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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe case for open orders on the auction house
by Basil Berntsen 
Mar 2nd 2010 at 7:00PM
There are changes afoot- PTR build 11599 had variables introduced that mention the mobile auction house. This means that we're probably due for a major AH redesign, and I am talking about more than just the nice "quality of life" changes which bring some popular addon functions into the default UI. I suspect Blizzard is going to have to redo some things from the ground up, so I figured I'd take this opportunity to pitch an idea.
Selling on the auction house is a "fire and forget it" asynchronous activity. You choose how often you want to check back and relist, but many people make all the money they need by simply posting 48 hour auctions. This should be how buying works. I think that it would make sense to allow people to post an open order the same way we can post auctions, which would allow people who are selling to choose whether to sell to an existing open order or put the auction up.
Asynchronous what?
The advantage of asynchronous buying and selling is that regardless of whether you're online or offline, the transactions you are willing to make are available. So for sellers, this means that even if we're not around to physically complete a sale of a product, a buyer can choose between our offers and our competitors' offers. The only advantage to camping the auction house is that the campers can change their offers more often.
What Blizzard didn't take into account when designing the auction system is that there is just as much fierce competition among buyers as there is sellers. Right now, if someone needs a lot of Saronite Ore, they have to either be the first one to see a well priced auction, or they have to be online to see someone advertising in trade. This means that the buyers who do the best (have access to the most mats at the best prices) are the ones who can afford to camp the auction house and trade chat.
Of course, we all go around the system when we can. We'll use the "snatch search" feature of auctioneer, as well as ask farmers to send their mats to us cash on delivery. Neither of these solutions are ideal, however. Snatch saves us time, but only lets us buy what's already on sale, and many farmers don't farm nearly enough to bother adding an auctioneer to their already cramped friend's list.
Open Orders
Open orders would solve this problem. Whether the farmer is high volume or casual, if they had the ability to go to a city and see all the demand for their wares, they would be happier, and the auctioneers who end up buying their stuff wouldn't have to spend as much time as in the current system.
The way I imagine this system is that it would still cost the seller money to fill an order, so that sellers wouldn't be biased against listing auctions. Each open order would have a maximum volume and a minimum quantity.
For example, I buy a lot of Cobalt Ore. Instead of spending a few minutes as often as I can spare the time checking the AH for it, I decide to post an open order. Since I only have time to process 40 stacks this weekend, my open order is for 800 ore at 1.5g each, with a minimum quantity of 1. I could choose a higher minimum quantity if I want, but I don't want to miss out on the people leveling mining with small stocks. Now, as miners come onto the AH, they would be able to choose between selling directly to me for a guaranteed sale, or trying to sell their stock for more as an auction.
Downsides? What downsides?
This would potentially reduce the amount of stock available immediately for casual buyers, but to be fair, every time I log in, I do the same thing by emptying the auction house of both factions of all the cobalt I can get my hands on. This system would actually go a fairly long way toward stabilizing prices, since people buying in volume who can afford to wait are no longer emptying the AH.
It would also be good because farmers would be able to decide what to farm based on real current demand, instead of just guessing based on what they remember selling. If a miner wants to decide between Cobalt Ore and Saronite Ore, all they would do is figure out how much they can farm in an hour, and see what kind of demand there is for each. Right now, the only information they can use to decide is information about the market last time they sold ore.
Being an auctioneer is like being able to print money. Or gold, as it were. Wait, that doesn't make sense... you can print on gold, but you can't print gold. That would be closer to transmutation? I can transmute titanium, but that's only worth it if the price of saronite is low enough to justify the time spent making it. I need some sort of analogy here. Whatever, I'll figure it out later. Making gold? Every week, Gold Capped will teach you the tricks of the trade. From setting up your auction addons and user interface, to cross faction arbitrage, to learning how to use your tradeskills. Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Nick Mar 2nd 2010 9:20PM
That will work just as well as people who post grey items for 50k gold.
If you want to fill buy orders by default they'll be sorted from highest to lowest, so noone will ever see you 1c ones.
Oteo Mar 2nd 2010 9:06PM
I can see a downside... In another game I play there is both an auction house that works like what we have now, and a Trading Post that works as what you've described above: people post what they want and what they're willing to offer, and sellers choose whether or not to accept the offer.
The problem with it is that the Trading Post is FLOODED with ridiculous trades that never get accepted, like asking for a Battered Hilt in return for a 25s Cockroach pet, or vendor trash (to use a WoW example). These offers sit on the Trading Post for months to the point that, even with a search function, there's no point in looking through the Trading Post offers for any good deals there might be simply because you have to wade through pages and pages of horrible offers for your Battered Hilt.
Thoorin Mar 3rd 2010 5:11AM
Open orders from eve, how do i miss them in wow.
Most "crap" moronbait offers would get filtered by price (offered), just as now we use price asked to shop. And putting same time limit as on normal auctions should help with volume. As for the "I buy ur Hilt for 1c", all you need to do is just add the AH cut, based on item vendor value. I guarantee, someone who keeps trying to get, say, some ore for 1c and ends up with a solid-gold bill after a few days of unsuccessful basking, is gonna ragequit in the end. And still, we got people trying to sell of grays for like 1000g, so we got the same issue now, nobody's qqing, so....?
The most important factor is, we'd be less influenced by listing prices and more by actual market prices. Sure, if all I see is orders below 40g per stack of my saronite ore, I am gonna put up auctions. But say, it's nearly raidtime, I expect a 100g repair bill after my progression raid, and I'm low on gold. Yea, I can AH my ore for 40g a stack, but will it sell? If pressured, I may at least choose to accept an order which pays 35g. Sure, I "lost" 15g selling 3 stacks to get the 100g I need, but I got money now. Though I do understand those who QQ here, open orders would mean end of most speculation (buyout+relist), stack-of-one floods, and other techniques of manipulating the buying populace. Many hardcore players earn tons of gold that way, they will surely QQ and oppose all the way.
The state of matters as they are now, with no API access to actual transaction prices, is playing right into the basket of gold sellers. A new player hits town at say lvl 5, sees the shiny greens on the AH ...all for 20g and more. And he's got like 5g. If he concentrates on questing and not developing a gathering profession and farming, he sure will be hard-pressed to get the 30-odd gold to get his/her first mount and training by the time they're available! I know, I've been there. I was lucky - I got sumptuous help from my guild where I was one of the few socials among all-raider crowd... but not everyone has that.
Hydden Mar 3rd 2010 8:42AM
Can we also get a vendor option - I hate going to the AH and sorting through the UI for buying, and I typically vendor stuff because I'm not so in need of gold that I want to even approach the AH. However, to meet market needs I think it should be streamlined for people meeting the needs of buyers.
For example, I'd like to go to a vendor, highlight over the item in my bag, and for the tooltip to say:
Sell to Vendor: 5g
Sell to Buyer: 8g
...then right-click to automatically sell to whichever of the two is higher. That'd be sweet.
Jafari Mar 3rd 2010 1:39PM
or just make the buyer bids the automatic vendor price.
Step one: only permit buyer bids that are at least 5% higher than standard vendor price.
Step two: when selling to a vendor, the vendor pays you the highest current bid minus 5%, and if no bids are pending, the standard vendor price.
This would allow the playerbase to capture the value of all the useful items that players vendor, but would destroy the AH as it presently exists. It would be extremely beneficial for purchasers of the low-value "white" items, like big bear meat, or raw fish, that most people don't bother to take to the AH.
Hydden Mar 3rd 2010 8:44PM
@Jafari
Agree that there should be a minimum, sure. I was more thinking something like a Frozen Orb. If I could go to a vendor and see Vendor 5g, Buyer 20g, I may just sell it on the spot (right click and it goes to the buyer, and I get 20g). That's as opposed to throwing it in my bank as I currently do because I can't be bothered with the AH. If I really wanted more than 20g, I could either wait a few days and hope for a higher buyer, or I could put it up for sale on the AH manually.
Just the convenience of going to a vendor would help with filling orders, and I totally see farming those eggs around Xmas time as a much easier experience (no fear of being undercut - you just have to hope there's buyers around - and buyers could put up an order for what they feel is a reasonable price; if they're highest, they'll be quickly filled).
Rage Mar 9th 2010 12:00PM
If you want to fix enchanting mat prices then you need to make them usefull again.
I would love to see something similar to scroll of kings/fort.
I think a drum of heroism made from enchanting mats would make enchanting mats worth wild again!
Rage Mar 9th 2010 4:30PM
Well, just thought of a couple of other drum/scroll abilities I would like to see made from enchanting materials let's call them enchantment's.
They should be made with the enchanting mats that seem to be close to worthless at them moment Infinite Dust and Dream Shards. Alot of people feel that it's better to sell greens now as they have less hasle and make more money. My idea would give new value to Dream shards (~8g) and Infinite Dust (~2g).
Enchantment of heroism - Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 25% for all party and raid members. Lasts 35 sec 10min cooldown shared with real heroism.
Dream Shards - 2, Infinite Dust 10 (make it roughly worth 40g)
Enchantment of divine intervention - make it cheap enough where it saves you on repairs, have a personal cooldown say 12mins.
Infinite Dust - 6 (roughly 10-12g)
Enchantment of Rebirth - It would need a raid cooldown of say 6 mins.
Dream Shard - 1, Infinite Dust - 6 (roughly 20g)
MyrddinE Mar 11th 2010 8:32PM
Many MMOs already have this feature. I know that Star Wars Galaxies had this at launch (and presumably still does) The thing you're missing here in your suggestion is that all bids and all sales would now work about the same way.
Buying: Post a quantity and a maximum price. If there is enough available for sale, you get it right away (at the various prices it was posted). If not, your 'buy order' remains, ready to scoop up any new sell orders below your price limit.
Selling: Post a quantity and a minimum price. If there are enough buy orders available, your stuff gets bought right away (at the various bid offers that were available). If not, your 'sell order' remains, ready to sell to any new buy orders above your price limit.
The AH would not be a giant list of all the orders available. Instead, it would simply list a particular item, and the current 'gap' between the best sell and best buy prices. If you want to sell right away, you need to post a price that's below the current buy... and if you want to buy right away, you need to post a price that's above the current sell.
Or, you can post outside the sweet spot, and hope that the market moves in your direction. You can post things for sale higher than the current best price, and hope that demand rises... or post a purchase order below the current market, and hope that a big farmer drops a ton on the AH.
It would be a major simplification visually, even though it would be more complicated conceptually.