Gold Capped: Using the new armory auction house
by Basil Berntsen 
May 26th 2010 at 6:00PM
This game is constantly changing. Every new patch, Blizzard delivers new content, new rules and new interfaces. We've seen some major quality of life improvements in the auction house of late, and these are continuing. The latest one (which is still in beta) is that the mobile armory now lets you trade on the AH from anywhere using either an app on an iPhone/iPod touch or your browser.
Right now, for testing purposes, we're limited to 25 actions a day (purchases, bids, auctions), but we can clear out our mail! To be honest, that's the killer feature for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time clearing out my mail. The majority of my profits in, say, vellums will come from sales of singles. I list stacks of all sizes, but the singles are what sell best. On my mid-range population server, I can easily sell 200 of these a day, and that adds up to a lot of time watching my mailbox empty.
Once the feature goes live and they raise the limit to 200 actions per day, I'll probably use this to list my vellums too. In the interest of using my 25 moves in the most profitable manner, however, I'm going to avoid that for the beta.
Before we go any further: this product is currently in beta. Any money you lose due to bugs is probably gone forever. I posted a load of stacks of 10 Greater Cosmics, and they all ended up getting listed with a stack price of what I intended the unit price to be. This is a buggy beta test, so be very careful and validate your auctions by searching for them after you post.
I'm assuming that most people interested in this probably want to auction from work, and I personally detest any small devices trying to be real computers. If they ever make this available on the iPad and then give me an iPad for free, I'll consider using the app version. Otherwise, I'm all about the real computer version. On that note, Macs aren't real computers.
When you log into the armory's auction house interface, you see this:
The default character was set to my hunter; however, I clicked the top right icon and was able to promote my auction alts into the five available slots for auction house characters. Use the plus sign to the left in the list of characters they show you. First up, I want to empty my mail. This is how you collect your sales:
Clicking "Claim All Gold" is the fastest. Now let's try creating some auctions: click the "create auctions" tab, and then pick your product. You'll see this:
Awesomely, this has more functionality than the in-game selling tab. It will actually show you your competition's prices and let you undercut! Also, it lets you post from your expired auctions in mail, your bank and your inventory as a single source. This is, in fact, way better than the in-game version. I can only hope that they make these features available via the in-game interface.
When I create 10 auctions, this is what it looks like:
When I create 10 auctions, this is what it looks like:
You can relist expired auctions as well, but I don't have any at the moment, so we're skipping to the buying interface. Click on "Browse Auctions," and you can search the AH for stuff you need.
The stuff you buy from this tab will appear in your mailbox and be immediately available for posting. This means that so long as you have transactions remaining, you are able to buy and relist undervalued items. You can equally do this at the neutral auction house, relisting items on your faction AH. You still can't bid on your own auctions, however, so you'll need a friend if you plan to do any cross-faction arbitrage.
I'd caution people about the downsides of camping as a business plan; however, the built-in limits on our daily activity will make this manageable. The best strategy in terms of gold per hour played is one that does not require you to cancel and re-undercut your auctions. If you're having to do this, you're not undercutting steeply enough. If you can't undercut steeply enough, then you're paying too much for your product, or your competitor isn't making any profits.
This feature is a premium service, so once it's out of beta, it'll be something like $3 a month. For the way I play, that's far better a deal than any of these stupid toys Blizzard keeps putting up in their store; however, it's frustrating that something that should be a base functionality has become a "value-added" service. Arena players didn't get higher monthly fees when the devs added enemy unit frames to the default UI. I'd stop complaining if the default in game UI were this functional and the $3 only bought me access to waste my time at work.
I'll pay for this, but grudgingly.
I'd caution people about the downsides of camping as a business plan; however, the built-in limits on our daily activity will make this manageable. The best strategy in terms of gold per hour played is one that does not require you to cancel and re-undercut your auctions. If you're having to do this, you're not undercutting steeply enough. If you can't undercut steeply enough, then you're paying too much for your product, or your competitor isn't making any profits.
This feature is a premium service, so once it's out of beta, it'll be something like $3 a month. For the way I play, that's far better a deal than any of these stupid toys Blizzard keeps putting up in their store; however, it's frustrating that something that should be a base functionality has become a "value-added" service. Arena players didn't get higher monthly fees when the devs added enemy unit frames to the default UI. I'd stop complaining if the default in game UI were this functional and the $3 only bought me access to waste my time at work.
I'll pay for this, but grudgingly.
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 trade skills. Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
JC_Icefox May 26th 2010 6:09PM
Stupid toys?
Stupid toys?!
You, sir, have a cold black soul if you think baby wyvern is stupid.
I bid you good day.
Grovinofdarkhour May 26th 2010 6:14PM
Baby wyvern isn't stupid.
Baby wyvern is stupid plus ugly plus intrinsically inferior due to its hordiness.
Gryphon hatchling FTW.
Galestrom May 26th 2010 6:19PM
In all fairness, it /is/ a baby... How much could it know? =)
Besides, it's pretty clear to me that he was talking about the Celestial Steed. How is that a stupid toy you ask? Well, if you place your camera behind it just so, you can totally recreate that awesome 90's-era Star-field screen saver.
Warp $25, engage.
Pyromelter May 26th 2010 6:50PM
Two pets that are way cooler than anything you can buy, and all it takes is a bit of time and effort in game:
Kirin Tor Familiar
Phoenix Hatchling
Both way way cooler than any pet you can buy. I remember when pandaren and lil kt came out. I rarely even see them anymore.
JC_Icefox May 26th 2010 7:09PM
It's not so much the quality of the pet, it's the volume. As an avid collector, I have both the pheonix and the Familiar, and I did purchase the Pandaren back when half proceeds were going to charity, but I love them all the same.
I have a randomizer macro specifically for mini pets, and I even keep a stack of snowballs in my bags specifically if I happen to juggle out any Winter Veil pets.
That said, the plush/pet combo is just not worth the money, -however- both of the two minimounts are so cute, even the Gryphon despite it's inherent namby-pamby Allianceness.
thutch77 May 28th 2010 10:19AM
Well I guess it just goes to show you.. there are two kinds of players. Players who think that spending real money for in-game pets is silly, and silly people who buy them. ;)
Jed May 26th 2010 6:09PM
I didnt even know about the wowarmory auction thing till just now.. that is pretty darn neat! Just when I think i might be done with WoW for awhile they implement some pretty cool features lol.
Dan828 May 27th 2010 1:18PM
I just used it to check on an auction. It hadn't sold, but I was able to relist it from the armory. It was pretty slick. Not only was I able to relist it, but it showed other current auctions for the same item, so I was able to list it at a price that would sell, and not have to guess at what the market was looking like. Very nice implementation by Blizzard.
Legs May 26th 2010 6:16PM
Unfortunately my auctioneering is tied closely to the auctioneer addon, and this interface is (obviously) unsupported. There's no reason that support couldn't be added through a browser addon or something, but until it is I'm afraid I'll only use this feature for seeing how my auctions are going, and possibly reposting a few things here and there...
jrizutko May 27th 2010 10:03AM
I was thinking the same thing. I reference my transaction history for some items daily, and all that data gets captured when I process my mail in-game.
Guttsu May 26th 2010 6:18PM
This just in: "Macs are aesthetically pleasing, useful and reliable computers."
Drakkenfyre May 26th 2010 6:26PM
On the StarCraft 2 beta forums, Mac users were complaining daily about a lack of a Mac client. They kept bragging about how much better their Mac was than a pc.
Day 1 of the Mac client release?
"WHY DOES THE MAC CLIENT SUCK SO BAD?"
"Why is the Mac version so slow?
"Why is the Mac version so much slower than the Windows version?"
I loved the irony. The Windows version was faster with Bootcamp than their native client.
Pyromelter May 26th 2010 6:53PM
Since Windows 7 came out, Mac's really have absolutely no advantage over windows, save for the fact that more hackers/virus people spend time trying to break it.
Jamie May 26th 2010 7:03PM
As a PC user, I'd say Macs don't have to deal with:
Step 1: New Windows 7 pc
Step 2: Connect to internet & get internet security installed
Step 3: Click on IE8
Step 4: go to getfirefox.com
Step 5: Remove all shortcuts to IE8
But I don't have too many problems with Windows 7.
Ostentaneous May 26th 2010 7:11PM
Edit:
Step 4: go to google.com/chrome
There fixed.
Jamie May 26th 2010 7:40PM
I disregard your attempts to fix my step 4, sir/ma'am!
Iirdan May 26th 2010 7:44PM
Chrome is moderate at best. Firefox is still the superior browser due to the much larger extension community and support of RSS feeds, which ought to be a basic function in this day and age.
But I digress. To each his own.
Jeffrey May 27th 2010 3:53AM
"I loved the irony. The Windows version was faster with Bootcamp than their native client."
If you "use" Bootcamp and install Windows on it, using the Windows version to play ON windows it's still native. Bootcamp just -simulates- the BIOS, we use EFI. So yes it's possible that the Mac OS X native client runs slower then the native Windows client (it's all about optimization, something they might haven't done *yet* on the OS X client).
"Since Windows 7 came out, Mac's really have absolutely no advantage over windows, save for the fact that more hackers/virus people spend time trying to break it."
I can name countless advantages. It depends on what kind of 'user' you are.
jrizutko May 27th 2010 9:51AM
Arguing about whether Macs or PCs are better is like arguing whether BMWs or cars are better.
Drakkenfyre May 27th 2010 10:56AM
The OSX version is still the native version. The game ran faster on the same hardware using Windows than the OSX version.
Yes, part of it is due to optimization issue, and part of it had to due with the lack of DirectX texture compression. It was still ironic and funny that all these Mac users who had bragged about their systems, and demanding a Mac client for months because they didn't want to boot into "shitty Windows", were now complaining in large numbers about how much more their version sucked.