As somebody who spends a lot of time on the AH, I’m hoping Blizzard can do something about the practice of people posting a single item at about half the price of the normal market value and then cancelling the auction but with the hope that somebody has posted their items at this lower price so that they can also buy them and make 100%+ profit on it.
Some people might say that if you’re not astute enough, then you deserve to get scammed but not everyone cares enough to check the AH prices, they just go, put the item in and off they go.
Now, the main issue here is that the scammers doing this tactic are clearly using some sort of automation to do it. I know this because I can be refreshing a particular item and see the amount for sale at the normal price is not decreasing. However, on certain refreshes where the lower items show up, they are gone within a maximum of a second. There is no humanly way to post an item, go to your auctions page and then cancel within this time.
Also, whilst there are addons, which I do use, they do not allow you to post or cancel without user input. As far as I know at least. Therefore, I can only conclude that these are scamming through botting. I was also checking the name of one of the sellers, and it is the same name.
I was only looking at one reagent tonight to see what was happening. There were two level 10 characters, both on the same realm who were doing this. Clearly it works as I’ve noticed this for a while now, just haven’t raised it until now.
It is not considered a scam to put up any items for any price on the AH.
If you suspect them of automation you can report them for it, but there are addons that allow you to pre-set sales and/or purchases below certain pricepoints.
Finally, since certain goods are Region-wide, they don’t even need to cancel it will likely be snapped up by some other player purchasing goods. All is circumstantial at best or not against the rules.
These are not just merely undercutting the normal prices.
One account intentionally lists strictly 1 item on a very low price and another account intentionally and immediately buys every auction that was listed on that preagreed price or below.
Unsuspecting ppl ofc will ofc unintentionally put up their stuff up for what the ah suggests (lowest price) and since both accounts are bots, they work on such speed that they almost always will be faster than a regular player (unless the internet intervenes with higher latency and such), so you cant even cancel it.
There are has been bans handed out recently for “economy abuse”. Something tells me this might be it.
A solution would be to make the AH default to something else (like the avg perhaps), so this cheating would no longer work.
Another would be to include a kernel-based anticheat finally with wow, tho this would still not prevent ppl from doing the entire thing physically, but would increase the barrier or entry for cheaters.
I use AH addons and none of them let you post and cancel using automation. Even if you use the sniper feature in TSM, you have to manually click purchase, the addon doesn’t do it for you. So whilst they add QoL improvements, when it comes to buying, selling, cancelling then each action has to be manually clicked on by the user.
I sat here watching this 1 reagent. The same two characters were posting 1 Storm Dust repeatedly for over an hour and I suspect cancelling it immediately somehow. The number available at the normal value would be stable for at least several seconds but these single items were gone before I could even get to the buyout button. It isn’t a coincidence and it happens on a lot of Reagents.
That is correct, they’d bind this to a regular button or more commonly… I’ve seen them use things like foot pedals and watch a movie. It’s kind of boring but it appears to be legitimate since they’re still doing the actions themselves.
Some could be actual bots, that’s why I recommend reporting any suspicons you may have.
Or for this issue specifically, make it so that you are unable to cancel an auction for at least a minute.
There is ofc the issue of accidental posting at a lower price but at least that is a user error issue which people will learn from and not a bot abusing the system.
I am not saying its not a user error, but until it remains profitable the bots will exploit it and based on what I see, its very much profitable.
Since the lowest price is anyway not to be trusted, they might as well change it default to something else to hurt bots without really impacting players (actually guarding ppl who dont know about these issues).
And a proper anti-cheat is long overdue to this game. There are too many bots, because botting is relatively easy in this game.
They do have to be banned I whole heartedly agree. But it did backfire on a scammer once. They had listed a black rock bulwark for 50k instead of the then price of 750k hoping others would get listed lower. But I brought it before it could affect any one . He was soooooooo mad.
Instead of trying to ban players looking to exploit a system, maybe the system should be changed to not be exploitable in the first place. Since it is still more profitable to play around the deposit/cancelation fee of an item due to its low vendor value, and trying to manipulate that brings more headaches than it solves, then simply remove the ability to cancel an auction for 30mins. Or 1 hour. Or 4 hours. Or even entirely until it expires.
But I still believe that automation of AH interactions should be prevented. If someone wants to post 100 different items, force them to do it manually 100 times.
They probably dont cancel their posted item. If they are posting at 50% value they only need to buy 1 to get their investment back, which considering people post 100’s of these items at a time, is pretty easy to do.
It capitlises on peoples reliance on automated postings from addons like Auctionator or people who arent paying attention.
My suggestion would be, take a few extra seconds to check your listing b4 you post and buy any of their postings quickly if you can.
Addons can be useful, but sometimes speed and convenience costs you. Literally.
. He was soooooooo mad.