Auctioneer Battle Tactics
All warfare is based on deception. - Sun Tsu
To increase your arsenal of strategies for winning lots of WoW gold in the auction house game, it is time once again to take your thinking out of the proverbial box, and turn the Auctioneer addon on it%26#8217;s head.
In essence this is an old but effective method for fooling BottomScanner into believing a really bad deal is a really good deal. This is a great way to keep the buy-low/sell-high auctioneers on their toes - by cutting off their fingers!!!
These are the elements for setting up this auction house ambush:
- You want to find two or more of an item that either has high value or has the appearance of high value. Often Limited-Sell Patterns fill this description nicely, but blue items work the best. I like to play this with Darkmoon Faire (Wowhead | WowWiki) Cards.
- Make sure your items will be the only ones listed for a decent amount of time. Either choose an item that is not on the auction house currently isn%26#8217;t listed often, or buy out the one or two you find. Kudos here if you found an item that someone else listed at an overly-high price but doesn%26#8217;t have competition - you can move on to step 4.
- List your first item at an exhorbitent buyout amount with an alt character. I like to take WowEcon%26#8217;s base price and multiply it by 10-15. The starting bid should be the same as or slightly under the buyout price. Make sure to set it up to last 24 hours.
- Now log into your main character and list the other (identical) item for much cheaper, but still much higher than it%26#8217;s normal price. This time, however, do not list a buyout, only a bid. For this I often make the initial bid about five times the WowEcon average price.
Why not list a buyout when making the auction? It%26#8217;s a psychological trick - some players will immediately see the price difference (especially when using an automated system like Auctioneer) and bid or buyout. But other players are a bit smarter and will see that the %26#8220;cheap%26#8221; price for that item seems awfully high %26#8230; however they will be more likely to place a bid because they will often think that chances are someone will outbid them and then they will get their money back.
This certainly is not the best tactic in the book, but it is a solid one. And by multiplying your efforts you can make even more gold.
Many long-term Auctioneers with large personal databases are able to almost completely avoid this strategy. Almost %26#8230; by listing a lot of (relatively) low-value items (ding! limited-sell patterns here ftw), at huge prices over time you can eventually skew all the personal databases of auctioneers in your realm%26#8217;s faction.
Let me tell you, if you can manipulate most of your realm%26#8217;s auctioneers%26#8217; databases to list Pattern: Tuxedo Pants (WowEcon | Wowhead) as having a market value of 30 gold, then you can proudly consider yourself an auction house Baron. At least until tomorrow.
So if you%26#8217;re wondering how I come up with crazy stuff like this, no it%26#8217;s not the bong hits %26#8230; I study Valkor%26#8217;s Gold-Making Guide. This guide is an 108-page powerhouse of information about all the best and quickest ways to rack up loads of WoW gold. This guide is recommended by me and pretty much anyone who has ever read it - it%26#8217;s that good.