Saturday, September 1, 2012

Bad Rap

A funny thing happens when you confide in folks that you play the Auction House: Their perception of you changes, and a lot of times, they start treating you differently.  Most of the time these differences aren't exactly what you'd want, and I probably spend as much of my time shooting down misconceptions as I do actually dabbling in the AH.  One solution is just to not tell anyone what I do in my spare time, why I hang out in the AH for 30 minutes at a stretch, refusing to budge in order to make sure my scan gets done before I move on to my dailies.

Or I could educate the masses.  Guess what I'm doing?

  • Myth: AH Players are rolling in gold - Depends on your definition of "rolling".  I've never broken 100k in total gold, even when I made it a point to buckle down and focus.  Right now I'm lucky to have 10-20k fluid.  Sure, this sounds like a lot to someone who lives raid-to-raid, buying their enchants and making repairs with whatever they brought in, but it's easy to blow through that much before you realize you've done it.  A handful of epic gems here, a stack of enchanting mats there, the occasional moment where you give in and "loan" some gold to a guildie, and you're suddenly broke again.  Unfortunately, this myth leads most folks to the next one.
  • Myth: AH Players are greedy bastards who care about nobody but themselves, and gold - I get this one a lot from people who think that because I've got several thousand gold worth of epic gems on the AH, I could easily give them one for free.  Or the ones who've heard from a friend of a friend that I've got "tons" of gold, and think that me bankrolling their legendary weapon quest is the only logical thing for me to do with it.  Oh, the whining and complaining, the accusations that fly, when I tell them no.  Think of it this way: If I gave a free whatever to everyone who asked for it, I'd quickly wind up with nothing to give.  And truth is, I do give out a lot, I'm just selective about it; all of my guildies know that they can get a free rare gem, cut, from me in a heartbeat, to fill that piece of gear they just picked up in the raid, and I never, ever charge for my services when it comes to guildmates or friends thereof.
  • Myth: In order to play the AH, you have to spend all your time in the AH - Only if they really want to.  Most of us have found ways to automate most of our AH activities in order to complete them in about 20-30 minutes a day.  I probably spend about that much time there, and spend the rest of my time leveling alts, completing dailies, and raiding.  Some people would point at this and say it's why I haven't "reached cap" or some other arbitrary gold-making goal, but I know for a fact that many of the folks out there who've hit that same cap have done so without making their entire life about the AH.
  • Myth: If you don't hit gold cap, you're doing it wrong - Says who?  My goal in playing the AH is to be comfortable, to have everything I want, and to be able to provide little perks to my guildies, like the free rare gems bit.  A lot of people have different goals when it comes to the AH, and not all of them involve WoW's gold cap.  Some have a one-time goal, like getting enough to buy a high-end mount.  Others, like me, just want to not have to worry about every little thing.  Sure, there's nothing wrong with aiming for the cap, it's just not the end-all-be-all of gold making.
  • Myth: People who play the AH are ruining the economy - This one is probably the hardest to educate people about, because you sort of have to understand how economics work in order to see why this is wrong.  What it really boils down to is that the market will bear what it can afford; if there are people out there who can afford to and are willing to spend 700g on a gem, that's what they'll sell for.  Trust me, if the market was set by the sellers, you wouldn't see one cut of Queen's Garnet selling for 800g and another for 200g, when the uncut gem sells for 650g.  If I buy out all the Thorium on the AH and relist it for 10x what it was going for originally, people will either buy it or find a way to go get it cheaper; if it doesn't sell for 10x, I'll try 8x, then 6x, and so on until it finally sells.
I'm sure there's a few points I'm missing somewhere, but these are the ones I run into the most.  I'll be happy to add to them if anyone's got some they'd like to get addressed.  Until then, you guys enjoy WoW the way you want to enjoy it, and I'll do the same.

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