The reason I love the Auction House
Sonny was saying in the comments of my post The floor writers are back in town:
Sunwell dailies are awesome!!! I used to grind the Auction too, and had other money-making tricks, but when I hit 70 I learned to ask “Is this faster than Sunwell dailies?” And the answer is always no.
And you don’t get rep from grinding the AH.
And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.
Zupa responded with a couple of bits I will grab:
re: AH vs dailies. my gold / hour from playing the AH is very hard to measure, but it is very easy, doesn’t require me to pay more than 10% attention to what I’m doing, and has proved to be a very reliable source of income.
and
Of course the daily’s are there when you need quick cash, but once a successful AH strategy is in place, you don’t need quick cash
It’s nice being able to afford the ridiculous amounts of food, flasks, potions, repairs and bloody respecs I seem to go through these days.
So I guess I can go a bit further into my reasons why I prefer the AH to Grinding (Dailies, Mobs, Gathering).
Time is an issue for me, I generally only get one block of real contiguous time per week (4-6 hours), which is on a Friday night, and when I log in my mates are waiting for me to start the raid. Therefore I need a time-flexible money gaining strategy. So on the basis of time-flexibility:
Time – As much or as little as I want
- 10 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan (/aadv getall) and Repost (Post All)
- 30 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan, Detailed Repost (reviewing past results and adjusting prices) and Partial Bottom Scan
- 60 min – Mail check, GetAll Scan, Detailed Repost (reviewing past results and adjusting prices) and Full Bottom Scan. mail Disenchanting Items to my Disenchanter, Disenchant & return for sale, Post.
Time – non-Contiguous
I can go and do things (I am often washing dishes, ironing, making lunches etc in the morning) while Bottom Scanner ticks over and alerts me to a bargain.
Zupa talks about a successful strategy:
once a successful AH strategy is in place, you don’t need quick cash
This is a big one for me. I have hit the AH sporadically over the years – when I needed something. Which meant that the AH became a grind the same as any other. What I have learnt now, is to do it regularly (but not obsessively or “panicky”) to build up a nice base to work from. When you have 10g left and you want 5,000 for an Epic Flyer right now, is not the time to start working over the Auction House.
So having a nice base to work from allows me to:
- If something comes up on the AH (recipe, turtle etc) – I can grab it.
- If I run out of Mats – I can buy them
- If a mate needs a loan – I can fund it
- If I want to build my cash levels higher, I can bid without dear of going bankrupt.
- If I want to play the game, without concern for bank balance, I can.
- If I want to do daily’s for Rep, then I can, without worrying about the cash element.
Reputation
they dont give rep when you hit exalted anyway
Another point by Zupa. They don’t give rep past exalted, they just become another form of gathering. To be honest I would rather put my energy into Old World reputation (I don’t know why), so it is nice knowing I can bunk off an do something “totally irrelevant” yet still have cash coming in.
Speaking of which, the other good thing about farming the AH, is I am fundamentally farming cash 24 hours per day. I don’t have to be in WoW, focusing on little dots on the minimap. The Auctioneer is handling all my selling needs.
Mailbox summaries like this:
Finally, a few screenshots of the summary of my sales over a 36 hour period.
2061 gold (gross) for maybe 1.5 hours playtime (more or less). I expect that is around 600g-1000g nett. All of which while I was AFK.
I think the best haul from the Mailbox I have had was
Auction successful
- 53 mails (So one whole mailbox opening + 1st 3 items of the mailbox refresh)
Gold in the Mail
- 3,500g (From memory, and it was probably more for the day, this would have just been the single mailbox opening)
Not for everyone
Of course I appreciate that the AH isn’t for everyone and even those that do work the AH do it by degrees, so I am not suggesting that people should go out and dump their existing gold into Greens and hope they turn a profit. (Just as I wouldn’t suggest you take your life savings, throw it on the stock market at stop work today). Do what works for you!
And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.
Finally as Sonny says
And Magister’s Terrace is a PAIN to group for times a million.
Gnomer and Out!
I’ve never found a way to successfully play the AH. I’m a little dense and probably just too flighty to sit there and find deals I guess. Dailies for me are the mindless money grind I can do while watching tv.
I have a question if you have the time. How does AH actually work. I get the fact that it scans the AH and lets you know what is selling for what. Is this something that gets better over time? IE. the more scans the better the base data is? I find my self strapped for money more often than not because my main tends to fund my ALTs. Do you have any sugestions on what to look for and what a good buy would be? I am not on your server so no worries there. Thank you for your time in advance.
I guess there is no real short answer to that question, and as usual when you go to the expert forums (ie: Auctioneer addon), you are faced with hundreds of threads, some of which are hundreds of posts long, and generally have 1/2 dozen gem posts.
I am tempted to do more on AA (at least) as well as general strategy, but I am waiting until Auctioneer stabilizes (which wont be that far off) and they get their wiki sorted.
The wiki will probably answer 70%+ of the general questions, basically the mechanics of it – and the rest will come down to experience, random blog tips and the epic threads.
Shortest answer I can give.
- You want to get a base scan set in, maybe 1/2 dozen scans over a week (quick and easy method using AA is /aadv getall) This will be around 5 minutes while AA dumps the whole AH into it’s database.
- Pick some stuff you have a good idea about (say gathered mats if you are a gatherer), and watch for bargains.
If you have an enchanter, then DE mats are an easy way of building a regular income stream.
- Stay away from armor and weapons until you have a better idea
Basically play it safe until you have some funds you can afford to loose, and you are feeling more comfortable.
It wouldn’t matter if you were on my server anyway, because everyone has different comfort levels, and “specialties” – those things you are most confident about. Sure occasionally you will buy across different products, but only when you know it’s a sure thing.
Also people operate on different scan times – some in the morning, some during the day, some after work, some late at night. There are lots of pickings out there for everyone. I see a lot of familiar names, often selling things at prices I am prepared to pick up for resale – so it all comes down to each player and the % they want vs. the risk they are prepared to take.
Meanwhile check out a few of these:
Auctioneering references I like & use
I was looking for a specific thread at AA, but I can’t find it right now.. anyway, I will see what else I can come up with.
Og’s Ledger (in my post above) is old, refers to the old, soon to be defunct Auctioneer Classic, but the principles are all still valid.