Between spawning a bruto or quickly flying to the AH versus having to go to Dalaran Sewer and then back, the AH is faster. Even more when the price is closer to the vendor price.
It’s all about convenience, also we have a lot of players who don’t even know where is the vendor, or that the vendor even exist.
Just… Don’t buy it on the AH? If you don’t want people to profit off of selling these things on the AH, do it yourself. If you want the prices to drop, ramp up the supply while lowering your own demand by grabbing them yourself for you and your friends. Flood the AH yourself for whatever profit you think the labor of getting them is worth.
You know. I should’ve kept an archive with the hate mail I have received for not claiming insane fees for crafting, or for undercutting - or snatching underpriced items.
I mean that is the cheaper option - but the AH isn’t designed to be cheap as others have pointed out, it’s designed to be convenient, but really like:
Unless you’re buying en mass, you’re paying 50g in order to avoid two load screens to Dala’s sewers. Even if the PVP mode is on (which it isn’t half the time) you can get full PVP immunity by buying a guard, the AH is just, again, convenient, not mandatory here.
That one’s excessive but it’s also the convenience arguement again. People are selling it at that price because they don’t wanna grind whichever profession from whichever expac it’s from.
Same with this - yeah, it’s a lot of money, but it’s also a one-time thing. If you’ve got it once, you don’t need to make it again. It’s the same with the crafted mounts.
I’ll be honest this one’s nothing. An extra 3-4 gold for something which lasts a good while and is only accessible for the first week of each month? Yeah, not a bad deal honestly, I’d go for that.
But honestly, the AH isn’t there to provide people things. I mean, it is, but that’s not why people are putting stuff on there. They’re putting it on there to make some quick gold - you can either engage with that or not. To me, I’m happy to pay a little extra for the convenience (and occasionally benefit from that same system (which let’s be fair we all do from time to time))
ICly, Lochton is ruthless in business. If you cannot comply to the market value of process and development, then that is not his fault. If he can supply a product faster and cheaper because of cooperation and support, then why should he overcharge for it?
And I’ve come to realise that myself. If people have the mats, and I don’t need to invest anything, then a tip is fine and good with me. If I have to supply anything of my own, then of course, people should pay an additional cost.
The auction house is there to supply, it isn’t there to generate the best offer for the buyer always. I would love to see the Work Order system be extended into the old crafting tiers, so that people could request things of old to be crafted instead of searching high and low, before dropping overprice on the auction house.