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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsDuplicate recipes create ingame scam
by Mike Schramm 
Apr 5th 2007 at 2:52PM
Tobold has found a strange little ingame scam that high level alchemists might fall into if they're not careful. Before the expansion came out, the recipe for Flask of Distilled Wisdom was an extremely rare drop from the last boss of Live Strat. Because it was so rare, the recipe could sell for hundreds of gold on the AH. Tobold thought he was getting one for a bargain at 150g, until he actually tried to learn it.Turns out he got the Recipe: Flask of Distilled Wisdom instead, which is exactly the same thing (produces exactly the same potion), but is available for a mere 4 gold from the Cenarion Expedition quartermaster in Zangarmarsh. The only catch is that while both are BoE (which means they can both be sold on the AH), the Cenarion version requires that you be exalted with the Expedition to learn it. Which isn't super hard, but the fact is that players who are exalted can buy this recipe for 4g, and sell it on the AH to unsuspecting alchemists for hundreds of gold.
Of course, this scam has an expiration date, because as soon as word gets out that a) it's a scam, and b) the recipe is available for 4g in Zangarmarsh as long as you're exalted, the AH price will likely drop anyway. As Tobold says, Blizz could fix it by simply making the Zangarmarsh recipe BoP, but Blizzard probably thought they were doing players a favor by turning a rare drop into a rep reward. Anyway, if you happen to be shopping around for high level flask recipes, buyer beware.
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Breakfats Apr 6th 2007 4:30AM
One of the reasons to mark the "usable" option, when searching for recipes. Has also the advantage to reduce the list significantly to the interesting ones, when you are looking to complete your skills.
Malineros Apr 6th 2007 8:12AM
Wow... really, all this debate over whether or not it should be called a scam based on the knowledge level of the buyer and/or seller... I'll get back to that after I hit the point that first jumped in my head when reading the post...
"How is this news?"
This behavior has been around for a very long time, if on a smaller scale for things that (unlike flasks) were not previously only available as rare drops. People buy recipes available from Engineering/Leatherworking/Tailoring/etc. suppliers for the nice little vendor price, then put them up in AH to try to catch people who don't know that it's readily available for cheaper (heck, sometimes in Shattrath - go ahead, try to argue selling convenience... I won't buy it, why pay obscene multiples of anything's price no matter where in Azeroth/Draenor it is?) I'm willing to bet this is (and has been) rampant on every server, if not on the flasks, then surely on the smaller scale.
As for whether it is a scam... quit trying to make excuses for crappy MMO behavior. Everyone who does this knows exactly what they're doing. Whether it's calling confused old people on the phone or putting recipes up in WoW's AH, you are taking something with a certain value (low or zero in some cases) and availability, and offering it in a different way, hoping that the customer is not aware of something that would cause them to pass on the purchase. Just because someone has to be stupid to fall for it, doesn't mean it's not a scam, because that's what scamming is, taking advantage of stupidity for your illegitimate profit. My guess is that some of the responses calling this off as not a scam are from people who put crafting recipes up in the AH for 20, 50, 80 gold, hoping for people to assume they're rare drops (a lot of which are now BoP, way to get the "fix" backwards, Blizzard) and pay for them, when they are available for 5g or less somewhere.
Blizzard needs to wise up and make vendor-sold recipes BoP... sure there's a minor inconvenience for honest people who will pick up something on one toon conveniently at the vendor so they can mail it to their alt, but that's a small price to pay for stopping a ridiculous economy exploit.
Malineros Apr 6th 2007 8:14AM
Wow... sorry for the wall of text, I really need to learn to pay attention to how long I'm typing instead of rambling on "making my point".
Yippster Apr 6th 2007 1:12PM
Ok yes, it is a scam, it's called bluffing the market. It's an attempt to raise the market value of an item by simply claiming it's worth more than it really is. It's kind of similar to the Enron scandal, where they were able to lie enough about their bottom line and their profitability that it actually raised the value of the company's stock... that is, until the market called their bluff.
This item sells from an NPC for 4g, but the buyer never sees it for that price, instead he sees it repeatedly on the AH for over 100g. So there is no reason for him to think that the item isn't really worth that much. What he should have noticed, though, is those red letters which say "require cenarion expedition - exhalted".
So, in summation:
Scam? Yes.
Sympathy for the buyer? No.