The glyph market on my server has been pretty tame since last fall. There's about 3 of us that post a few times a day and with the average posting price of about 15-20g we are all making money. One of the things I did to let my competition "win" was to stop posting/reposting 3 of every glyph and focus on the top 75 best selling glyphs. This gives them a bit of profit which reduces the chance of a price war while giving me great profit (at least 1000g/day). One other thing is because there are 3 of us posting at all times of the day it is like we are camping the Auction House without one of us needing to be on our computer 24/7. This has discouraged anyone else from entering the market so peace has reigned -- that is until "NewScribe" (not his real name) entered the market.
A few weeks ago I started seeing increased postings from some new competition. Some of the names are familiar but they have been little factor in the market the last 6 months. The frustrating thing is every time I post my glyphs some of them are undercut almost immediately and all of them are undercut within an hour. This isn't the first time this has happened so I do what I always do when I get new competition ... add anyone that has undercut me to my friends list and track their comings and goings. One thing that is invaluable to me in this tactic is a mod called "myFriends" which basically updates every one of my toons to have the same friend lists which allows me to play and still track my competition. It doesn't take long to realize that most of my issue is with 3 posters and after a few days tracking it is apparent that the 3 posters all belong to one scribe. It is apparent that this scribe has read an article of MMOChampion, Wow.com or JMTC to implement the classic 3 scribe AH camping strategy. They are even posting Snowfall Ink at 5g, crashing that market and is obviously making a play at dominating the market.
Since I have played in the glyph market a while so I don't panic but wait a few days to think up a plan. Dominating glyph sales on a server is extremely difficult and with 345 total glyphs the only way to do it is to give 3 scribes Bottomless bags (32 slot inscription bags) and post 115 on each. Then you use these 3 toons to post/canceling/retrieving mail/re-post all these glyphs. Some people do this a few times a day which takes a few hours but the truly industrious camp the AH all day and do nothing but post/cancel/retrieve/repost to make sure that if anyone buys a glyph that it is coming from them. This is what "NewScribe" was doing and my 1000g of daily income suddenly plummeted to under 100g.
My first thought was to just repost a more often with a focus on primetime (6pm - 11pm server). This didn't work for 2 reasons ... it cut into my actual playtime and he was able to undercut me quick enough that my profits really didn't increase much. My second strategy was almost as bad in that I decided to call his bluff and just cancel/repost for a night. I sat at my PC doing this for 5 straight hours but he was relentless and at best I had maybe another few hundred gold for my efforts. Neither of these plans were working and he was taking "my" profits. It was time for drastic action.
One thing that I have found to be true of auction house camping is it is extremely boring. No one can do it indefinitely as it is mind numbing and ultimately leads to low profitibility due to the fact that the market can never reset itself to a high price since no glyph ever really expires. This statement isn't entirely true but it depends on someone taking the price below your set minimum price. This is why I use a relatively high minimum (4g) as it make sure that if my glyphs don't sell out that eventually someone will reset the prices. It is for this reason that I sometimes will put up a a 12 hour auction instead of a 24 hour as when my glyphs expire it allows my competition to raise prices. This method has increased prices on the server to the point that there is actual complaining in trade about glyph prices and I'm sure that is what enticed "NewScribe" to make a play for the market.
Quickauctions is an amazing tool that can make anyone thousands of gold daily if configured correctly. One of the key compenents is the undercut feature. I typically make my undercut around 15s as it will eventually lower prices but it won't crash the market. One thing that pissed me off about "NewScribe" is he set his undercut to 1 copper. A 1 copper undercut is basically no undercut at all and it sometimes pisses people off. A 1 copper undercut is usually an Auction House camper as all they are looking for is the lowest price but they still want to make money. After a few days of messing with "NewScribe" I decided that since none of the rest of us were making money that he wouldn't either. I changed my max price from 40g down to 5g. Almost immediately he undercut the price. I undercut again and then went to play for fun. The next day the flaw in my plan became apparent. My profits were down to 50g while he was still raking in money from all the glyphs I don't post. I now had 2 choices -- retreat or go all in.
When my competition has tried to take of the glyph market on my server in the past I usually just let them go for a bit as I make more money from my non-glyphing activities (mainly blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy, jewelcrafting) than I do from inscription. Eventually every one tires of the grind and I knew this guy would be no different but I wanted to speed up the process. Glyphs sell in much greater quantities than anyone realizes and I bet that total sales per day are at least 200-300 glyphs sold every day on my server. Multiply that by an average price of 15-20g and anyone that dominates the market is making a ton of gold. The only issue is they need to spend all day camping. My thought was ... I wonder what this person would do if all of a sudden they go from making 3000-4000 gold a day to under 1000g. Would that lessen their desire?
I fired up Quickauctions and looked at the glyphs that I don't sell then queued 2 for anything that had a price over 5g. Quickauctions had a nice feature that allows you to set up groupings of items and I set up my glyphs a long time ago into two groups - glyphs I sell and glyphs I don't sell. This allows me to send the right glyphs to my reseller toon but not jam him with other glyphs if make a mistake. The was nice because this easily allowed me to send all 400 new glyphs to an alt. I chose to send them to a toon I never use to post to the auction house as I wanted this to be a bit of a stealth attack since it would be difficult to know who was posting these glyphs. The other thing I decided was to allow the glyphs I normally post to reset so I could make money again. The plan as that "NewScribe" could make money on the glyphs I normally sell but make next to nothing on everything else. I posted during primetime and sat back to watch the result. "NewScribe" quickly undercut me as well as some of my old competition. Now it was just time to sit back and watch the result. The next morning I opened the toon I used to post my glyphs and found 2 surprises - 600g from successful auctions and a note. I noticed that part of the 600g came from "NewScribe" so he was in fact paying me to crash the market. The note was from another of my competitors that thought that since I was new that I didn't realize how much more I could make posting glyphs at a higher price. This gave me another name to add to my friends list. Since that went so well I redoubled my efforts and made more glyphs for anything over 5g and re-crashed the market that night. The next morning I had similar profit as the day before but noticed that "NewScribe" had refrained from paying me for more glyphs. I wanted to keep the pressure up so I continued. Slowly the number of glyphs over 5g were shrinking with the exception of the ones that I usually post. It was time for me to to get back into my normal market. The next morning I hit 500g on my main toon for the first time since "NewScribe" started his camping and another 300g from my crash toon. At this point I had spent about 1000g in glyph costs and made about 800g back to crash the market. The interesting thing I noticed was "NewScribe" continued to be online all the time but he was no longer camping the AH. The battle was won.
I don't kid myself and think that anything has really changed. Last night I topped 1000g on my main scribe seller for the first time in a long while and that is part of the problem with glyphs. There's just too much money to be made for anyone that has the time. My ultimate strategy was to make the time investment not worth the payoff and so far "NewScribe" has decided to exit the market. My plan for the future is to sell through the glyphs I made to crash the server then retire my "Crash" alt (even though I am making a ton of money on him too). There is plenty of profit for everyone in glyphs if no one gets too greedy. I certainly plan to dominate the top glyphs but I also want my competition to be able to make money on the rest because if they are happy with the money they making they are less likely to come after me. Still ... it is only a matter of time before "NewScribe" or someone like him tries to corner the market again and if they do ... my "CrashScribe" will be waiting.
A few weeks ago I started seeing increased postings from some new competition. Some of the names are familiar but they have been little factor in the market the last 6 months. The frustrating thing is every time I post my glyphs some of them are undercut almost immediately and all of them are undercut within an hour. This isn't the first time this has happened so I do what I always do when I get new competition ... add anyone that has undercut me to my friends list and track their comings and goings. One thing that is invaluable to me in this tactic is a mod called "myFriends" which basically updates every one of my toons to have the same friend lists which allows me to play and still track my competition. It doesn't take long to realize that most of my issue is with 3 posters and after a few days tracking it is apparent that the 3 posters all belong to one scribe. It is apparent that this scribe has read an article of MMOChampion, Wow.com or JMTC to implement the classic 3 scribe AH camping strategy. They are even posting Snowfall Ink at 5g, crashing that market and is obviously making a play at dominating the market.
Since I have played in the glyph market a while so I don't panic but wait a few days to think up a plan. Dominating glyph sales on a server is extremely difficult and with 345 total glyphs the only way to do it is to give 3 scribes Bottomless bags (32 slot inscription bags) and post 115 on each. Then you use these 3 toons to post/canceling/retrieving mail/re-post all these glyphs. Some people do this a few times a day which takes a few hours but the truly industrious camp the AH all day and do nothing but post/cancel/retrieve/repost to make sure that if anyone buys a glyph that it is coming from them. This is what "NewScribe" was doing and my 1000g of daily income suddenly plummeted to under 100g.
My first thought was to just repost a more often with a focus on primetime (6pm - 11pm server). This didn't work for 2 reasons ... it cut into my actual playtime and he was able to undercut me quick enough that my profits really didn't increase much. My second strategy was almost as bad in that I decided to call his bluff and just cancel/repost for a night. I sat at my PC doing this for 5 straight hours but he was relentless and at best I had maybe another few hundred gold for my efforts. Neither of these plans were working and he was taking "my" profits. It was time for drastic action.
One thing that I have found to be true of auction house camping is it is extremely boring. No one can do it indefinitely as it is mind numbing and ultimately leads to low profitibility due to the fact that the market can never reset itself to a high price since no glyph ever really expires. This statement isn't entirely true but it depends on someone taking the price below your set minimum price. This is why I use a relatively high minimum (4g) as it make sure that if my glyphs don't sell out that eventually someone will reset the prices. It is for this reason that I sometimes will put up a a 12 hour auction instead of a 24 hour as when my glyphs expire it allows my competition to raise prices. This method has increased prices on the server to the point that there is actual complaining in trade about glyph prices and I'm sure that is what enticed "NewScribe" to make a play for the market.
Quickauctions is an amazing tool that can make anyone thousands of gold daily if configured correctly. One of the key compenents is the undercut feature. I typically make my undercut around 15s as it will eventually lower prices but it won't crash the market. One thing that pissed me off about "NewScribe" is he set his undercut to 1 copper. A 1 copper undercut is basically no undercut at all and it sometimes pisses people off. A 1 copper undercut is usually an Auction House camper as all they are looking for is the lowest price but they still want to make money. After a few days of messing with "NewScribe" I decided that since none of the rest of us were making money that he wouldn't either. I changed my max price from 40g down to 5g. Almost immediately he undercut the price. I undercut again and then went to play for fun. The next day the flaw in my plan became apparent. My profits were down to 50g while he was still raking in money from all the glyphs I don't post. I now had 2 choices -- retreat or go all in.
When my competition has tried to take of the glyph market on my server in the past I usually just let them go for a bit as I make more money from my non-glyphing activities (mainly blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy, jewelcrafting) than I do from inscription. Eventually every one tires of the grind and I knew this guy would be no different but I wanted to speed up the process. Glyphs sell in much greater quantities than anyone realizes and I bet that total sales per day are at least 200-300 glyphs sold every day on my server. Multiply that by an average price of 15-20g and anyone that dominates the market is making a ton of gold. The only issue is they need to spend all day camping. My thought was ... I wonder what this person would do if all of a sudden they go from making 3000-4000 gold a day to under 1000g. Would that lessen their desire?
I fired up Quickauctions and looked at the glyphs that I don't sell then queued 2 for anything that had a price over 5g. Quickauctions had a nice feature that allows you to set up groupings of items and I set up my glyphs a long time ago into two groups - glyphs I sell and glyphs I don't sell. This allows me to send the right glyphs to my reseller toon but not jam him with other glyphs if make a mistake. The was nice because this easily allowed me to send all 400 new glyphs to an alt. I chose to send them to a toon I never use to post to the auction house as I wanted this to be a bit of a stealth attack since it would be difficult to know who was posting these glyphs. The other thing I decided was to allow the glyphs I normally post to reset so I could make money again. The plan as that "NewScribe" could make money on the glyphs I normally sell but make next to nothing on everything else. I posted during primetime and sat back to watch the result. "NewScribe" quickly undercut me as well as some of my old competition. Now it was just time to sit back and watch the result. The next morning I opened the toon I used to post my glyphs and found 2 surprises - 600g from successful auctions and a note. I noticed that part of the 600g came from "NewScribe" so he was in fact paying me to crash the market. The note was from another of my competitors that thought that since I was new that I didn't realize how much more I could make posting glyphs at a higher price. This gave me another name to add to my friends list. Since that went so well I redoubled my efforts and made more glyphs for anything over 5g and re-crashed the market that night. The next morning I had similar profit as the day before but noticed that "NewScribe" had refrained from paying me for more glyphs. I wanted to keep the pressure up so I continued. Slowly the number of glyphs over 5g were shrinking with the exception of the ones that I usually post. It was time for me to to get back into my normal market. The next morning I hit 500g on my main toon for the first time since "NewScribe" started his camping and another 300g from my crash toon. At this point I had spent about 1000g in glyph costs and made about 800g back to crash the market. The interesting thing I noticed was "NewScribe" continued to be online all the time but he was no longer camping the AH. The battle was won.
I don't kid myself and think that anything has really changed. Last night I topped 1000g on my main scribe seller for the first time in a long while and that is part of the problem with glyphs. There's just too much money to be made for anyone that has the time. My ultimate strategy was to make the time investment not worth the payoff and so far "NewScribe" has decided to exit the market. My plan for the future is to sell through the glyphs I made to crash the server then retire my "Crash" alt (even though I am making a ton of money on him too). There is plenty of profit for everyone in glyphs if no one gets too greedy. I certainly plan to dominate the top glyphs but I also want my competition to be able to make money on the rest because if they are happy with the money they making they are less likely to come after me. Still ... it is only a matter of time before "NewScribe" or someone like him tries to corner the market again and if they do ... my "CrashScribe" will be waiting.
Posts
0 Comments to "Taking Back the Glyph Market"