OK, not physically, but today’s frustration over that guy who just won’t log off and keeps undercutting your auctions with 1 copper 2 seconds after you push the POST button made me think of a different approach. I had crafted a load of scrolls last week, and with the mats market coming down on us I wanted to unload some of these before they become useless.
I logged on in the morning, only one serious competitor: Mr Camper (didn’t know he was at this point though) and cut him off with 50 silver on all my scrolls. Note that scrolls have no deposit, so other tactics to scare the guy off is not working: the one who can get his hands on the cheapest mats wins. 30 seconds later he was top listed again cutting all scrolls except one with 5 silver. I run QA and repost. 30 seconds pass again before I’m undercut. I try the patience game and we keep doing this for 20 minutes or so before I log off to help my girlfriend with some stuff. I know I should have stopped after 5, but I don’t give up easily.
I’m back two hours later and have an idea: I’m gonna test his thresholds. I post all my scrolls to 60% of the market price, we’re down here to just below (the old) mats price. The guy follows, but he’s getting careful and only posts 1 or 2. I wait until 5 in the afternoon and repost my scrolls at 100% again. It now looks something like this:
Camper: 100 gold 60%
Camper: 100 gold 60%
Me: 190 gold 100%
Me: 190 gold 100%
Me: 190 gold 100%
Guy from this morning: 192 gold 101%
This was a longshot but my idea was that the camper would blindly look at QA and keep his auctions there making him believe he had “won” our little war. So what happened? Peak time came, people did their heroics and raids, and went to AH after to pick up some stuff to enchant their new gear. The campers’ stuff sold, but so did most of mine. The moral of the story is: being top listed isn’t always the most profitable thing. If I would have kept undercutting the guy down to 40% or lower I would have lost alot of profit, and more important: time.
Campers are annoying, but there are other ways to still sell stuff than carpet bombing, at least in the scrolls market.
//Nim
Filed under: General
