Markco, You're an Ass on the Auction House

Markco, You're an Ass on the Auction House

Shattnerhoff said...

"I hate that you try and gouge people for items that cost you nothing to make. How much is enough? You can't even spend the gold you have! The Glyph of Mage Armor is pathetically priced and I would never pay those prices, I'll wait it out. It's one thing to make a profit, it's another thing entirely to hold people hostage and crank up the price so high just to get a few extra gold coins you can't spend anyway. To what purpose? Why do you do that? It's like people who raise gas and water prices during a hurricane, they have gouging laws in the real world. I guess they depend on peoples consciences in game to not screw their fellow gamers, how silly of them. If you sold the glyph for 40 gold you'd be making stupid profits, when you sell it for hundreds or thousands, you're just an ass."

My answer:

This comment on the blog was in response to the Mage Armor 'gouging' I was encouraging auctioneers to participate in with the recently uncraftable Glyph of Mage Armor. I am in no way trying to single out Shattnerhoff in a negative way, but rather I wish to answer his question respectfully and in such a way as to possibly change his opinion on the subject. I'm sure that others feel the same way as he or she does. Supply and demand determine the price of an item. In this case, Glyph of Mage Armor had just as much demand as any of the other major glyphs for other classes after patch 4.0.1 was released. The supply however was very different from every other major glyph in the game: no one could craft this item after 4.0.1 went live. So if anyone had Glyph of Mage Armor in their bags before the patch, they were sitting on a high demand, super low and getting lower supply item. With each Glyph of Mage Armor that sold after the patch, the supply dwindled while demand stayed high. This incredibly rare situation creates an atmosphere which appears to be sinister in nature but it is actually just a response of the market to the actual value of Glyph of Mage Armor. What I did was inform the masses of the actual value of the item itself, I did not tell everyone to go gouge the item and make ridiculous amounts of gold off this glyph. Instead, I told them that the value is far more than the other glyphs, in the range of probably 300-500 gold. If a player chooses to post an item for 1000 gold when it is worth 500 gold then he or she will get undercut by players who know the actual value of the item in question and other players will refuse to buy it. Here's how the pricing should work in a perfect glyph seller's world:

There are just as many mage armor glyphs as any other glyph with the same demand. Mage armor sells for the same price as its brethren.

There are half as many mage armor glyphs as any other glyphwith the same demand. Mage armor sells for double the price of its brethren.

There are athird of as many mage armor glyphs as any other glyph with the same demand. Mage armor sells for three times the price of its brethren.

As you can see, the closer we get to having zero mage armor glyphs, the exponentially more expensive this glyph becomes. What I did was give players the information they needed to understand what this item was worth and how much they should sell it for. This is actually a perfectly fair and honest way to conduct business on the auction house. If prices are insane on your server it's because there just isn't enough competition to bring the price down to a 'fairer' price which is really just your opinion on the matter anyway. Supply and Demand are what determine the price and allow for the gouging you are experiencing. If I had the last glyph of mage armor I'd have it up for 1000 goldwithout a second though. That's not gouging, it's economics.

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