Auction House Competition and Maturation
The Gold Queen had an interesting post recently titled Staying The Best, which discussed the maturation of the auction house markets and how should we combat the extra competition coming from all of the free gold making resources currently online. It's a nice article and worth a read, but I must say that I disagree.
In my opinion, what we are seeing is much more of a great divide amongst the players. There are far more buyers than sellers and with the changing times, there are less and less sellers. A look onto my auction house shows much of my competition is gone.
The Changing WoW Player Base
Along the far end we have players that are well educated on gold making tactics and on the other end we have completely clueless players, but the majority of players still fall within the two extremes. I believe that most players are stuck in the middle. They are no longer a completely new player, but are not advanced to the gold making strategy. And it is within this middle area that the absolute majority of players reside and will remain. The new players are constantly replaced by other new players, where as more veterans are leaving. And it is these veterans that are most likely the ones playing the auction house on all of our servers. Are these veterans being replaced by new veterans? It hasn't been the case on my server at all.
Have the players as a whole learned the proper ways to make gold on there own?
As a whole, I say No, but there have been more players that are educated and know how to process information on the auction house and our gold blogs, but those tend to be the players that have been around a while. These players may even have graduated to being free thinkers who can develop their own strategies. The thing is a lot of these informed players are bored or quitting all together. Games like Rift have stolen a few players away as I have discussed in my very popular post on The Current State of World of Warcraft.
On the other end are a slew of players that are still clueless, have no idea how to think freely, and need sites like MMO Champion to cover a topic, so that they can copy the tactic, not adapt it to their server’s market, follow the rest of the lemmings, and utterly fail because they have no clue how to process or relate the given tactics to their own market on their own server. Remember the report on prospecting Thorium Ore and how that was a major market price crasher on Thorium Ore once people realized that every copycat was trying the same strategy? I snatched up a ton of cheap thorium ore and processed it down various much more profitable gold making avenues.
I believe it isn’t so much that the majority of players are making more gold by sound auctioneer strategies, but the ability to gain gold by doing normal activities is much easier. Just think of linear quest chains, reduced mount costs and early level requirements, the lack of as many wipes and repairs with the easing of the difficulties of many lower level dungeons, etc.
So its easier to get gold, there are fewer major gold sinks out there, and the old gold sinks are now much cheaper (mounts, etc.)
Goodbye Competition
In the last few weeks I now have a third of my competition across almost all markets. These competitors may have turned to auctioneering as a new way to play World of Warcraft, while currently they are bored with even that and have moved on to try other games. The result is less sellers, less auctions, and less competition. Let's see how long it takes for others to capitalize on the fact that there are less competitors on the Auction House lately. These findings are the exact opposite of what the Gold Queen was reporting. I understand that all servers are different, but as a whole some changes may appear on other servers in a little more time. Maybe your server just hasn't caught up yet.
Wes of Capped By Cata and Auction House Junkies reported a similar finding in his article: The Rift Effect: It Will Make You Rich. It is time to re-examine those old markets you vacated due to competition.
So all power to RIFT and any other games that come along. They tend to steal our compeition away and leave more gold for us to make from the World of Warcraft auction house.
Anyone else finding less and less competition in one or more markets?
The Gold Queen had an interesting post recently titled Staying The Best, which discussed the maturation of the auction house markets and how should we combat the extra competition coming from all of the free gold making resources currently online. It's a nice article and worth a read, but I must say that I disagree.
In my opinion, what we are seeing is much more of a great divide amongst the players. There are far more buyers than sellers and with the changing times, there are less and less sellers. A look onto my auction house shows much of my competition is gone.
The Changing WoW Player Base
Along the far end we have players that are well educated on gold making tactics and on the other end we have completely clueless players, but the majority of players still fall within the two extremes. I believe that most players are stuck in the middle. They are no longer a completely new player, but are not advanced to the gold making strategy. And it is within this middle area that the absolute majority of players reside and will remain. The new players are constantly replaced by other new players, where as more veterans are leaving. And it is these veterans that are most likely the ones playing the auction house on all of our servers. Are these veterans being replaced by new veterans? It hasn't been the case on my server at all.
Have the players as a whole learned the proper ways to make gold on there own?
As a whole, I say No, but there have been more players that are educated and know how to process information on the auction house and our gold blogs, but those tend to be the players that have been around a while. These players may even have graduated to being free thinkers who can develop their own strategies. The thing is a lot of these informed players are bored or quitting all together. Games like Rift have stolen a few players away as I have discussed in my very popular post on The Current State of World of Warcraft.
On the other end are a slew of players that are still clueless, have no idea how to think freely, and need sites like MMO Champion to cover a topic, so that they can copy the tactic, not adapt it to their server’s market, follow the rest of the lemmings, and utterly fail because they have no clue how to process or relate the given tactics to their own market on their own server. Remember the report on prospecting Thorium Ore and how that was a major market price crasher on Thorium Ore once people realized that every copycat was trying the same strategy? I snatched up a ton of cheap thorium ore and processed it down various much more profitable gold making avenues.
I believe it isn’t so much that the majority of players are making more gold by sound auctioneer strategies, but the ability to gain gold by doing normal activities is much easier. Just think of linear quest chains, reduced mount costs and early level requirements, the lack of as many wipes and repairs with the easing of the difficulties of many lower level dungeons, etc.
So its easier to get gold, there are fewer major gold sinks out there, and the old gold sinks are now much cheaper (mounts, etc.)
Goodbye Competition
In the last few weeks I now have a third of my competition across almost all markets. These competitors may have turned to auctioneering as a new way to play World of Warcraft, while currently they are bored with even that and have moved on to try other games. The result is less sellers, less auctions, and less competition. Let's see how long it takes for others to capitalize on the fact that there are less competitors on the Auction House lately. These findings are the exact opposite of what the Gold Queen was reporting. I understand that all servers are different, but as a whole some changes may appear on other servers in a little more time. Maybe your server just hasn't caught up yet.
Wes of Capped By Cata and Auction House Junkies reported a similar finding in his article: The Rift Effect: It Will Make You Rich. It is time to re-examine those old markets you vacated due to competition.
So all power to RIFT and any other games that come along. They tend to steal our compeition away and leave more gold for us to make from the World of Warcraft auction house.
Anyone else finding less and less competition in one or more markets?
