I put myself in the middle with a *lean* toward the "stop giving away our trade secrets!" camp. I do enjoy your articles, and on the whole I cannot deny it helps the entire community. I don't complain about any of it, I just accept it and work harder to out PvP my auctioneer buddies. And let me START OUT by saying I do not reject your articles, and I welcome them. But I will humor myself with an opposing view....

- You claim that, "anyone with the time and interest can figure out everything I've written without having read anything but the WoWInterface and Curse addon pages." I disagree. Nearly 100% (key word nearly) of WoW players will agree that a top level raider or top rated Arena team requires more than time and interest - it also required SKILL/ABILITY. And AH PvP is no different. The truth is, many wanna-be auctioneers, even with time and interest could not have or would not have figured out many of the tricks you explain in detail. Many of the "secrets" we execute everyday were "figured out", calculated, or organized in a such a way that used our skills (in mathematics, supply/demand, market fluctuations, etc).

- Foresight - related to the above, one of those "skills" is what I would call market "feel" or foresight. Pre-expansions, pre-patches, etc - I am amazed at how many people READ the patch notes (time and interest, as you say) yet still don't see the connection between crafted gear and CD's going away on mats, etc. So in some ways, after I read something and see how I can buy "x" mat, transmute it without a CD, then craft "y" item, and sell for 350% profit - and then I read your article explaining the entire process to the masses - my instinct is to scream a "ShhhhhhhhH!!!!!!!!".

- Your implication that you're not affecting the markets too much because your buyers don't even read who they are buying from, etc, misses two bigger issues: Trade and Pricing.

Trade: What I advertise or ask for in Trade is now flamed and resisted/rejected twice as much as it used to be, "We know what you're doing and we won't stand for it! We all read Basil's article yesterday too!! What do you take us for, Morons?", whereas in days of old, I would instead get numerous whispers like, "Why on earth would anyone in the their right mind buy Dingy Frog Whiskers for 1g each? MORON!!". Think about it, in this case you're not increasing the average players capability to profit from Frog Whisker shuffling, you're just limiting my ability to continue to profit from it.

Pricing: If people suddenly realize (by reading your detailed explanation of it) I am profiting from following a complicated 3-step process to turn Dingy Frog Whiskers into Epic Frog Elixir, on the whole, a small number of people will jump into the game. That doesn't bother me. What does bother me are the MANY MORE people who simply say, "AAh - Dingy Frog Whiskers are now worth 10 times what I was selling them for!"

/end of rant.

Basil - I love you, your articles, and honestly I look forward to them more than any others on this site.

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