View Poll Results: What do you think about this level of control?
This is acceptable, people with experience should have an advantage over others. 0 0%
This is a grey area, it's on the verge of violating the terms of service. 0 0%
This is abuse, it's ruining the gameplay experience for others. 1 100.00%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 1. You may not vote on this poll

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03-27-22, 04:34 AM   #1
phage
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Should one person have control over all auction houses for a region?

Since Covid began in 2019, a single person has held control over all North American auction house deals for two years using grey area tactics. If you're subscribed to The Undermine Journals' paid feature, you'll have noticed a scarcity in killer deals as of April of 2021. This is all thanks to a single player who has had almost no competition because of the limited access the average player is provided when it comes to the complex nature of programming.

There was a program created to combat this player called [Goblin Stock Alerts] that gave non-programmers the ability to call the web api as fast as the other person could, but this project was quickly killed off. Through manipulation by the same person with their exclusive api program, a newer, and of course private addon was created. This addon provides what GSA and TUJ can, but without the need of the web api. Similar changes to a popular addon called Auctionator reflect just how powerful a shopping addon can be with the right code. Once again, this person has a personal, exclusive addon that no one else will ever be able to use. Is this fair? Why not, that's modern day capitalism at work. However, because they're able to be on for the majority of the day, no one has any chance of finding cheap mounts, rare patterns, removed transmogs/mounts, or cheap pet deals. So the question is now "should this be allowed"? Multiboxing was permitted since Classic only because

On top of that, every TCG mount that has appeared on TUJ that has been listed for under 3m has been sniped by this one person and flipped. This has given them enough gold to control the markets of every high pop'd realm. This has led to the creation of a syndicate, consisting of three dozen accounts that are always online, running this, for lack of a better word, bot. The command that controls shopping isn't a protected api call and has therefore been turned into a weapon against the average player. If you've mispriced an item when posting, only for it to be bought up within a few seconds, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

So, to the point of my post. Is this fair? If you're interested in buying the items on this person's list, you're forced to pay their prices as long as they're at their computer or spend weeks farming the item, if it still drops. You have zero chance at getting anything below the suggested market average according to TUJ, all because this person's able to automate the shopping process, removing most competition. One simple change to the auction house api, specifically protecting the call which allows for automated scanning, would kill this addon in its tracks. One step further, which is restricting access to the web api for common players, would eliminate this abusable grey area completely. Is it fair for one person, with unlimited free time, to run this kind of script most of the day for two years straight?

The amount of money you make outside of the game shouldn't let you dominate the trade market for a whole region just because your computer and internet speeds can handle three dozen accounts running a custom script. This is as bad if not worse than what multiboxing did to the open world resources for a decade. An investigation should be done on this player and the system should be changed.

What do you think?

Last edited by phage : 03-27-22 at 05:39 AM.
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03-28-22, 09:25 PM   #2
myrroddin
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I am not going to vote, because I find your post silly. I am a "gold goblin" and specialize in crafting for profit. I don't have the big ticket legendary items yet, and still make hundreds of thousands of gold per month, even missing days, sometimes entire weeks, in any given month.

While I could randomly guess who this mysterious person is that you refer to, that would be pure speculation. At least three of the biggest gold goblins other than myself have characters on my realm, and I am not hurting in any measurable way.

If a person, any person, has an issue with how gold goblins do their thing, my suggestion is to learn how to craft and auction properly. According to Blizzard, a whopping 21 BILLION gold gets shuffled PER DAY in the NA region alone.

Instead of crying "not fair", an actual solution would be to join the woweconomy Discord and subreddit and learn how to grab a slice of the pie.
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03-30-22, 12:39 AM   #3
phage
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Originally Posted by myrroddin View Post
I am not going to vote, because I find your post silly. I am a "gold goblin" and specialize in crafting for profit. I don't have the big ticket legendary items yet, and still make hundreds of thousands of gold per month, even missing days, sometimes entire weeks, in any given month.

While I could randomly guess who this mysterious person is that you refer to, that would be pure speculation. At least three of the biggest gold goblins other than myself have characters on my realm, and I am not hurting in any measurable way.

If a person, any person, has an issue with how gold goblins do their thing, my suggestion is to learn how to craft and auction properly. According to Blizzard, a whopping 21 BILLION gold gets shuffled PER DAY in the NA region alone.

Instead of crying "not fair", an actual solution would be to join the woweconomy Discord and subreddit and learn how to grab a slice of the pie.

So you support players being able to technically run autonomous addons that will scan the ah for them while they are afk? That sounds a lot like multiboxing to me and many others. It's a shame you're dismissing the entire discussion with "crying" instead of actually engaging with me.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...uction-houses/

Thanks for your input.
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03-30-22, 06:31 AM   #4
myrroddin
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Originally Posted by phage View Post
So you support players being able to technically run autonomous addons that will scan the ah for them while they are afk?
If such a thing were possible, no, I would not support those "addons". Good thing no addon can automate anything, nor can they work while you are afk.
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03-30-22, 07:14 AM   #5
myrroddin
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You may want to have a read through what what addons can't do. And I did engage with you. Your post makes several claims that are not possible. I know of at least one person with over 500 million gold; he streams regularly on Twitch, and you can plainly see he isn't violating any rules. Therefore, I engaged with you to say that your post is silly, because it is silly. Your post is not based on any reality.

Further, I had a scan through the official Blizzard forums post. Several people do not know much, if anything, about coding addons. While that is certainly not a bad thing, it does lead to highly inaccurate claims.
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03-31-22, 12:10 AM   #6
phage
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Join Date: Apr 2021
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Originally Posted by myrroddin View Post
You may want to have a read through what what addons can't do. And I did engage with you. Your post makes several claims that are not possible. I know of at least one person with over 500 million gold; he streams regularly on Twitch, and you can plainly see he isn't violating any rules. Therefore, I engaged with you to say that your post is silly, because it is silly. Your post is not based on any reality.

Further, I had a scan through the official Blizzard forums post. Several people do not know much, if anything, about coding addons. While that is certainly not a bad thing, it does lead to highly inaccurate claims.

There's a person running automated scans on three dozen accounts. They're logged in all day with this addon. Care to explain that one? You already admitted that scanning can be automated on the official forums. Not sure where you're going off with the "addons can't automate tasks" part. The link you included also has nothing to do with ah addons. I'm pretty confused at what you're saying on these matters.
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04-01-22, 01:09 PM   #7
SDPhantom
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Addons like Auctioneer and TSM can even do live scans that show items as they are posted. You don't even need multiple accounts unless you are trying to have one person logged in on every server simultaneously. Even then, you can't buy anything without user input. This is as much control as Blizzard is capable of at this point and is even allowed. What isn't allowed is if someone hypothetically set up an auto-clicker to bypass this and just have their mouse hovered over the buy button.

Anyone using an auto-clicker to do something like this would fall under use of a 3rd party program and may be banned for it.
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Last edited by SDPhantom : 04-01-22 at 01:25 PM.
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