Game economics and the auction houses

[boscolio]

Since the auction houses were added to the game I have been experimenting to see the best way to use them. From a sellers point of view what is better, long auctions where your item has time to get bid up in price or short auctions because buyers want instant gratification?

Experiment #1: Long auction. I placed 10 items up for auction at the auction house in Undercity for 8 hours. I set the starting bid on all of the items to 1c. That’s right one copper! Most of the items I was selling would sell to a vender for 5 to 50 silver. I wanted to know what the “true� market value of the items were. I did not set a buyout price.

Experiment #2: Short auction. I placed 10 items up for auction at the auction in Undercity for 30 minutes. I set the starting bid on all of the items to 1c. Again the items in the auction would sell to a vender for 5 to 50 silver. I did not set a buyout price.

The buyout price feature: While it’s a nice feature for a quick sale, it’s actually no longer an auction with that feature because the highest bidder does not win the item, just the first bidder to agree to the buyout price.

The results: Interestingly both the long and short auctions did not sell well. I successfully sold only 3 items from each auction. This is especially surprising considering that the items had a starting price of 1c. Anyone could have come along at the end of the auction and bid 1c on the item and resold the item to a vender for a profit. This would seem to indicate that the auction interface is not user friendly and the minimum bid is not clear to buyers. If an item does not have a bid on it yet you must highlight the item and look at the bid price at the bottom of the window. I think many buyers do not see this price.

Game economics: Part of the problem for someone trying to sell items at auction is really a supply and demand problem. Everyone gets tons of “loot� so the market is flooded with common items. I think most players can equip their characters very well without ever buying anything. The value of trade skill made items is not very high because so many players have these trades that again the market is flooded with the items. What I think Blizzard should do to address the problem is limit the number of trade skills a player can have at one time to 4 max. This way if a player specializes in Herbalism/ Alchemy for example they would need to buy their armor from another player specializing in Mining/Blacksmithing. As it stands now once a player gets enough skill points they can specialize in everything. Because they can make everything for themselves they don’t need to buy from other players.

A good example of the problem with trade skills is in Cooking and Alchemy. Ever try to sell some food? Even high level food does not sell. Why? Because almost every player can make/get their own food. Same problem with Alchemy, since so many players can make their own potions why would they buy yours?

Posted by SunTzu

[Akasha]

Hmm interesting read... personally I have always been a fan of the Bazaar system in EQ. For those not familiar it was a zone dedicated purely to selling, buying or trading. You would purchase 10 slot bags that had no weight limit but the bag itself weight 10 pounds so not an option for every day use.

I used to go to Bazaar, go to my bank and swap all my normal bags for the trader bags that were sitting in my bank holding my items for sale, find a "stall" to stand under which as the zone was a medium size there were always spots, and more that one person could share a stall. On that note to the thousands of people that sat on top of each other at the first stall of each row... you actually make it harder LOL.

Ok so your under a stall, you /trader to open the window, set prices you want to sell at and click <begin trader> which would set you up for others to come and buy. Normally right clicking someone in game would inspect them, but if they were in trader mode it would open their goods. It showed all the items they had for sale and the price, and you could have a look at each items stats before purchase.

I would set up trader every night before bed and get up the next morning, bank any money I made, swap my bags around and head out for the day. This was a great way for me because I could have the same items up for months if I wanted without it costing me money. As a buyer I could go anytime I wanted, do a search for something and buy at nearly all times of the day or night - GREAT for an aussie as most US sellers are up when I am playing instead of sleeping.

Tradeskill components sound like they sold a little better that system than what I just read as most people did only specialise in one skill or possibly two.. sure you could max all - but like hello boredom LOL. While I think it's great that you can do all tradeskills in WoW, it almost adds to that "solo feel" of the game as you don't need anyone else for anything.

Personally I will most likely go engineering as I like doing the more off beat things and will use the Market section of this site to purchase potions of other Warlocks. When I look at what I just said though that in a way takes another person away from the auction system. I would rather see one of my members get my money that someone I don't know so would put a post saying "Buying 10 Mana potions - let me know how much" in which boscolio might put the first post saying 10 silver, they are in the mail COD.

I would like to see all Warlock using the boards to sell and buy to each in other so that ALL warlocks benefit as the money will circulate instead of giving it to those nuisance mages :lol:

[farslayer77]

Early problems with EQ bazaar included both /beg and /pickpocket working on vendors. Middle problems included mass group buffing and AOE spells affecting the bazaar. And forcing characters to go link dead .
Late problems included platinum duping and also warp/buy macros that
effectively farmed the bazaar. Current problems include camping out and in on top of a trader to force them out from under a stall. Thus opening a trader slot for you. Also the tardspam from "casinos" was annoying whilst
shopping.

Auction houses in WOW eliminate or mitigate a number of those problems.
They also free up server resources that would be spent on 500 ish characters afk online as well. Having been the beneficiary of the vanishing items trick. I would be hesitant to put my expensive junk up for sale. Having one or two characters lose junk in the bazzar in EQ was fixable. Having a server full of people that lost their junk in WOW would be a CS nightmare. I may be alone but I will most likely have a set of packmule characters. In all the easily accesible zones to sell junk with. In addition to using the auction system.