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.

Ways to defect in the AH Prisoners Dilema

This post is part of a series;(TL;DR the collective wins from co-operation but the individual wins from defection)


The urban dictionary has a few definitions for jerk.  In WoW AH parlance, a jerk is someone who prevents you from making sales.  As such, I consider few players AH jerks.  There are many who would consider me one.  There are no care-bears on this page.

The selling jerk is the buyer's favourite nice guy. 


Most customers that buy of the AH don't care if we are cheaper by 1 copper, 1 silver or 100g. However, defecting is a way to get the sale.  There are different ways to defect in the AH.

• 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

Gevlon, love him or hate him, is the pinnacle of the defector; He prefers defection to co-operation.  It is worth reading his industry post talking about random sellers, vs campers, vs monopolists, vs deep undercutters, and their interactions.


When you post an auction, you are capping the price for that item until you are either bought out, or it expires.  Posting a 48 hour auction is a form of defection.


Every time you undercut someone; you defect a little; We all do it.  We want to be the one to sell.


I post daily (or maybe twice per day).  In my 'co-operative stance', I am vulnerable to being undercut.  Every undercut is a 'defection'.  While campers hit my sales (and hence my profits), there is no difference between 1 player 'defecting' 24 times / day, and 24 players 'defecting' once / day; they both 'hurt'.

Deep undercutting is a way for a player to say; stuff it with the nickle and dime stuff; The price is heading down anyway - lets see where it ends up.  If I post under a real market price; I will be bought.  If I post over a market price; I will continue to be undercut.


Before I restarted my deep undercutting, I was selling 1-2 alliance glyphs/day at an average profit of 60g.  I had a princely profit of lets call it 90g/day.  I was also posting then collecting 500 glyphs/day. (call it 15 minutes).

In contrast, once I started deep undercutting, with 48 hour auctions initially at 20g each; currently down to 18g.  I am now selling 10-20 Alliance glyphs/day; with a profit between 5 & 10g each, still for the princely profit of around 90g/day.  Awful income but still better than dailies.  I also only need to post and then collect 50 glyphs per day. (call it 2 minutes)

The majority of scribes have packed up and gone home.  There are still 3 or 4 other posters.  Where there was continuous competition, there is now leisurely posting.  There are now glyphs sitting at 350g every time I login and post, at least until I log in and trash the market again. (I think this means that some of you haven't finished your research yet.)

The 3 or 4 other posters also consider 18g sufficient to stay in the game.  I have a true threshold of lower than that, and I am genuinely curious to find out what their threshold is too.

There is nothing particularly personal about this, though I am taking notes on the names of still active scribes. I also don't think it was any one player dominating the market (unlike other times).


I am the nice guy in Northrend gems.  I am also the nice guy with horde glyphs.  I prefer co-operation, but I am also very well aware that the continuous nice guy ... will have a screwdriver applied.  When I 'feel' the time is right: in a week, a month or maybe next expansion; I will become the nice guy again.

WoW AH's prisoner's dilema - background

This post is part dealing with 4.3 recipees, and in part a response to recent comments.  I am also largely talking supply of product (manufacturers); not demand side (customers).  It is also background reading for later posts.

As technical background reading; it is worth looking at the Prisoner's dilema; taking note that the glyph market is traditionally iterated and multiplayer, with no fixed end. The TL;DR version is that the collective wins from co-operation but the individual wins from defection.


Some players advocate continuous 'defection' (Gevlon, Critical). Some players advocate 'cooperation' (Breevok, Brent #2). I prefer mild co-operation; I make more gold.


For me there are several stages to a market. At the top of the list it is worst for consumers and best for producers.  At the bottom of the list, it is the the other way around.

• Monopoly : Someone is the first to get the new pattern.  Their only boundaries for gold making is raw material and what price the market will pay.  
• Duopoly : A second player will also get the pattern, traditionally more raw material becomes available.  Prices are still very high, but competition starts.
• Multi player co-operative
• Multi player competitive
• Every player competitive. Think vendor taught levelling recipees.

At some stage most patterns decend into 'Every player competitive'; Whether that is literally every player with the vendor compulsory levelling recipee; or whether it is an optional recipee that 20 or 30 end up getting; there is still no gold to be made here. After an expansion when content becomes non-current; unless it is literally vendor taught and required, even these patterns go back up the value chain. 

Multi player competitive: These patterns are gained by enough active players to compete against each other, and they do so.  The harder any individual competes, the greater % of the total sales they get, but the smaller the total value of those sales.  This is great for consumers.

Multi player co-operative.  These patterns are gained by a few players, but there is no-one dominating the market.  Players voluntarily choose a smaller % of total sales, but in turn, the total value of those sales can be mainated much higher.

Duopoly : A couple of players have the pattern; The original player bemoans the entry of the newer player, but has no real choice.  Prices still remain high, but an amount of under cutting almost always happens.  Neither player will particularly want to entirely crash the market as there are still huge profits to be made of a relativly small number of sales.

Monopoly : The only issues you have here are how many can you make; and how to maximise your profits before your monopoly is broken into a Duopoly or worse.  You are considering your demand at different prices (lower prices gets more customers).