The capital cities in Azeroth are where you can find the auction houses. It is here that the most potential for profit and loss in Warcraft exists. The reason is the variability in price that you will find in here. One day Mageroyal is 5 silver apiece, the next it’s 10.
So it’s the variations that give you the player the opportunity to make and lose Warcraft gold. Selling to the NPC vendors that are dotted around the place does not offer variability. The prices they charge and buy for are fixed. So if you have uncommon loot or decent crafting materials then these NPC vendors will not offer the best return for your efforts.
Playing the market in the auction house requires that you first do some research, and collect some data. You need to know if a bargain is as good as it seems, or if you could get more profit for the items you are selling.
The first step would be to download and install Auctioneer. An addon you can get from Curse.com. This has a scan function that records every asking price for every item at auction. Before you start your career as a floor trader, spend a few days running the scan once a day to collect good data. Carry on powerleveling until you have about ten scans worth of data.
Run the scan once a day, or perhaps once every two days to avoid double counting certain 48 hour auctions. It might be a while until you have enough data to make a decent average.
Once the scans are complete, Auctioneer will have worked out the average asking price for every item it has found. When you open the auction house GUI you will now see a percentage displayed on the right. This is the ratio of that items asking price to the average that auctioneer has found in its scans. 150% means it’s 50% over the average asking price, whereas 50% means it’s half the average asking price.
Using this information, you can make decisions on which items to trade in. Following the simple real-world rule of buy low, sell high.
However, before you rush off, there are a couple of very big potential pitfalls.
Auctioneer records the asking price, and not the selling price. There can be a huge difference. Auctioneer does not know if an item sold. People put on extremely high prices for junk items (10,000g for 1 leather scrap for example) this happens quite a bit. It is a way of moving larg 안전놀이터 e amounts of gold around. Gold sellers use this method to give gold to the character who buys off them. Also some do it just in the hope that someone accidentally clicks on it and buys the item. Auctions are instant and none refundable remember. These huge prices can skew the average price. An item that should be 20 copper selling for 10,000g will ruin the average price that Auctioneer has taken.
What should be of more concern though is that the value of items changes over time. New items cost more, and then lose value over time. Blizzard increase and decrease the drop rates of certain things with every patch. A rare expensive trinket you have suddenly becomes very common and its value can plummet. Blizzard also change the stat values and level requirements of ingredients, weapons, armour and recopies all the time. This has a pretty quick effect on the value. If you are holding stock you could be wiped out very quickly.
