Playing the Wow auction house
 

I got back into WoW a couple weeks ago, but the only aspect of the game I'm really interested in is the auction house. I played a skinning/mining rogue up to level 20 just to have some funds to get started with, but I now find that spending all my time on my level 1 auction character is much more efficient.

So far I've mainly been dealing in linen cloth and light leather and am gradually moving into some slightly more expensive items like mageweave cloth. I'm thinking that with the new expansion in the works, cold resist items should go up significantly in value. I'd like to stock up on them if I can actually make enough funds (all I have right now is about 100g worth of leather and cloth). Oh and I use the program "auctioneer" and it's not really all that helpful so far, but it doesn't hurt.

Anyone else into this?

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
I got back into WoW a couple weeks ago, but the only aspect of the game I'm really interested in is the auction house. I played a skinning/mining rogue up to level 20 just to have some funds to get started with, but I now find that spending all my time on my level 1 auction character is much more efficient.

So far I've mainly been dealing in linen cloth and light leather and am gradually moving into some slightly more expensive items like mageweave cloth. I'm thinking that with the new expansion in the works, cold resist items should go up significantly in value. I'd like to stock up on them if I can actually make enough funds (all I have right now is about 100g worth of leather and cloth). Oh and I use the program "auctioneer" and it's not really all that helpful so far, but it doesn't hurt.

Anyone else into this?

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When I played, I made lots of money just buying cheap in the AH and reselling. I normally used the items needed for enchants, such as greater/lesser nether essences and stuff like that. Often I would buy 1 greater essence for 2g, which can be turned into 3 lesser essence, and sell those for 1g each = 3g total = 1g profit. They don't charge a listing fee on the essences either which is nice. There are tons of items that can be made a profit on if you watch the market.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I think you need to get to lvl 5 or something to be able to start disenchanting. I did that for a long time, buying cheap lvl 10-20 weapons and disenchanting, then selling the essences back. But then the market got fairly saturated, so it may not be profitable anymore. This was also over a year ago (I haven't played for a long time).

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think you need to get to lvl 5 or something to be able to start disenchanting. I did that for a long time, buying cheap lvl 10-20 weapons and disenchanting, then selling the essences back. But then the market got fairly saturated, so it may not be profitable anymore. This was also over a year ago (I haven't played for a long time).

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They effectively ended the days of an AH disenchanting alt because the level of the item you can DE is tied to your enchanting level. This really hosed me as I made a ton of money through disechanting. Buy low sell high is still good for lots of money. Its just like any other market really. Also once you get a good base of funding you can manipulate prices by buying mass produced items and then relisting at an inflated price. Takes a fair amount of gold and dedication to do this but its possible.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

i think u guys need a life....go play some poker

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think u guys need a life....go play some poker

[/ QUOTE ]
I only get on WoW like once a day [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Less if I'm busy. It takes time to sell things.
If I want to start hardcore monopolizing and price gouging, that'll be a different story.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I use the auctioneer program as well.

The first thing you have to do is scan the AH everyday, 2 times if possible.

Then right after your scan search for Auctions that are listed 70% below value.

When the items come up check to see how many times it has been in the AH 10+ is good.

Then start at the top 99% and work down.

I do this all week long and then throw all the stuff on the AH on Friday night so it is ready for the weekend. I am a level 48 hunter and I have over 700 gold just from doing this.

Hope that helps.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

BEAT:

[ QUOTE ]
I got back into WoW a couple weeks ago.

[/ QUOTE ]


HORRIBLE GAME! FFXI > WOW

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think u guys need a life....go play some poker

[/ QUOTE ]
I quite WoW to play poker. /golfclap

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

TPN:

Thanks, I may try this. Lately I've been spending all my money on underpriced cloth and leather, but I'm starting to see that I'd be better off diversifying since I can only sell so much of one particular at a time. Demand for my items seems pretty high though, so it's been working out.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
BEAT:

[ QUOTE ]
I got back into WoW a couple weeks ago.

[/ QUOTE ]


HORRIBLE GAME! FFXI > WOW

[/ QUOTE ]
Ew.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

You do have multiple salesbots up right?

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

What's a salesbot? If you mean characters, then no I only have one so far. When I start running out of inventory space I'll make more.
Actually I should have done so already instead of buying those 6g bags. Oh well.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

What server are you on?

I can hook you up with some gold im thinking of selling my account so I can hook you up with a bit if you want.

PM ME

Anyone that wants to buy large amount or wants a helping hand ( Hakkar, pvp server)

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I play as well. Im on FarStriders US server. Cylent is the name. LVL 70 hybrid warrior. And btw, enchanting mats is the way to go if youre looking to make G in this game.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I think at any reasonable level you make way more just playing/mining/etc.

That said, when I listed stuff, I always nabbed any stuff that was underpriced.

The AH fees are killer though.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

The fees always kept me from listing any sort of weapon. I just didn't want to take the chance of it not selling and me losing so much gold. They really could have more reasonable fees. I mean, dusts and the like are free to list, and people go crazy on trying to overcharge, so I understand the need for fees, but it's just a little too high. Maybe they could base it off the usual sale price on each server or something. A small program could figure that out relatively quickly.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think at any reasonable level you make way more just playing/mining/etc.

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Depends on server economy. I have one character on a sparsely populated PVP server, I almost never buy to resell nor do I even bother to sell anything that isn't green+ or a common tradeskill mat like cloth. On the other hand, on another character on a heavily populated pve server, I sell all non-greys and troll the AH every day and the gold is definitely coming in faster than grinding (not to mention that I occasionally buy something and, you know, actually use it for my character)

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I hate how on some servers, just because an item's blue, it's automatically priced at 30g or above.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I've been quite into AH speculation in the past.

One thing you need to know though, cold resist items won't mean anything in the expansion. Even on the off chance that they're needed, it'll be for lvl 80 raids and certainly not any sort of item you can lay your hands on now. Apologies if this isn't what you meant.

My short bit of advice: stop trading in common items like cloth. Things like mageweave, copper ore, light leather etc are all easy to make a small amount of cash on, but you're severely limited by the fact that whenever the market reaches a point where people are unwilling to pay your price, they can easily go and farm whatever they need. Look into items like silver bars, coarse stone or citrines, or slightly rarer trade goods. Things that are used often in trade recipes and are not easy to farm. I mean, if I need silver bars for something, it's very hard to actually go out and try to find a silver vein. Yeah, while you're levelling you'll run into some, but very few people are levelling anymore. Even so, they're still very much needed for jewelcrafting and engineering amongst other things. A 70 powerlevelling a profession would pay a pretty insane amount during times of AH drought.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Very true..

I really wanted to stockpile loads of ore before the expansion came out, cuz I heard the jewelcrafting prof was going to need it for prospecting. I had a bunch saved up, but my friend wanted to learn mining, so I went ahead and let him smelt it all. STUPID!! I heard stacks of ore were going for like 20-80g. And that's just copper.

If the new expansion has a new profession, I'd try to think about what would be needed for it, and stockpile that. If not, yeah, I agree, stockpiling CR stuff isn't going to help, since most of the gear out there will probably be a heck of a lot better than the gear that exists now.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

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If the new expansion has a new profession, I'd try to think about what would be needed for it, and stockpile that.

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http://www.wowwiki.com/Inscription

As to what to stockpile, I have no idea.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Oh right, I do remember reading about that now.. Dalaran, in Northrend? I thought it was SW of UC? In the purple bubble?

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

One of the best ways to make [censored] of money in wow without having to start from a huge base amount is to use auctioneer over a couple of weeks to find out the average prices for various items on your server and manipulate the fairly lax AH rules to your advantage. There are tons of items in WoW (especially reagents) that can be combined into bigger items or broken down into smaller. Most of the stuff you get from disenchanting is like this. Greater Essences are made up of three Lesser Essences. The critical part is that the prices of the greater ones are generally not in parity with the smaller ones. Depending on their use, the smaller ones are usually 30-40% more expensive than the larger ones by volume, so I buy a lot of the bigger ones and break them down into smaller ones to resell. The same thing can be done in reverse with motes and primals, since people will often put motes of fire and such on the AH for 30s buyout when the actual value (when incorporated into a primal) can be 8x as much.

The benefit of selling stuff enchanters use is that none of the enchanting mats have AH fees so you can relist them over and over with no penalty if they don't sell.

About 50% of the gold I got for my epic flying training and mount for my main was buying Adamantite bars off the AH for 15-20g per stack, changing them into hardened Adamantite and reselling for 25-30g. All engineers require like 20 of the hardened bars to level up their engineering past 365 so there is always demand and they always sell within an hour of listing them.

Prior to the expansion I spent a lot of buying and reselling gear and such but the market went crazy for several months and I never went back to it. It seems like there's a lot more people willing to run outland instances over and over to get the gear they want so BOE stuff isn't nearly as valued as it was pre-expansion.

If you're willing to invest the time and have a level 70 character, fishing is a hugely under appreciated moneymaker. I don't remember how long exactly it took to get to 300 fishing pre-expansion but I think I spent about eight hours total to get from 300 to 375 fishing. I spend a lot of time fishing in Nagrand since the food you can make from the various fishes there sell for 20g+ per stack plus I'll usually fish up 8-10 primal waters (20g each) in an hour.

When I actively play WoW (I'm on an extended break right now) I usually spend 4-5 hours a week getting gold and have more than enough for everything I need. It took me two weeks total of grinding two hours a day to get the 5200g for my epic flyer back in May.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Dude, that's hot! If I get this paladin I'm trying to buy, you gotta tell me where and how. That's some serious bling!

As for fishing, you can make a boatload selling the crawdads, if you have a bunch of people on your server who just have to have their skill in cooking maxed. (Unless those added vendor recipes can max them) Plus the Golden Vendor Fish drops are always fun.. Just don't accidentally delete one. I wanted to cry. I know it's just 6g, but I was still very sad.

Earlier, I may have been thinking of Dolanaar?

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

No you were right, it's Dalaran.

is to move from its previous location in the Alterac Mountains to levitate at great height in the air north of the Dragonblight in Northrend. It will act as the neutral sanctuary city for the continent, similar to Shattrath City in Outland, under the guidance of Rhonin and the Kirin Tor. The Kirin Tor are responsible for the move, but the exact method is unknown - it is likely to be either by teleportation or transportation. It can be accessed by either foot or flying mount.[8] However, as with Shattrath, there will be no class trainers or auction houses.[9] The effect on the current location of Dalaran is unknown.

The crawdads are great but the last few months they've been massively overfished on my server, and since I already got three Mr.Pinchy's, I've moved on to Nagrand since it's almost always empty and the pools spawn more frequently. The only thing unique to the crawdad pools are the crawdads themselves. The vendorfish drop out of any outland pool. A few weeks ago I got three of them out of one pool!

Basically in Nagrand there's a large lake right above the Horde stronghold. Around this lake spawn about 15 different pools of bluefish or mudfish. Either of these I sell for 20g per stack cooked and I usually get four stacks an hour in total. On top of that, as long as you are continually fishing the pools they will eventually turn into pure water pools, each of which will give you 3-5 motes of water.
The rivers on the other side of the Horde town leading away from the lake also have pools. Once you get a flying mount you can also fly north of the lake up onto the elemental plateau. It's a place that has small areas filled with various types of elementals, all of which drop the appropriate motes for their type at about a 48% drop rate. This area is farmed 100% of the time by gold farmers, and my main is a prot warrior, so I've never bothered with killing the elementals much. The main reason I go up there is there are 6 pools of pure water that spawn something like every forty-five minutes. No one else fishes them and when they are all up it usually means I get 2 or 3 primal waters (60-75g) in 10 minutes.

Usually when I decide to go fishing for a few hours I'll fly up to the elemental plateau first, check for pure water spawns, fish those all out, fly back down to the lake, grab any pure water spawns that are there then fish every other pool. Once that's all done I fly down the rivers, fishing all the pools as I go. A full circuit takes maybe forty five minutes total, and by the time I'm done on the river the pools in the elemental plateau have spawned or respawned and some of the pools on the lake will have turned into pure water. Other than sitting at the AH for hours buying greens and de'ing them endlessly, there's no easier way to make gold in WoW IMO.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I enjoy playing the market in MMORPG's as much as the game itself. This thread got me nostalgic.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

I miss WoW.. =(

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

A quick guide to making gold on WoW's AH:

First, like all things, to make money you must need to spend money. So you need a capital. I would start with ~1k gold (you can do 500 but you will make less).

While it is true that you can no longer send items to a "mule" to DE them, don't worry about it that much. There are plenty of enchanters that are willing to DE your items at a small fee. Also another point is, if you play on a heavily populated server, enchant materials are plentiful and cheap.

The new green items DE into two things: Arcane dust and Planar essence (sometimes lesser planar and sometimes greater planar (3x lesser = 1x greater)). Arcane dust usually sells around 1.5-2g (server may very). The only bad thing about this is that since there is so much arcane dust going around, it might be hard to unload for this price. Greater planar essence usually sell around for 4-5g (again server may very). These are always needed and usually are only found in DE'ed weapons, so there are less of these than arcane dust.

The blues DE into 2 different things based on the level on the blue. 60-64 level blues DE into small prismatic shards and 65-70 level blues DE into large prismatic shards. Again, 3 small prismatic shards = 1 large prismatic shard. These fluctuate wildly in value depending on how many there are on the AH. I have bought SPS for 4g and sold for 7-8g (and with no AH cost to put up, a nice profit). Avg price for SPS is usually 6g. LPS are plentiful since they are what you get whenever you DE a lvl 70 blue, and if you remember running instances with enchanters, they are free to shard them for you. Like SPS, LPS fluctuate in price widly as well depending on how many there are in AH. I have seen swings from 15-25g. This would be your #1 moneymaker in my opinion.

Another thing that sells really well with low auction house fees are primals. There are 6 of these primal. Primal Air, Primal Earth, Primal Fire, Primal Mana, Primal Life, Primal Shadow, and Primal Water. They are made from 10 motes of the primal that drop off mobs.

It's worth noting that Primal Earth is basically worthless to buy/sell since they are plentiful because a miner basically has half a primal whenever he mines a node.

Primal Shadow used to be worth nothing at all, since they dropped off demons, and if you ever leveled to 70, you'd know there a ton of demons in Outland. When I leveled to 70, I got 11 of these things in the process and all I was doing was quests. But times have changed. A few months ago, blizzard implemented a patch saying that mote of shadows will no longer drop off demons. That means they only drop off voidwalkers. So because of this, supply/demand when into stock and a 40silver item became a 15gold item. Also it's worth to note how progressed your server is, because guilds in black temple will need a lot of Primal Shadows because they need to have 25 people with ~300 Shadow resist gear for Mother Shiraz fight and you need a lot of primal shadows for the gear.

Primal life will go for a little less than the other primals since herbalism can get them off mobs/nodes, but since it's used in so many healing enchants it's needed by a lot of healers. These can go anywhere from 8-13g.

Primal water goes for around 15-18g. Needed by warlocks/shadow priests for Frozen Shadowweave gear. Also needed for many enchants.

Primal mana go for around 12-15g. Used in spell damage enchants.

Primal fire go for anywhere from 15-25g, needed in the Spellfire set for mages/destrolocks.

Primal Air will be the most expensive primal. They go from 20-25g (sometimes even 30). The reason is that the mobs they drop from are sparse and heavily farmed.

Primals have an 24silver to put up on AH for 24 hours..

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Here's what I've learned in my short time trading on the AH. Just a warning, I've only been doing this for the last week or two, but I've probably spent as much time trading as I did grinding. Also, I'm including trading in the trade channel along with trading on the AH. It's all the same to me.

First of all, get the add-on Auctioneer. Learn how to use it. Also, you can use Allakhazam.com and look up median AH prices on that site. Between those two tools, you should be able to get a good feel for what an item is worth. Auctioneer has a built in tool to scan for auctions below the market value. Of course, you don't want to just scan and then buy every item on the list. You need to eyeball the options and make good picks.

I try to pay attention to the trade volume of different items. This will determine how easily you are able to unload items after you buy them. It's just not worth it if you pick up an item for 1g but it takes you a week of "WTS xyz item" to unload it for 5g. I will categorize things below.

Green weapons/armor (tradability: low)
I personally think these are terrible. (These can be good to disenchant if you can get them low, but I'm just talking about straight trading here.) If you post them on the AH, it's so unlikely that someone is going to be looking for your specific item, so that basically means you have to sell it in the trade channel. I personally think this is a huge pain and I don't deal with these. Tried a few times, got stuck with [censored] items.

Blue weapons/armor (tradability: medium)
These are a little better, but you need to have some idea of which ones are good/bad. As an example, casters use cloth, so stats like intellect, and to a lesser degree spirit and stamina, are useful. I haven't played any of the fighting classes so I don't have that great idea of what amount of which stats are good. In general, I try to avoid these unless I can get an amazing deal, like < 25% market price, or if I know it's a high demand blue.

Purple weapons/armor (tradability: high)
These are the easiest to trade out of these 3. People want epics, and it's so much more likely that someone will do a scan of the AH for new purple gear, than blue, and moreso for blue than green.

Green recipes/books (tradability: low)
Don't bother.

Blue recipes/books (tradability: medium)
Some of the recipes are really high in demand (ie. fiery enchant, mongoose). I find that recipes < blue are not worthwhile, and even a lot of the blues are crap. The prices for the books (to teach spells) seem to fluctuate a lot and I've found that sometimes I can pick up something like Book: Gift of the Wild for 1g. But then it ends up taking me awhile to unload it, because 24h in the AH isn't always long enough, even if I'm listing it at 75% market price.

Purple recipes (tradability: low)
I've had a couple experiences with buying epic recipes for 500g that were supposedly worth 600-700g. My theory is that these are pretty rare, so if someone wants what you're selling, it's not going to matter to a rich 70 if it's 600g or 650g. You might not want to jump into these right away, as you'll find you can be stuck with them sometime. And it's hard to get a good estimate on the price. If you make one bad buy on a recipe that Allakhazam lists as 600g but it turns out you're server values it at 400g, you could be out a good amount of gold in the process, wiping all of your small 5-10g trades.

Goods used in crafting (tradability: high)
These include ore, cloth, dusts, essences, etc. In general, I'm not searching these for deals too much. It should be obvious that items with higher trade volume also tend to be more efficiently priced. I think if you get into this stuff, you'll find yourself nickel and diming for 1-2g at a time.

Cards (tradability: varies)
If you're going to buy/sell the cards (you know, the furies, blessings, warlords, etc cards), make sure you know which ones are good. I picked up the 2/3/4 of warlords (3 of each) at ~1g each, and I found myself having trouble unloading them for even a low price. On the other hand, the blessings cards are really in demand. I think these can be worthwhile if you're smart about it.

There are other items too, but I'm getting too lazy to list them all out. Basically, I look at the tradability of items. The higher it is, the lower profit margin I need to make it worth my time. If I see someone selling a stack of arcane dust for 12g, and I know I can immediately turn around and sell it on AH for 15g and it will be bought, then sure, I'll do it. On the other hand, if I can buy a lower traded item for 12g and eventually sell it for 15g after WTSing in the trade channel everyday for a week, forget it. You should look at your profit margins in nominal values rather than relative values. Making 50g on 200g purchase is obviously better than making 2g on a 2s purchase.

Items that you know people will search for, like dusts, ores, etc. Basically the high volume items. It's better to list these in AH. Much simpler on your part and you can dedicate your time elsewhere. Items with low trade volume should be sold in the trade channel.

Also, understand the idea of undercutting. Sorry, it's just a stupid joke I'll make because the kids who play WoW are sometimes way too young and stupid to understand the idea of basic supply and demand. I see people do this all the time: "Undercutting prices blah blah blah" and then I go take a look and I see 10 singles of item xyz for 10g and that guy's 5x stack for 60g. I was initially skeptical that an MMO which has been around for awhile would have such an inefficient market, but I was proven wrong very quickly after spending some time in the AH. In general, if I buy an item for 10g and I can sell it immediately for 17g or spend some time and squeeze 20g out of it, I will take the first option. You only have so much time/chat resources to spread among trading your different items, that instead of focusing on an extra 3g for this one, you could be focusing on acquiring a new item for 7g.

I'll post more if I think of anything, but I'm hoping that someone else will contribute their little tips/tricks that they've picked up during their playtime.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Great tips in here. Where do you guys get auctioneer from?

I have always been intrigued by the AH or equivalant in all MMORPGS (dating back to the bazaar in the original EQ) and often find this aspect of the game much more enjoyable than the actual adventuring itself.

I paid for pretty much everything i needed (mounts, gear, etc...) in wow by changing greater nether essences into 3 lesser essences and reselling those at a higher rate. I also did the same with greter eternal essences but not to the same degree. I'm sure there are other items where the same could be done.

The biggest downside to this is that you can only list items for 24 hours at a time, and it can get really annoying/boring/repetitive listing and relisting auctions every single day, especially when you have a ton of items/stacks of stuff to sell.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

[ QUOTE ]
Green weapons/armor (tradability: low)
I personally think these are terrible. (These can be good to disenchant if you can get them low, but I'm just talking about straight trading here.) If you post them on the AH, it's so unlikely that someone is going to be looking for your specific item, so that basically means you have to sell it in the trade channel. I personally think this is a huge pain and I don't deal with these. Tried a few times, got stuck with [censored] items.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your post was pretty good but you are way off base on this point. The right greens can be pretty good. You just have to know who wants what. I've made some good coin off of greens.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

Also wanted to add, although it is fairly time consuming, there are a ton of vendor sold items in the game that can be sold for a profit on the AH.

One example is the expert cookbook. If you have the waypoint set up, you can fly to wherever it is (can't remember the city it has been ahwile) buy a ton of expert cookbooks for around 1 gold each, go back the AH and sell them for 2-3 gold each. People are willing to pay a couple extra gold to save 15 minutes of game time flying out there and back. This is just one example, that is no longer that profitable, mainly because 1 gold just isn't worth that much anymore.

there are also lots of limited items on vendors, such as either the blue or green dragonscale breastplate that is sold in that swamp zone where there is tons of blindweed (again I can't remember the exact zone name but it might be nagard or have a city named nagard there). This can be bought for like 1 gold and sold for around 10 gold, but it is not always available on the vendor (limited supply). There are lots of items like this that can be sold for a nice profit, but again is very time consuming, as you could waste a lot of time travelling out there just to find out the vendor does not have any available.

Re: Playing the Wow auction house
 

http://auctioneeraddon.com/

Actually, to add to the point about vendor items being sold on AH, there's the Darkmoon Faire going on right now, and two of the vendors sell items ranging between 16s-40s that sell on AH for 2g-50g. There are some gems like Star of Elune and herbs like Black Lotus. I have the feeling that the prices will fall over the next week because of the higher supply, but they will go back up over the faire is gone. I mean if the price for a Star of Elune was previously 45g, it means it went up after the last faire.

Here's a list of items that are worth buying from the Darkmoon Faire:
- Star of Elune
- Noble Topaz
- Nightseye
- Talasite (only so-so)
- Dawnstone
- Living Ruby?
- Black Lotus
- Fel Lotus
- Mote of Mana
- Mote of Life
- Mote of Fire
- Mote of Water
- Mote of Wind
- Mote of Earth (only so-so)