessity of the market. Some people are going to input much more time and effort (and I include the risky business of botting in this arithmetic, although I do not endorse the practice) to realize their economic goals and that is always going to be the case.
In sum, if the goal is to make the most of your game time on the AH, there's very little point in getting angry at the natural forces of the market. Understand the basics and the rest begins to make much more sense.
I've been selling horribly rolled Calamities and Danetta's (1K DPS and crap affixes) for 200-250K a piece. Socketless or crit-less, no Discipline boosts, or useful mods (I recall the Calamity rolling int). No one in their right mind should use those poorly rolled items, yet they sell in the span of minutes.
LOL - First time in my life I've been accused of being a socialist! You clearly have studied market mechanisms and you seem keen to display your knowledge, but I'll leave the discussion there. FYI, I actually agree with the majority of your comments.
The comment that I made with regards to the "haves" and the "have nots" was purely with respect to the retards who use bots to cheat in this game. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that particular point. Good luck with your gaming.
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I have the same problem, and this is what I've concluded about the situation...
1. The player-base has a World of Warcraft mentality. It's either the best gear possible, or no gear at all. Basically the gear your selling needs to have 100% awesome rolls with zero wasted stats or someone won't want it. I've gotten legendaries with amazing stats on them. But when I offer to sell it in trade chat, people laugh and tell me they won't pay that price for such a piece of crap weapon (I'm talking as low as 50k gold.) So I've come to the conclusion that if it's not considered "best in slot", then no one will want it.
2. You might find an item that has awesome stats on it, and try to sell it for 1 million gold.... But there is someone out there that will have pretty much the same exact stats, or even slightly better ones, that will sell it for 900k gold. Then someone comes along to undercut him with even better stats for 800k gold. That's the problem with having one unified auction house for an entire country. If anything, they should break the AH's up into 3 or 4 seperate AH's for each timezone or something.
Those are my conclusions.
not necessarily true, i sell most of my stuff towards the very end of my auctions
There's nothing inherently mysterious about the market and the basics remain constant.
You are right, of course but I think the discussion is a fair bit more complex..... The (subtle) point I was making is that as the player base dwindles, demand dries up and prices of the goodies I am finding is falling. Therefore it is taking a lot more time to generate in game gold compared to 3-6 weeks ago. Now, by rights, economic theory suggests that high end (BiS) item prices should also start to fall to meet the lack of gold being generated... BUT the fly in the ointment is that I think botters have seriously distorted the market place to the point that there is now a 2 tier market - the "haves" and the "have nots". Botters are generating enough gold (including great legendary drops) to be able to trade amongst themselves whilst the peeps (like me) struggle through requiring enormous hours to progress by very incremental margins! It was great to see the ban wave yesterday, lets hope it helps even the playing field, but I wonder how much damage is already done?
I am one of those tenacious types, so I'll keep grinding my way through but the vast majority of players are not as persistent and that imho is why we are seeing a very serious drop off in player numbers....
While the discussion can become infinitely complex, with the addition of as many market variables as you can imagine, the point was that in practice it doesn't have to be so. If you took the time to map out every possible shift in supply and demand before you placed a bid or posted an auciton, you'd quickly find yourself spending days on end agonizing over every exchange. That is a fine thing to do on the macro scale, if you want to do so, but for the player who is simply wondering how to offload their stuff for gold, there's little point in delving so deep into the morass.
If I am to understand you correctly, your claim is that "BiS," items are rising in price while the price of nearly all other goods is falling. You view this as a failure of the market; a division into "haves and have nots," but like the socialist mantra you're echoing, it simply doesn't retain water. The demand for item X, as a best in slot item, is going to remain strong despite it's short supply becoming slightly greater over time. It trends this way because it is the effective ceiling on the asset side of the equation. Since there is no similar ceiling on the gold side, item X can freely fetch whatever people are willing to pay for it. The other items, ones with less than perfect stats, are in an almost endless supply, and it is therefor logical that their value will free-fall, especially with the expansion of the gold supply and the improvements in drop rate on the very high end. Over the long haul, regardless of player retention, the demand for better and better items is going to trend with the demand. If, as you insist, many players are priced out of a market they want to be in, then prices will fall as supply inexorably rises.
If what you say about botters is true, that they dump huge amounts of gold and high end items into the economy, then their effect on the economy to the average consumer who does not bot is largely neutral, if not beneficial. Botters are not violating any of the laws of supply and demand, they are simply a reaction to demand out-pacing supply. If players didn't want all those high end items, then there would be not botters. Similarly, due to the presence of so many botters, their items are constantly pushing value towards equilibrium. In other words, if you are active on the market, it should please you to see so much competition. When there are so many seperate instances of orders attempting to unite supply and demand, the odds of guesstimating exactly where the two meet are much better.
I don't know what the figures are for player retention and frankly, it doesn't matter much in my view. So long as there are more players than one, there will be a functional marketplace and that market will be governed chiefly by supply and demand. Any attempt to "level the playing field," in a meaningful sense would simply void the necessity of the market. Some people are going to input much more time and effort (and I include the risky business of botting in this arithmetic, although I do not endorse the practice) to realize their economic goals and that is always going to be the case.
In sum, if the goal is to make the most of your game time on the AH, there's very little point in getting angry at the natural forces of the market. Understand the basics and the rest begins to make much more sense.
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LOL - First time in my life I've been accused of being a socialist! You clearly have studied market mechanisms and you seem keen to display your knowledge, but I'll leave the discussion there. FYI, I actually agree with the majority of your comments.
The comment that I made with regards to the "haves" and the "have nots" was purely with respect to the retards who use bots to cheat in this game. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that particular point. Good luck with your gaming.