Clearing out the trash, then largely AFK for a week

Happy Winter's Veil. 

Having been excessively eloquent in the last week (or maybe not), I have not quite disappeared.

I have joined another guild; not being on enough during the week to keep people interested meant loosing members; those interested enough to group regularly went elsewhere, and several on the casual end took extended /AFK time.

The new guild had a lot of unused stuff in the guild bank, yet wanted to splurge on new gear.  I (and my blog) was known to the guild leader, and now he has far less 'junk' with fallling value, and far more gold; even after buying some shinies.  Currently here is very little point in holding onto most mats (with the possible exception of epic gem transmute mats, or maybe snowfall ink for inscription research - if we ever do get all glyphs taught by daily 'northrend' research)

Deathwing is 'dead' on LFR (not that it was particularly challenging); I tried on a Monday, and there was sooo much healing required; with the raid leader trying to kick anyone doing less than 40k DPS; I gave up.  Immediately after reset, I tried again, got a very smooth run (0 wipes on both LFR raids; bored healing spine); with only moderate DPS in the group.

I will be largely /AFK over the next week; I might have sufficient internet connectivity to post auctions, but might not;  The glyph market won't miss me; Both Horde and Alliance scribes are following  'drive em off' approach; and I have been having way to much fun (and profit) with gems to notice or care.  I have been purchasing 'cheap' pyrite ore and prospecting the life out of it.  Pity about the flood of Zephyrite.  I am of two minds; either to cut and vendor, or take the very very long view; and sell for levelling cuts come Mists of Pandaria.  Uncut Northrend basic gems are selling quite well at the moment.  I don't need the immediate cash, and I have more than enough guild bank space.

Anyway; I'll have a bit of fun in first life over the next week; and come the new year concentrate on getting that blessed Ragnaros kill.

Multi toon ID done better

I sometimes spend as much time on various AH toons as I do on my played toons, many of them have their own guilds for the banks. 

I run an addon syncfriends to allow me to contact (or track) players regardless of what toon I am on; though it does not work cross faction.  I also lurk in vent; those that know me can find me there.

I have never used real id; nor will I.  Those that know me in game; know me as Foo, not some other first life name.  My toon names all contain foo; so does my vent ID.

So, I was very pleased to read about battle tag's.  I have already signed up even though it won't be in WoW for a while.  No prizes for guessing my tag's name.

Ways to co-operate on the AH

This post is part of a series on the WoW AH prisoner's dilema.

Today I'm talking about the co-operative sellor.When it works, you can make a fortune.  Some of the items below would be of questionable legatilty in many western countries.  Today, we are fleecing the buyers instead of other sellers.


In my last post on this I talked about defecting in different ways.

• Undercutting (even by one copper), with special 'jerk' status applied to:
• Camping the AH, immediately undercutting new auctions
• Deep undercutting, pricing below thresholds.
• Posting with long durations

We know that defecting sends sales your way; but also encourages others to either defect or, if markets get too tight, to simply bail.  Others bailing is good for you (increased sales per sellor); others defecting again in turn is bad for you.  On our AH; buy co-operating; we are raising the prices, and potentially encouraging others to co-operate as well.

Seperate the market you are selling to.  This can be seperated by time (I post in the morning; you post in the evening), or by product (I'll sell glyphs for the first 5 classes; you sell the rest).  Time seperation is easiest to organise.  Just don't post immedieately after them.

High thresholds and fallbacks are also nice.  More money to whoever makes the sale.

Sometimes we will organise to 'whitelist' individuals that you are not going to compete with.  In tradeskillmasters, you can explicitly mark players that you will match prices with.  However, there is no need to undercut at all.  You have all been in the first life shop that 'price matches' the competition.

I also post 12 hour auctions in busy markets; knowingly letting AH postings expire.  This allows both others doing the same thing, and the cancel/undercutters to raise prices, so when you come back, there should be much higher sales prices.

Drying up supply mid Jan 2012?

Altolycus has a post about ... those tireless suppliers of mats, and Blizzard reaching an agreement with those that assist them. I am also going to assume that Blizzard are serious about stopping those that are truly tireless; and the jury is out on this one.

Now, if this works, we will see higher prices on the AH.  I will start to stockpile mats against a mid-January 'famine' - but not a huge stockpile.

I have a different scenario for you.   Lets pretend there is a persistent competitor on the AH.  He continuously undercuts you, and is a pain.  You offer a bundle of gold for him to stop competing; and he accepts it.  Oh look; those toons no longer post auctions, but all of a sudden a new set of level 1 toons start posting auctions with exactly the same posting patterns.  Didn't that agreement work out for you? 

I expect that after a brief pause, tireless farmers will continue to be tireless, even when their support network is removed.  I also expect that a renamed (or possibly even new) support network will step in.

I don't support automation.  Well apart from addons like TradeSkillMaster and Auctioneer for the AH; and Deadly Boss Mods/Ensindia Fails/Player Score; because they are 'legal'.  And those that sell my mats on the AH.

[(mostly) sarcasm] Tireless playing is bad when the others have it; and I don't. [/(mostly) sarcasm]

Most players don't like tireless automatons (or even players) that compete with them; but love those that supply to them.  Personally I get annoyed when I am swiped within 1/10 second on the neutral AH.  I am annoyed by campers continuously undercutting me on the AH (both tireless playing and live players).  Secretly I love players regularly putting up pyrite ore; whiptail; etc on the AH.  Broke players are already complaining about 250g cut inferno rubies yet will not mine their own; without tireless farmers; this would easily be doubled in price; and would result in more players mining.

I do have some cheese to go with my whine. 

Currently we have the ability to 'vote to kick' from a random group.  We can report for spam out of trade chat.  Blizzard also has community volunteers that help with the official forums.  Sites like slashdot use community moderation in some form or another.

Start with something easy - like the gold selling networks.

Give those players that already have moderator status on the forums the option to have moderator status 'in game.'

Track those players currently using 'report for spam'.  Blizzard already has these stats.  Give those that have a high true positive / low false positive record a moderator status as well.  When 3 (1? 10?) moderators 'report for spam', then the account holder is warned first.  The second (or third?) time it occurs, the account holder is suspended for 24 hours; with right of appeal to either a fresh set of moderators (from another realm), or even Blizzard.


Extend this to reporting especially tireless toons - with guidelines for how to determine whether toons are inappropriately tireless. When reporting tireless toons, evidence (screenshots, dates, times) would be required; and reviewed by a moderator from another realm.  Again, first offence is a warning; second (third?) offences result in a suspension.

Again, there would be an appeal mechanism.  Successful appeals would 'mark down' the reporting moderator; unsuccessful appeals would 'mark up' the reporter.

The advantage of such an approach is that it would be quick; and give an (in game) financial incentive for competitors to report each other.

The disadvantages are that: it is extra work; would be abused by competitors; and would result in false suspensions.


The market would be a very different place without the tireless players.  Some players would adapt; some wont.


ps.  There are times I go out of my way to avoid terms or names.  This post was especially difficult to write while not using a certain term.

I sure hope it gets harder than this

I enjoyed the start of cataclysm as a healer.  Dungeons became hard, and a correct quick decision meant that the group might be upright, but an incorrect decision meant a wipe.

I like wipes.  It means that I am attempting difficult content, stretching myself.

It's week 1 of patch 4.3, and I am already concerned about the patch's longevity.

I have completed the three new dungeons.  I have completed, first evening I looked one of the LFR wings.  The biggest problem I had completing the dungeons was that I ended up having to manually choose the last one as I couldn't get it entirely randomly.

Now, I do not consider myself the first of the progression raiders.  This week was the first time ever that I capped valor points. My holy priest is geared in 378 for everything but trinkets.  I will be queuing up for random dungeons to get a 378 trinket from the well of eternity, but after that?  I'll help others out, but won't be seeking opportunities to re-run tthe 'new' 5 man dungeons. 

My PC groans under the weight of 25 man raids.  The LFR raids don't seem to have a high healing requirement, and topping the healing chart's on Yor'sahj was good for my ego.  I will either have to upgrade my PC or find some settings to trim. I prefer my screen refreshes to be 30+ frames per second; so sitting at a single frame per global cooldown isn't ideal.  I will either find something to turn off; find a better PC, or treat incredibly low framerates as my special hard mode.

Many (other) players are looking at the new 5 mans and LFR and revelling in their shortness and ease.  I am happy to see the same fight from different perspectives; Tank; Healer; DPS.  But I didn't enjoy bashing out "heroics" in Northrend.  I am not likely to start now.

Here's to hoping that 10 man raids are tuned harder.

Nothing to see here, move along

We know that there is a datamined epic gem transmute recipee : Transmute Queen's Garnet, but do not know where it drops.

So, today, I tried the usual suspects.

• Profession trainer
• Profession supplies
• Research
• AH (Recipee - Alchemy - tick usable items)
• Ackis Recipee list (addon at curse)
• Crafterstome recipee list
• Look up the item on wowhead or similar
• And of course a google search

So, no luck today - at least for my Queens Garnet.  However, it is still worth cycling through professions doing the above items.


Who knows, maybe you'll find a recipee you overlooked; maybe even a new glyph.

Patch for auctioneer

Auctioneer patch available.  From  the auctioneer website:


WoW 4.3

Nechckn - 2011-11-30 19:08:35:

Auctioneeros,

Since folks are missing the posts we have been making on our/curse/wowi forums, just wanted to put up a note that, yes, a working version of the entire Suite will be up as soon as we are able to finish with some coding tidbits and testing.

We are making strides to getting things up to speed with the lovely changes Blizzard made between what was on the PTR and what went live. We had a tiny bit of time to get some things fixed, but when the patch went live, there were some really big changes affecting the AH.

The Beta/Preview, 5.13, from http://AuctioneerAddOn.Com/dl/#preview , has the current changes included, so be sure to check that one out - it should scan and all, but there may be issues, yet, remaining. Please be patient.
*Be sure to read and follow http://Wiki.Norganna.Org/Installing to help ensure you have the old cruft cleared out, too.

Happy Sales,

Nikk B-) 

I don't normally copy/paste some one else's post. (You can get into 'big trouble' for it).  However, by doing it today I splash it accross the undermine journal.

In first life I am involved with systems development.  Last minute changes outside of your control really can cause confusion and chaos.  Thanks to the Auctioneer team for making these fixes.

Please note: While the Beta is likely to work better than the previous installed version, In Nikk's words "There may be issues yet remaining.  Please be patient.".  Auctioneer is a volunteer based addon; though it does take sponsorship.  If you want more from your addons (this and many others); get involved in their creation and support.  This can be done by volunteering to help with coding; with testing alpha/beta releases; with documentation or in many cases by donations of real life gold.