The theme - as it often is - is glyphs. Breevok has brought to light his understanding of what happened. This post is in response to Breevok's.
I have some recollections of the conversations of the day, biased by selective memory (as happens). Blogs are great, as they form a written record. Re-reading old posts, there are days I come across assertively.
Looking at some of old posts
- In August 2010, I was worried about a 1 copper undercutter, and another purchaser/relister.
- In September 2010, I was driving out competition, and Breevok was fighting for scraps
- In October, we were concerned about the transition to patch 4.0
- In November, I welcomed Moonvengence My in game conversations were of a similar vein. This market was hard
- December found me trying to sell only the highest selling glyphs and I didn't sell much until I lowered prices again
- January was simply great
Breevok post talked about me irritating someone, about fun in an untapped market, yet his own blog posts were about fighting over scraps.
Sometimes I irritate people. Some people I irritate all the time. This is unfortunate, but I suspect that the same can be said of anyone. When I contacted Moonvengence, I had 3 goals : Find out how serious he was going to be, invite him to contribute to the online discussion, and let him know that our market was crowded. What I found out was that he was more serious than he let on (and with the wall of glyphs he was already serious), and he became a competitor that drove most others out. At the risk of adding further insult, I prefered the market after Moonvengence entered.
My pricing strategy is generally set after a week or so of thinking. If I can't keep up with sales, raise prices. Too few sales and I drop prices and/or post more regularly.
It is easy to see what toons I post glyphs with. Scan the AH for a seller with the name containing Foo. Foobarfoo, Foosglypha, Foosglyphb sell my glyphs. There is roughly one Foo toon that is not me.
Today, my biggest concerns are that the prices are high enough, and we are selling out enough to encourage a new (or even old) determined scribe. Since release 4.0 , with the possible exception of a 4 day window in December I have not been bothered by any player. I had to work a little harder for sales in late December, but as I was on leave (and had a second account to play with), this was not a problem.
At the significant risk of adding new competition (or even inspiring old competition), I would suggest that inscription is currently the most profitable tradeskill, whether you mill inks (of any variety), craft and sell glyphs, or make darkmoon cards. If you want to mill inks on a fee for service basis, please let me know ingame or via a comment here.
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Interesting read. Reminds me of a Faulkner novel--same story, different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteIn-game communication between AH sellers is somewhat rare and seldom remains civil in my experience. If yours did that would be the exception as far as I can tell.
Whether civil or not, the risk of creating an unnecessary 'trade war' outweighs any benefit of private tells or in game mail IMO. I would react very badly to someone telling me to leave a market. In the end they may be able to push me out but there would be two major results: first, I would make it as painful as possible; and second, I would never forget--redoubling efforts to later attack them in another way.
And I'm sure that if I pushed them out, the result would be the same back at me--retribution later, unnecessary grief.
I believe the marketplace is big enough to allow many players to profit. The nature of this game is that no secret is kept very long. There are too many resources out there like this blog and others who make it their solemn duty to expose and discuss every new gold making idea. Players are too crafty to allow any strategy to remain pristine over time.
I'm not disparaging your blog or the gold making blog community. I read many blogs every day, always looking for that new strategy that will give me some quick cash. That said, if the glyph market is the best gold making niche in the game right now then others are naturally going to gravitate to it. Any goblin in that market would expect to see more activity from new players.
My strategy would be something other than a duel in /wsp or mail. Not knowing exactly what happened I cannot say whether your strategy would have been my preferred method but if it involved trying to intimidate someone to leave, I can say I would have done something else.
There are many markets that I have entered, exploited and then left when they stopped being as profitable as I'd like. I have seldom abandoned them entirely but instead have returned later, usually in a different manner.
In the end it seems you and your competition have all found ways to make gold. I submit that the same result would have been reached without the drama. In fact, the profits for all may have been greater.
We may differ philosophically but I do enjoy reading your blog and find this discussion interesting. Different approaches aside, we share the same goal of playing the AH as an integral part of the game.
Doesnt surprise me at all. I have always sold on alts never on my main. The fortune card items were one that many people hated and would spam sellers that they were scamming people. One of my guildmates finally listened to me and stopped posting on his main.
ReplyDeleteIts ok foo nexium still likes you :-)
ReplyDeletevery interesting read though mate...hang in there take this moonvengeance down lol