WoW player wants to build auction house monopoly, buys 800,000 items, immediately regrets it
A grand plan in World of Warcraft goes terribly wrong. Instead of a big monopoly, a player now has a huge pile of junk.
Patch 9.2.7, probably the last update from Shadowlands, went live a few days ago. In addition to new rules for boosting, there was also a serious change to the action houses, because they are now region-spanning. Many a player sensed a great opportunity here to make a decent amount of gold – and gambled it away. The result is an inventory bursting at the seams.
What happened to the auction house? Patch 9.2.7 tied the consumable auction houses together. All realms in Europe now share an auction house, at least for items like crafting materials or consumables like potions and flasks. This means there is a lot more supply, but at the same time there are also many more potential customers – depending on the realm, this has advantages or disadvantages for the prices.
Player wanted to live the “wet dream of an anarcho-capitalist”.
The conversion of the auction house has awakened the urge in some players to get more involved with these mechanics and possibly even build up a monopoly. Because if you own all the resources of a certain category, you can dictate the price – at least that’s the enticing, basic thought. A thought that Reddit user “Federal_Pop_9580” (in the game “Nashadar”) also fell victim to.
What happened then? Nashadar spent real money on two WoW Tokens, then converted them into gold and then bought all resources from 4 categories:
- linen fabric
- woolen fabric
- silk fabric
- Sturdy stone
With his gold he bought up all available materials from these regions – and thus apparently had the monopoly for himself.
Why did that fail? For several reasons. For one, the market for the purchased resources is extremely niche. These are low-level resources that hardly anyone needs – at most collectors who want to craft old recipes as transmog templates. At the same time, all of these resources are extremely easy to farm when you need them. They pretty much drop as you level, so most characters have enough of them anyway.
What’s the problem now? The inventory slot. Because Nashadar has bought over 800,000 items that are now waiting in his mailbox to be picked up. That’s a lot that’s almost impossible to manage. After all, most items are available in stacks of 200 each, but even then it’s still 4,000 stacks of “useless” resources that nobody wants. With an average inventory of just under 130 slots, he would have to run back and forth between the mailbox and the auction house for a very, very long time just to bring the offers back to the market.
Would-be monopolist seeks help from Blizzard: When Federal_Pop_9580 realizes his mistake, he sees no other option but to file a ticket with Blizzard and hope they can take care of his blocked mailbox problem. It says (translated):
Last night, one of the best changes to the auction house came to World of Warcraft, the opening of the region-wide market. Thinking I was smart, I spent $40 on WoW Tokens to fulfill an anarcho-capitalist’s wet dream: Complete control over the supply and demand of Linen Cloth, Wool Cloth, Silk Cloth, and Solid Stone. i failed
As Illidan himself once said, “There can be no chosen one”. I tried to be the chosen one and failed to understand what burden [800.000+] Items are – something no human should have in this game. I beg of you, Game Master, please fix my little f*ck up and fix my mistake. If you could get rid of this horrendous amount of auctions and their associated items, I would be very grateful.
Your stupid Nashadar
Community having a great time: As you might expect, the incident is well received by the community and prompted plenty of mocking comments:
- “To trick a market for which there is no need. A perfect big brain move!”
- “No way Blizzard will roll back that for you. You have prepared the bed, now sleep in it too. But at least you have the good feeling that it is extremely softly padded with 800,000 fabrics.”
- “As someone who works in customer service himself (not at Blizzard): Please write normal tickets.”
Have you tried establishing an auction house monopoly? And did it work just as well as in this example?
Reference-mein-mmo.de