Retards of the Auction House

There is nothing worse than getting pissed off over some random and not that important thing. Be it some random douchebag hunter that trolls the entire raid with [Aspect of the Pack] turned on, scumbag that does not move out of the fire and then flames healers for "being useless" or fucking greavers that are corpse-camping you even though they don't have any in-game benefit because they are usually 50-80 levels higher than you. I guess they weren't breastfed when they were babies and lack of that exhibits as need to torture random lowbies and newbies. It's one of the reasons I hate playing on PvP realm, mostly because I know shit about PvP. But, that's the story for another time.

Another branch of people that I hate in WoW are Retards of the Auction House (in further text RotAH). These are people that:

a) Don't know how Auction House functions;
b) Don't want to know how Auction House functions;
c) Don't give a shit about anything related to Auction House
d) Profit through trolling on Auction House.

These people, also, don't seem to notice that even game such as WoW has it's own in-game economy that gets ruined with every small move that they make.

Let me get something straight. I am a casual PvE player. I don't "play the Auction House" and I am not earning tons of gold. With introduction of [WoW Token] in upcoming Patch 6.2, I will be making just enough so that I can afford next month to play.

Everyone knows what Undercutting is. My rant is, however, aimed mostly towards players that do not understand how functional undercutting works. Why do I call it "Functional Undercutting"?

Lets take a look at definition itself:

undercut, verb: offer goods or services at a lower price than (a competitor).

So, the way I see it, Effective Undercutting is when Player A offers [Tabard of the Lightbringer] at a price of 50.000 gold and then you place your own auction asking for 49.500 or 49.000 gold, undercutting original price by 1 or 2%. IF (or WHEN) Player C comes along, and wants to place his own auction, he does the same and undercuts my auction by the same amount that I did placing his auction for 48.500 or 48.000 gold. That way, average price of the Tabard stays more or less equal for a longer period.

Ineffective Undercutting is when I go to the Auction House and offer [Tabard of the Lightbringer] at a price of 50.000 gold and then comes some random douchebag and offers the tabard at the price of 30.000 gold and then, the next one comes and lowers the price even more (15.000 gold, for example).

This, in itself is both bad and good thing. Why is it bad? Because in some cases, for some items, a set period of time needs to pass before price can be corrected back to the original value... In most cases, value can be corrected back immediately without any problem but in some cases, people will avoid such an item by saying that "price is inflated" and that "item was much cheaper earlier / yesterday" even though rarity of the item dictates high price.

Right now, I am not dealing with items of high rarity. I have some auctions for herbs, Augments and mostly gear that has Transmogrification Potential. As an example, this is what I encountered in AH today:

Pieces of [The Forgotten Peacekeeper] item set, that I am trying to sell on AH, resemble Freethinker's Armor, removed Zul'Gurub paladin set. In itself, it's Transmog value is high and price should not be too high because pieces are rare, but not THAT rare. I came across ridiculously high and ridiculously low auction prices.

You can see very good example of Ineffective Undercutting.

• Pants: 2 Auctions of 500g, undercut Auction of 244g and all subsequent undercut auctions that start under 170g, ruining the price of the auction.

• Shoulders: Ridiculous auction of 75.000g, followed by realistic price of the item ~3.000g and then ineffective undercuts of 530g and even worse for a price of less than 100g.

Good thing is, if you are willing to risk, you can buy Ineffective Undercut (for example, the undercuts placed at 100g) and then sell it at the original price in a few days, after the price gets corrected. It's the same principle used in Auction Sniping. Downside of this, is that, although they have good Transmog Value people don't buy them that often. You will usually spend several days re-posting the auctions before someone buys the items.

Another type of people that I hate in-game, that fall under RotAH group, are trolls. These people usually dump enormously high amount of materials into the AH, all in the stacks of 1... Example:

611 [Starflower] stacks of 1. And this is just a tip of the iceberg. Throughout the playing I have seen some really weird amounts going up to the few thousands... With the release of WoD, most of the materials that once stacked in 20s now stack in 200s. While I see the need to place auctions in stacks of 5, 10, 20and even 50 even though maximum amount of materials in a stack is 200, I fucking can't see reason of someone placing 611 stacks of 1.

And I am gonna leave it at that and go play for a while until I find something else that pisses me off.