How is this not bannable for "Exploiting the Economy" ?

[movah]

Player name “<Name Removed>” routinely has over 300 Auctions posted…. I mean look at this.
http://theunderminejournal.com Direct link to player removed.

41x stacks of Lavascale Catfish
85x stacks of Lavascale Minestrone
35x stacks of Blackbelly mudfish
And more !

I try to play it rather safe, and this is just perplexing to me how this guy does not get banned ! I mean look at all the auctions he has up continually. If I were to post that much stuff it would be an instant ban. Actually I HAVE been banned for posting auctions and “exploiting the economy” but never to this degree. What am I doing wrong ? How is he able to get away with this ?

Thanks for your thoughts as always and be safe out there !

 

[Synik]

Remove the name and link that contains the players name and realm, it is against the forums terms.

 

[Mazzyr]

Since you edited your OP, no need for this comments then.

 

[movah]

Remove the name and link that contains the players name and realm, it is against the forums terms.

Sorry, names and links have been removed to protect the innocent.

 

[Malice211]

If I were to post that much stuff it would be an instant ban. Actually I HAVE been banned for posting auctions and “exploiting the economy” but never to this degree. What am I doing wrong? How is he able to get away with this?

It all depends. The only time I ever received a 3 day warning for "exploitation of the economy" was once when I used one of my lvl 85 farmer to post a bunch of auctions, and not really a large amount at that. This was back in LK and the suspension stated use of 3rd party software if I remember correctly.

Do you post your auctions on the same high level farming toon that you farm all of your mats on? Or, do you shuffle your mats in and out of guild banks to low level AH toons and use them to do your posting? I mean, the 300 auctions the guy you describe has running is less than half of what I usually have posted in the AH at any given time on a lvl 1 toon. Between ore and herbs, volatiles and gems, it is easy to hit 700 to 800 a day or more.

I know what folks will say, "you’re crazy, and you will get caught and banned..." However, I use to do the "play it safe" route, using several different AH toons and post small numbers of stacks and it was taking forever to post and collect the mail even with addons. Then I noticed others posting larger and larger numbers of stacks and thought, why not me? I tried it a few times with no backlash and now it is just the standard. I do use a separate AH account, one of the vanilla $5 jobbies that I don’t mind loosing if it comes down to that. The only thing on it is my AH toons and they keep no quantity of anything on them except when posting. Everything is stored in the guild banks.

Technically, you can post as many auctions as you like provided you have items to post. There is no difference between me posting large numbers and someone who buys bulk at low prices in the AH and relists for a few gold higher to turn a profit. If you are ever banned for “Exploitation of the Economy” by posting too many auctions then I say call up and ask them if they know the meaning of the term Free Economy. The key in the end is to prevent Blizz from accusing you of exploiting the economy through the use of Prohibited 3rd Party Software or Exchanging WOW Currency for Real World Goods. As long as you moving mats and gold through guild banks you shouldn’t have any problems.

In the end, I find that everything in Cata has expanded in scope, from the cost and availability of mats and gear, the amounts of gold being thrown around by everyone, right down to the number or auctions being posted. No one seems to be paying much attention. I mean really, can you imagine spending 40k on a single piece of gear back in Litch King? Even in GDKP runs I could have outfit one of my toons with the highest level ICC gear for under 30k total. I know blizz has *****ed down on gold selling/buying but besides that, just keep somewhat within the rules and you should be fine.

 

[haxed]

I do well over 300 auctions a day and I have never been banned.... My server is high population so herbs/ores stay up for as little as 20/30 mins, so maybe that helps.

 

[movah]

Malice - Thanks for your input and you mentioned some valid points. I do in fact post some of the auctions from the same account that I farm with. I have 1 account I use for my main that I do not bot with, a 2nd account to farm with, and now I think a a 3rd is needed possibly to just move stuff on to the AH, and move the mats around with various guild banks.

Thanks

 

[Anegus]

Player name “<Name Removed>” routinely has over 300 Auctions posted…. I mean look at this.
The Undermine Journal Direct link to player removed.

41x stacks of Lavascale Catfish
85x stacks of Lavascale Minestrone
35x stacks of Blackbelly mudfish
And more !

I try to play it rather safe, and this is just perplexing to me how this guy does not get banned ! I mean look at all the auctions he has up continually. If I were to post that much stuff it would be an instant ban. Actually I HAVE been banned for posting auctions and “exploiting the economy” but never to this degree. What am I doing wrong ? How is he able to get away with this ?

Thanks for your thoughts as always and be safe out there !

There is nothing against the rules that says you can't post hundreds of auctions. Posting hundreds of auctions simply makes you more visible to other players.

For one don't post all your auctions on your farmer account or at the very least farmer character. I always mass post my raw materials unless the price bottoms out and never have any issues. People have thousands and thousands of gold now days. Posting hundreds of auctions is not unusual for all kinds of players now days.

There is a lot of speculation and false information floating around, but in general I see botters as being far too paranoid. During the whiptail bug I was posting easily 500 whiptail auctions a day. Never had any issue with it and they all were bought up. What's going to get you caught is if you piss off someone on the AH. Someone is going to have to report you for Blizzard to investigate so as long as you're not screwing other people most people don't even look at who they are buying from.

 

[Malice211]

What's going to get you caught is if you piss off someone on the AH. Someone is going to have to report you for Blizzard to investigate so as long as you're not screwing other people most people don't even look at who they are buying from.

I strongly agree with this. With the add-ons being used like Auctionator, your average buyer just buy stacks based on the lowest price. I know that as I have watched my auctions be bought up at a speed that is just not possible without the aid of an add-on. So long as you don’t go around undercutting folks by a large amount you shouldn’t ruffle too many feathers.

I am reminded of a wsp I received not a week ago. A fellow seller had listed about 100 stacks of elem. Ore on the AH at 60g per stack. I listed about 75 stacks at 30g per stack. A few minutes later he wsped and asked why I was going so low undercutting him. Now I never ever undercut anyone that low, I use an auction house add-on to post at a percentage below the lowest running auction. So I said “wait a min, let me check it out”. Turns out someone else had listed about 10 or so stacks at 32g per stack shortly after him so I was only undercutting the lowest seller by 2 gold and not 30g. We shared a good cyber laugh over the whole thing. Given that we were both lvl 1 toons posting more ore than anyone has a right to own, we knew we were both bots but said nothing about that fact. We just have a mutual agreement not to destroy the market on one another. There’s plenty of gold to go around.

 

[MrBig]

You will get flamed here if you talk against those retards who fuck up the economy, be warned (I was, and was temp blocked too).

One sentence should suffice : "Dont spit where you eat"

 

[Malice211]

Malice - Thanks for your input and you mentioned some valid points. I do in fact post some of the auctions from the same account that I farm with. I have 1 account I use for my main that I do not bot with, a 2nd account to farm with, and now I think a a 3rd is needed possibly to just move stuff on to the AH, and move the mats around with various guild banks.

Thanks

If you are going to do a lot of botting and AH work then I would really recommend having a nice cheap vanilla account to do your posting with. I don’t trust selling on the same account you bot with and, much like yourself, I don’t like to do anything on my main account save for sending it my gold via guild bank transfers. Plus, if you have an AH account, your bots can keep running at the same time as you are doing your listings. Given the cost of a 3 expansion key set and the time to level an 85 to farm with, I really do not want to lose that investment to something foolish like auctions.

 

[fasteddie78]

auctions have no bearing on exploitaion of the economy bans

 

[btaddict]

You will get flamed here if you talk against those retards who fuck up the economy, be warned (I was, and was temp blocked too).

One sentence should suffice : "Dont spit where you eat"

wow..somebody's bitter...

I'm upset the dwarf rune stones went from 200G a pop to 40G as much as the next guy (especially since i have stacks and stacks of them)...but at the end of the day...
a) it's a game...who cares...
b) not like I spent any of *my* time farming any of this stuff...any gold is better than no gold for doing nothing.

 

[Bengan12]

i always have 500 - 1500 auctions up / account, that is no biggie, got a mail once from a Danish asking me to stop posting 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 but i don?t always post 1 1 1 only depends on what i post.

 

[Gentoo]

I constantly have 300-400 auctions up at a time. All on a very legit account selling glyphs and gems. I have made 1 million since cata came out,well..1 million profit after buying BIS BOE gear/mounts/flying/etc for several toons. So it has been quite a bit more than a million G since cata. I never used any kind of bot for farming or using the AH. Only AH mod's i use i downloaded from curse..

I don't use HB to farm or make gold. Heck, i only found it a month ago.. I paid $110US so i could use the CC's!

 

[MrBig]

wow..somebody's bitter...

I'm upset the dwarf rune stones went from 200G a pop to 40G as much as the next guy (especially since i have stacks and stacks of them)...but at the end of the day...
a) it's a game...who cares...
b) not like I spent any of *my* time farming any of this stuff...any gold is better than no gold for doing nothing.

It is not that I am bitter or that I care about how much gold I am doing, actually I only have 11k right now (dont sell gold either). But I actually play the game, and such a retarded behavior leaves real players in a bad position, one that they need not to be in should we exercise caution in our "activity". Bots slowly kill games, it was pretty clear in Lineage2 (maybe the strongest example) and is somewhat (to a much much lesser extent) the case of WoW.

And we dont even need to undercut by less than half to get profit, in fact we get less profit that way, it is much better to undercut by 1g with 7-8 stacks, and then find a buyer who is willing you mass buy from you at half the price or something, you will not lose the AH cut, you will dump your sh1t faster and you wont make much dent on economy since anyone who buys in such bulk is probably going to transform the stuff into something else.