I had been unconcerned about the risks of someone swiping you on the neutral AH. I have shifted 10's of thousands of gold, and have never been swiped. Untill now.
My setup was : on the same computer, dual boxing (my son has his WoW account again - at least for now). My selling toon in gadgetzahan, my buying toon in booty bay.
My buying toon had the AH window up, with the search for inferno ready to go, auctioneer buyout key ready to go.
My selling toon had the inferno inks - selling two partial stacks of inferno ink for a copper each, and pressed the sell.
I immediatly hit the search button on the buying toon, and attempted to fast buy.
There was another toon standing next to me in booty bay.
Yup. Well played. My inks were bought. I will be more careful.
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Arizona Chess
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[image: Sometimes, you have to sacrifice pieces to gain the advantage.
Sometimes, to advance ... you have to fall back.]
1 day ago
I burned my fingers on this as well. I was very pissed and angry back then. By now I know I should have been more careful and another thing struck my mind when I saw that sniper sitting there all day...
ReplyDeleteEven if he grabs some nice stuff, it will be couple hundred maybe thousand gold before you realize and stop putting item up. Afterwards you will check every time before you transfer things, will have his toon on friendslist and it most likely will never happen again.
Fell good knowing that that guy has the worst gold-to-hour-ratio possible in game ;)
Ouch! Did you whisper him or anything? I'd want to at least make sure that he wasn't a bot.
ReplyDeleteI had this happen this weekend. I hope the buyer chokes on what he bought. But I felt a little better after reading the above poster's comments about the worst gold to hour ratio. ;)
ReplyDeleteSo... not enough info
ReplyDeletehow did he know what you posted and when you actually post so to beat you to it?
One other suggestion, I always post a trial auction using an older epic gem. Since it's epic it usually will trigger a bot waiting to snipe.
ReplyDeletei was reading somewhere, you can put up like cheap mats on ah, like 100-200 of them right before you put your item you want to transfer on neutral. Somehow it should flood the AH refresh list, so when "swiper" searches the current auctions then he'll not have a chance to see yours until a couple of pages later. Make sure to post in stacks of 1 :-)
ReplyDeleteGuys safer would be to have a cash buffer (large) that you use to move the goods with, sell at an inflated price, one no one would buy for. Then simply return the money with an auction for a piece of gray gear in the reverse direction to move the money back. If an idiot snipes you, he's overpaid, and you've made ridiculous money.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's safe.
The problem with the cash buffer strategy is the neutral AH cut. If you're moving anything of significant value, you'll lose about 28% of the money you move (-15% each way). For current-tier BoE's, that amounts to thousands of gold on some servers.
ReplyDeleteIt even happens to me on occassion.
ReplyDeleteI usually post precious goods at substantial values to avoid being sniped. I just consider it a delivery insurance charge.
But I get lazy and cheap once in a while. Someone snagged 1 of 3 epic BoE's I was transferring a couple weeks ago.
Even though I was fuming, I counted to 10 and wrote a civilized letter asking if they would accept a ransom in place of the item they sniped.
We negotiated back and forth and settled on a tolerable exchange. And then I kept him talking.
It turns out that not only had we been in the same guild a year prior, but also that I had cut gems for him and loaned him money for his flying mount.
I suspect he was feeling kind of scummy by this time, since he tried to insist on returning the ransom. I refused it. It was worth a few thousand gold to make a sniper feel that bad.
Gevlon posted about how it is possible to post 100's or 1000's of cheap vendor items (water skins, flour etc), to flood the market, slowing up the AH scan. I would prefer to ensure that no one is sitting on the AH.
ReplyDeleteI will not post at market prices when transfering via the neutral AH - the 15% cut is not worth it (that said, for initial seed cash - your 'off faction' toon selling cheap vendor trash for 100g, bought from your main faction banking toon gives you 85g to play with - more than enough for a few AH deposits.
To the anonymous immediatly after bangkok bill - there is only one way I know that someone could search for, identify and buyout an auction in less than a second, and that is with automation.
If I was to be generous, it would be possible for someone to write an addon that continuously scans the AH (possibly for a list of a few items), and then presents the user with a click button to purchase the auction.
If I was not being generous, it would be possible for someone to have an auto click program to fully automate the process. However, I am sure that no-one would breach the terms of service by writing a bot.
There's a scumsucking program using the remote auction house to swipe stuff now too. Damn near instantly buying anything you try and transfer this way and they don't even have to worry about being seen in the neutral ah locations.
ReplyDeleteNow a question comes to mind with this... what triggers that or those programs? Is it basically the 1c or very close to it price or is it actually evaluating the item vs the posted price? aka, I've sent Ol' Smokys, Pet Bomblings, large packs of Mysterious Fortune Cards and other semi-valuable items (none of them epics) at 5g... We haven't been sniped yet (my fiance is on the ohter computer with a countdown... or up in our case... I post on 3, she hits search and buys on 4...
ReplyDeleteConsidering that it could be botted and now possibly using the remote AH as well, I'll probably start with test posts each time just to be safer.