AH changes are the worst thing thats happened to turtle

[Karpfend]

Hello!

After spending the night thinking it through I hardly can believe these changes were just pushed through like this.
When our lovely server had one thing going it was the active ah with cheap, low level mats, as well as a very well stocked sortiment of nearly any item you could need. It now is economically a bad choice to put up low tier mats to help newer players, putting up greens for a decent price: economical suicide.
World chat already is full of WTS [shitty level 30 blue item] and it will get way worse.

These changes single handedly will destroy the basis of joy for many players currently enjoying the auction house, will make raiding more expensive and therefore time consuming, and will force newer players to look elsewhere to get their mats.

Reveret it, if there is need to deflate our econmy, look at another place, don't detroy the market in the process. Rich players still will be rich, poor players will just be poorer now.

[Ezuba]

100% agreed. The economy has been crashing since groups have finished with Naxx. This is the worst possible time to implement something like this. What was the thought behind this? Was there any? I hadn't thought about all the noise this is going to add to world chat but you're spot on about that.

The only problem the AH has had is with people who post 100s of single items. IMO, revert the AH deposits/cuts and put a cap on how many items each account can list at a time.

[Karpfend]

The only problem the AH has had is with people who post 100s of single items. IMO, revert the AH deposits/cuts and put a cap on how many items each account can list at a time.

If it comes down to this, accepting that the blizzard ah ui is horrbile and making aux mandatory would also help it

[Valadorn]

I agree, this was a terrible decision, the OP is totally spot on. I havent seen a single person happy about the changes.

[Whosthechicken]

Some thoughts on why the deposit change is bad:
First of all, I think the AH cuts are good design. They have an obvious purpose, being a gold sink to limit inflation and act as a small incentive for players to search for buyers directly. Nothing wrong here.
Deposit fees, on the other hand, have the fatal flaw of being based on *vendor price*. Which is really really bad, because vendor price and market value are rarely related. There are plenty of items that vendor for close to their market value, plenty of items worth hundreds of gold that vendor for pennies, and plenty of items with literally no vendor value. This means deposit fees are extremely arbitrary in a way that makes no sense, no matter which way you look at it.

I'm going to assume deposit fees are supposed to do 2 things: 1) Be a gold sink, and 2) discourage people from re-re-re-relisting items for 550% of market value until someone mistakenly buys them.
1) is already done much, much, much better by the AH cut.
2), deposit fees suck at. Because they're based on vendor value. That means:
- For items with no/low vendor value, you're still free to relist as much as you want. Like quest items, enchanting materials, librams etc. there's absolutely nothing stopping people from re-re-relisting their 517 auctions of 1 dream dust at 550% of market value.
- For items whose market value is very high compared to their vendor value, the deposit fees are so small that you can still comfortably re-re-list them. This is most pricegouged items, like expensive BoEs, flasks etc. In other words, deposit fees fail completely at trying to stop the most rampant forms of AH manipulation.
- For items where market value is about 3-5x the vendor price, they actually work well. You don't see a lot of people re-re-listing thorium bars, because the deposit costs are prohibitive. Yay! ...Except this is only a small fraction of all the stuff in the AH. Items where the deposit costs do their job are a minority.
- And here's the really bad one. Deposit fees completely kill the market for items whose market value is close to their vendor price. This means low level materials, most green BoEs, most crafted gear from proffs, recipes... these are just flat-out not worth selling in the AH because even if you put a really cheap price, you're still not sure that it will sell, and the loss from deposit costs is so great that you will lose a ton of money compared to just vendoring. Notice how most of these are things that low level players buy and sell in the AH. Deposit fees are really bad for the leveling crowd, while being almost irrelevant to the high-level crowd and the AH manipulators.

--

So, how do you make deposit fees that actually work?
Well, ideally they would be calculated based on auction price vs average market value. But for that, you need to calculate the average market value for all items, which is not easy, even for the server owners.
You could also try limiting how often you can relist something, or how many auctions you can have at the same time, etc etc. but these are all easily bypassed by just using bank alts on other accounts, so even if you come up with a working system that players like (not easy!!), it would be almost impossible to enforce.
Or, you could just not have deposit fees. Which does cause some problems, but is still a lot better than deposit fees based on vendor price.

[Karpfend]

So after seeing a few items return with the deposit fee attached I am helplessly confused. Do we always get our money back? Must the item sell for deposit return? And most of all: Why?
This seems like the deposit fee just gatekeeps broke people from using the ah to make a buck and nothing more.

The 5% sales tax I can kind of live with, though we all know it will get priced in and the people paying it are the buyers, especcially when it comes to raidmats.

[Fizzles]

I just want to know how adding AH deposits and cuts will help lead to a "healthy" economy from the dev who made this decision rather than it be stated vaguely to us without any explanation.

From most people's opinions, it will cripple the market for leveling gear and recipes, hurting levelers in the process.

[Geojak]

For the past 7 months I logged in daily to minimum do my ah business.

I feel empty now :(

My business based on buying base mats and making sure anything an engineer can created is always up in the ah for higher price for someone in desperate need has died abruptly.

It just doesn't work with deposits. Now people will have grind anything for themselves again.

The system we had was broken, but thus is not the solution

[Geojak]

How about this, only if you have more auctions listed than your current level, deposits are charged, for a lvl 60 that means you can have 60 items listed for free,the 61 onwards you pay.

Having it tied to lvl helps, becuase you can't just make more chars or accounts to go around this barrier, you have to level up for it!

This will stop 1 stock spam since it wastes free action slots

This will stop ah as bank abuse mostly, because again it eats free acutiond and there are limited.

This will help fix white items and recipes going for almost vendor prices because these waste free ah slots too. power User will just vendor instead if nothing much to earn from listing. Better list something else for free.

This will lower total auctions which helps if large ah could become an performance issue. If this is an issue, consider stop sorting the ah.

This will help protect newbies from robbing themselves, not understanding deposit cost and that their white blacksmith trash will never sell and deposits are gone.

This will help allow niche markets to function for specialists, even when they seldomly sell, if they choose to use their free auctions for that.

Problems: would need the ui to show 0 despost when below 60 and the proper number when above which is currently displayed or else it becomes very gimmicky to check all the time if next one is still free or already over the top.

Second problem, this will basically mean bankchars have to become lvl 60 chars. Not a purely bad thing imo.

Third problem. People with multiple 60 can split their ah business on multiple chars, almost functioning like in the past l, just with profit cut now. I see this as OK issue, since its first lots of work to manage multiple chars ah business, secocdly having multiple 60 getting a small advantage is okayish. Not a show stoper problem in my opinion.

[Karpfend]

How about this, only if you have more auctions listed than your current level, deposits are charged, for a lvl 60 that means you can have 60 items listed for free,the 61 onwards you pay...

The problem with this I see is, that it will benefit mainly old players with many chars or access to many 60 chars of players that have left. If I asked around I could easily get 10 lvl 60 chars to do my ah business. So this change in the end again would hurt fresher players most, or players that dont want to spend months leveling when their main enjoyment is stocking the market with their professions.

[Ezuba]

Agreed here. I like the idea of it but someone like myself with 6 60s benefits greatly, not that I spam small auctions like a chump...

[Meownaa]

Alright, I’ve slept over it guys! *Knuckles cracking*
Apologies for the long post, this discussion is important to me.

I know a lot of the things I am listing now have been said enough over the course of the last days, still I feel the need to comment on some for the sake of completions.

In case someone missed it, Jamey explained yesterday that “Item floods, abuse of AH and gold sinks are the main reasons for the change. However, we're discussing alternate ways and/or rates.”


My takes on the changes
- The auction house cut seems to be a reasonable addition as a gold sink. However, as Karpfend said, we all know the customer will pay that in the long run. And in this case this means the poor pay more, the rich keep their money. I sincerely wish I am wrong, but I’d be more comfortable with a much larger gold sink at a different location.
- Greens and Blues in the ah are fantastic for the community, and really add to the PvE element of the server. Together we stand, here, take what I found for a low price. Let’s try to bring that back somehow and not charge charitable people.
- Inflation and economy are huge problems in classic WoW and retail still. Why is the hope that Turtle’s comparable minor problems will be fixed by introducing the same flawed system?
- Basing the deposit fee on vendor price is hugely problematic. Enough have said it, I will just add that, with all the problems the change entail for me, I am lucky to be an alchemist as I can at least still continue to work in my profession, unlike leatherworker, tailor or blacksmith’s.
- Nothing about the fees will stop people listing their 1 linen for 8 pages if they can be sure it will be bought - which is sadly more likely if they flood a lot of 1 piece auctions in the case of vanilla ah users (not aux, which lists the lowest price per stack and not per item). However, the suggested adjustments of, for example, as many free auctions a one has lvl, might mitigate that.
- I am assuming the above was meant by item flood. If item flood simply meant there are too many items, then I cannot agree (from a crafting material etc. standpoint). If there are actually too many items, the price will drop below vendor price and people vendor instead, destroying the item for the community. Since the deposit fees work off vendor prices, this is just the same result with extra steps. If an item is there in huge quantity, but still above vendor price, doesn’t that simply mean it is wanted and needed by the community and should not be deleted?

What I have been observing so far
- Frankly speaking, I am not lacking gold. If I wanted, this would be the perfect time to swoop in and make a buck. I know there are people who have A LOT of gold, who are doing exactly that now. And they can, because the not-so-well-off competition of regular players seems to wait it out for now. Buying all the herbs to sell it for higher was a lot harder when, you know, the ah was full of low priced herbs! There are some people who do abuse ah, and currently, it has become easier.
- So, the deposit is a fee that get’s taken away if the auction is cancelled or unsuccessful, but returned for a successful auction. Yesterday someone explained that this is an incentive to sell low and it made sense.
However, today I thought it over again and realized that this was not at all the effect it had on my thinking the last three days, neither on any other trader I’ve discussed this with.
My response was: I need to raise the price to make up for the loss. If the price will become too high, I will not provide this product in ah any longer. That’s it.
Of course there is always the possibility that I am just a dirty panicking capitalist and the majority of the people will act as intended and lower the prices, we will find out together.
- Certain material prices are sure to rise. I’m giving mageroyal as an example, because the price had been stable for 20c for as long as I can remember. I put up one mageroyal up for 20c, but the deposit fee is already 12c. Like hell people are going to pay that. It might just make the sweet low level potions less available, mageroyal might mostly be offered but not bought as material and become less useful. Same goes for many low level recipes. Instead of adding to someone's experience or the community, they will be vendored or too expensive for low level players.
- Since tuesday I have been quite cautious about what to put up, took notes about fees and changing prices and want to give the one standing out most as an example for the general trend as noticed by me.
Frost Oil: Price was relatively stable for about a year ~1g. It became cheaper this year, until a little while ago someone apparently cleared their bank char and heavily undercut for 30s. I am doing some trial and error, putting up frost oil yesterday for the same as the “cheapest” currently available in ah. Someone -bought it-. Three different people.
Summary:
Price for frost oil on monday this week: 30s
Price for frost oil on thursday this week: 1g79s.
→ My conclusion: It seems certain potion prices for the consumer have jumped up rapidly as an immediate response to the fee introduction. I will monitor and hope it will swing back to a level that benefits both producer and customer. (Before anyone gets ready to scream, no, I am not putting it up for that price again. :P That’s just impudent. I am, however, charging 20s more than before now to make up for it sitting some weeks in ah, as it usually did.)

So, this is a proper wall of text I guess.
I know that I am heavily biased, but from where I stand currently I find it unlikely that the introduction of deposit fees will combat item flood, auction flipping or lower the prices. My prediction is that it does neither for the first and worsens the two latter. As a gold sink it might prove effective, but to me it seems there are just more community friendly ways.

[Meownaa]

For the past 7 months I logged in daily to minimum do my ah business.

I feel empty now :(

My business based on buying base mats and making sure anything an engineer can created is always up in the ah for higher price for someone in desperate need has died abruptly.

It just doesn't work with deposits. Now people will have grind anything for themselves again.

The system we had was broken, but thus is not the solution

(Emotional statement ahead, no logic arguments to see here)
Last but not least, I want to add to what msg already summed up yesterday.
My favorite part of Turtle is the interaction with the community, and while I have neither the skills nor the time to ever go raiding, I take a lot of joy in providing materials needed and thus contributing to someone's success and personal gaming experience. I love to log on every few days to craft and restock, love to be able to make most potions available for any player at any time and genuinely feel bad when someone messages me because I failed to keep something in stock in ah.
The introduction of deposit fees would definitely result in a huge loss if I kept everything in stock as I did now, I don’t need to wait to see that.
While that is OK if the server as a whole profits from a better working economy with this method, I am very sad to have lost a dear hobby so suddenly. Like msg said, I feel empty inside, too.

[Geojak]

well its done, there is no way back for me now.

i sorted out part of my old ah invetory into new dedicated bankchars and vendored the rest. many useless recipes, even white ones or vendor stuff like simple wood had to go to the trash. it doest make sene for me to put these up to make money from people seeking convenience from having everyting available at the ah.

i am trough with business. let other people make gold now.

[Meownaa]

well its done, there is no way back for me now.

i sorted out part of my old ah invetory into new dedicated bankchars and vendored the rest. many useless recipes, even white ones or vendor stuff like simple wood had to go to the trash. it doest make sene for me to put these up to make money from people seeking convenience from having everyting available at the ah.

i am trough with business. let other people make gold now.

Makes me quite sad to read this. Especially because I can't shake the thought that you might have been able to sell most of your stock with a months or so notice and plan ahead.

[Jambiya]

Time to rp a black market salesmon that undercuts the greedy cartel auctions lol.

[Vociferous]

So I just read some of this. Being a new player to the server and seeing auctions like mageroyal going for 20c a piece... there is no way for me to make money. What the AH caused before this change was the rich keeping the money and the poor making no money. What will come of the changes? The rich will have to spend more money, which means prices go up, which means low level people can compete. Please keep AH fees. Raise them to about 20% vendor value. Let the AH take a cut. This stops whales. This stops bots.

I read some more... the cost of the AH needs to go up. This and this alone is what stops abuse. Make it costly to flood the market with low cost materials.

We all appreciate that people like to help lower levels but flooding the AH with low cost stuff is not the option. I'm almost level 40 with nowhere near enough gold for a mount let alone missed spells for training. Reason I'm broke? I can't use the AH. if I have 20 heavy leather to vendor for 30s or put on the AH for 35s, because whales want to keep the market flooded.... where's my opportunity to make a profit? 5s profit? Pitiful... This means I am vendoring everything I find because some whale put it on AH for the vendor price already because they don't need the gold "they just want to help". This here is a viscous cycle.

While adding a fee and AH cut, someone could still put stuff on AH at a reasonably low price to help people, they will lose money doing so and if that's their prerogative then so be it. Otherwise they can raise the price to compete with other players.

Want to make changes? I do believe the horde and alliance AH are combined? Remove this feature. This will stop 1000 low level players from putting thousands of the same items across the AH. This will help limit it horde and alliance.

edit edit edit....

Stop level 60's from posting thousands of light leather to try to make a profit. I do believe one of the biggest factors to the economy is the lack of high level players vs new players. A level 60 who can go farm 1000 leather and put it on AH for nothing, just to make a few gold, compared to a low level putting up a stack of leather trying to make money for spell training.

[Meownaa]

Time to rp a black market salesmon that undercuts the greedy cartel auctions lol.

Yes please!
Fight me, ingame rp merchant battle!

[Meownaa]

So I just read some of this. Being a new player to the server and seeing auctions like mageroyal going for 20c a piece... there is no way for me to make money. What the AH caused before this change was the rich keeping the money and the poor making no money. What will come of the changes? The rich will have to spend more money, which means prices go up, which means low level people can compete. Please keep AH fees. Raise them to about 20% vendor value. Let the AH take a cut. This stops whales. This stops bots.

I read some more... the cost of the AH needs to go up. This and this alone is what stops abuse. Make it costly to flood the market with low cost materials.

Want to make changes? I do believe the horde and alliance AH are combined? Remove this feature. This will stop 1000 low level players from putting thousands of the same items across the AH. This will help limit it horde and alliance.

Hello and welcome!
Nice to see the discussion continues.

You don’t need to be concerned by mageroyal, nobody makes money off 20c materials. I understand you are trying to sell materials with herbalism and skinning? When I was level 40, I didn’t have enough money to buy a mount or all skills too. As far as I understand that’s just a feature of vanilla, to make you choose and really hype that mount up. If you want to make money out of herbalism, I’d say you need to skill it and pick herbs a little bit above your zone, check the ah beforehand to see what’s worth it. Don’t waste your time on Khadgar’s Whisker or Mageroyal, but if you want to go batshit crazy on Blindweed which is far more profitable, everyone will thank you for that and you can earn money. If you are, as I read from your post, struggling for gold and want to earn it through trades and professions, fishing is a very viable option still. Go for Oily Blackmouth and Stonescale and once again, you’ll have a lot of fans and a steady stream of income.

Additionally right now the server is in an interesting situation: Many, many new players like you have flooded the market with cheap low level materials. If you take a look at the auctions, you will see many different names, not really huge “Whales” who control the oh-so-profitable (sarcasm end) linen market. To heavily add to the problem all the huge raidgroups finished and/or became more or less inactive. That left a huge gap in the economy, so you are currently witnessing a still crashing market with very low demand and an alltime high supply.

I have to admit I’m a little bit confused. Why will the cost of ah going up stop abuse? If the cost for trading go up by a very high trading tax as suggested by you, will that not simply lead to poor and new players not being able to buy OR sell, thus being shut off from the ah, thus rich and older players having a monopoly on auction house profits?

As for the crossfaction feature, I don’t think anybody wants that to go. Even if it would halve the market, the positive features heavily outweigh this effect.

[Geojak]

So I just read some of this. Being a new player to the server and seeing auctions like mageroyal going for 20c a piece... there is no way for me to make money. What the AH caused before this change was the rich keeping the money and the poor making no money. What will come of the changes? The rich will have to spend more money, which means prices go up, which means low level people can compete. Please keep AH fees. Raise them to about 20% vendor value. Let the AH take a cut. This stops whales. This stops bots.

I read some more... the cost of the AH needs to go up. This and this alone is what stops abuse. Make it costly to flood the market with low cost materials.

We all appreciate that people like to help lower levels but flooding the AH with low cost stuff is not the option. I'm almost level 40 with nowhere near enough gold for a mount let alone missed spells for training. Reason I'm broke? I can't use the AH. if I have 20 heavy leather to vendor for 30s or put on the AH for 35s, because whales want to keep the market flooded.... where's my opportunity to make a profit? 5s profit? Pitiful... This means I am vendoring everything I find because some whale put it on AH for the vendor price already because they don't need the gold "they just want to help". This here is a viscous cycle.

While adding a fee and AH cut, someone could still put stuff on AH at a reasonably low price to help people, they will lose money doing so and if that's their prerogative then so be it. Otherwise they can raise the price to compete with other players.

Want to make changes? I do believe the horde and alliance AH are combined? Remove this feature. This will stop 1000 low level players from putting thousands of the same items across the AH. This will help limit it horde and alliance.

edit edit edit....

Stop level 60's from posting thousands of light leather to try to make a profit. I do believe one of the biggest factors to the economy is the lack of high level players vs new players. A level 60 who can go farm 1000 leather and put it on AH for nothing, just to make a few gold, compared to a low level putting up a stack of leather trying to make money for spell training.

Sry but this is just the complete opposite of my experience. I level up from dez to March and I never had thus much gold.
When I was lvl 40 I had already 300g, when I hit 50 I bought the mind control, when I hit 60, I immideitly bought the fast mount.

And I never Grundes the hole way, just a habdull times or getting mithril in arathi.

You ask how? By using the ah of course.
Don't vendor anything, everything goes to the ah above vendor
But mostly engineering parts made me money that time. Finding niches nobody sold things yet.

The cheap ah with no fees meant, poor newbies could actually afford to buy things, and also allowed them to increase their profits above just vendoring.

But I do agree with more and more ppl joining, prices kept dropping further. The profit cut was absolutely necessary

[Karpfend]

So I just read some of this. Being a new player to the server and seeing auctions like mageroyal going for 20c a piece... there is no way for me to make money. What the AH caused before this change was the rich keeping the money and the poor making no money. What will come of the changes? The rich will have to spend more money, which means prices go up, which means low level people can compete. Please keep AH fees. Raise them to about 20% vendor value. Let the AH take a cut. This stops whales. This stops bots.

I read some more... the cost of the AH needs to go up. This and this alone is what stops abuse. Make it costly to flood the market with low cost materials.

We all appreciate that people like to help lower levels but flooding the AH with low cost stuff is not the option. I'm almost level 40 with nowhere near enough gold for a mount let alone missed spells for training. Reason I'm broke? I can't use the AH. if I have 20 heavy leather to vendor for 30s or put on the AH for 35s, because whales want to keep the market flooded.... where's my opportunity to make a profit? 5s profit? Pitiful... This means I am vendoring everything I find because some whale put it on AH for the vendor price already because they don't need the gold "they just want to help". This here is a viscous cycle.

While adding a fee and AH cut, someone could still put stuff on AH at a reasonably low price to help people, they will lose money doing so and if that's their prerogative then so be it. Otherwise they can raise the price to compete with other players.

Want to make changes? I do believe the horde and alliance AH are combined? Remove this feature. This will stop 1000 low level players from putting thousands of the same items across the AH. This will help limit it horde and alliance.

edit edit edit....

Stop level 60's from posting thousands of light leather to try to make a profit. I do believe one of the biggest factors to the economy is the lack of high level players vs new players. A level 60 who can go farm 1000 leather and put it on AH for nothing, just to make a few gold, compared to a low level putting up a stack of leather trying to make money for spell training.

You write these things like you were an financial expert, balancing auction hosues since 2012, still I don't see any evidence, reasoning or logic behind what you wrote.

First of all, the reason why the market is flooded with cheap low level mats is the fact the server is having a huge influx of new players, deflating the economy (everyone is talking about gold inflation, but in fact over the last few months living and raiding on turtle got cheaper). If you truly think there is capitalist players trying to get rich by 5c profit margins on mageroyal you are very mistaken.

Second, what I am reading is "I can't make a quick profit because the market is saturated, thats why I want everyone else to suffer". This community is about playing together, helping each other, rp over faction warfare. You complain about "whales" and bots, while at the same time wanting the prices to go up. The main factors driving up prices is people speculating and high fees keeping players from using the ah alltogether. Speculating obviously gets easier with less items on the ah, you just have to price in the deposit costs and have the capital to control the market.
The reason a mageroyal is 20c is because it is worth 20c. It is a very low level material only used in bad leveling potions. If it does get more expensive you may call it mageroyalcoin, but i promise no one will buy it to level their alchemy skill. Poor people will just stop buying it and those selling will see it return to their mailbox more often than not, maybe being lucky enough to have a well of player leveling a prof now and then.

Third I do have to ask what mode you are leveling in, because if you are playing warmode and complaining about being broke, that is a you problem.

[Vociferous]

So there are a handful of items that make money. Those very few items that are in demand almost all the time. That's normal. What's not normal is everything on the AH at the SAME PRICE as the vendor. How can you make gold if it's the same price as vendor? Why put anything on AH? I have posted less than half a dozen things on the AH because the only profit margin outside of that is a couple silver. If I made 5s on every auction I posted, which is wishful thinking the way the AH is right now, it would take well over 1000 auctions to make mount money.

So the only way to make gold is to drop my professions and pick up engineering to sell items? You see this is unsustainable right? What this does is cater to those few professions. I'm sure the server was much different a few months back. As of now the only thing worth even posting on the AH is armor and weapons. Maybe things will change higher levels but under level 40 there is not one thing I can farm to post on the AH to make gold. A lot of that has to do with a high population and supply and demand. But the market got so messed up with free postings and dragging the prices down to vendor price.

I want to note that everything being vendor price on AH is my main argument. There is no option to make gold above vendoring items.

So I have to ask, at level 40, how would you recommend making money on the AH for a mount? Farm leather and sell it for the same price as vendor? So why am I even using the AH?

Let's digress to the AH fees. You say it will stop people from using the AH? Wrong. It will stop people from posting items just to post items. If there is profit involved, people will sell it or buy it. If there is no profit, i.e. mageroyal being 20c a piece, you shouldn't see them on the AH. The AH is not there to help other players, it's there to help the economy grow so people can trade. What you're doing is saying a black lotus is the same as a mageroyal. It's all there to help people. But at some point, which we are there, it is unsustainable and the market is going to crash. Reason? No fees, people kept posting stuff till it hit vendor price and that's it. Sure, a few people posted cheap stuff on the AH to help. Everyone else needed gold for stuff and kept lowering and lowering the price to TRY to make gold. You get the cycle here? The AH fee is required.

[Karpfend]

But I do agree with more and more ppl joining, prices kept dropping further. The profit cut was absolutely necessary

I do not agree with this, everything becoming cheaper because of higher availability already means a huge individual profit cut, in fact thats what the post you replied to was complaining about i understand, but blaming "whales" (I don't know a single 60 farming light leather to make profit btw, this is not EvE Online). A lot of wealthy and industrious players have quit playing over the last couple months, not to mention the decrease in active raiding, resulting in high supply and low demands. It was not a good time to make an easy buck by just blindly listing things everybody farmed, but a great time to stock up on materials and level professions.

The point I am making here is, yes the server has way more gold now than it used to have a while ago, but on a per capita basis wealth decreased, and prices even on level 60 reflect that.

And once this huge generation of new players starts raiding, the demand will rise sharply again, I am not sure the availability will keep up with it, now that the maket is so weak. I expect people, that stocked up before the crash, will make a huge profit in the coming weeks.

[Vociferous]

But I do agree with more and more ppl joining, prices kept dropping further. The profit cut was absolutely necessary

I do not agree with this, everything becoming cheaper because of higher availability already means a huge individual profit cut, in fact thats what the post you replied to was complaining about i understand, but blaming "whales" (I don't know a single 60 farming light leather to make profit btw, this is not EvE Online). A lot of wealthy and industrious players have quit playing over the last couple months, not to mention the decrease in active raiding, resulting in high supply and low demands. It was not a good time to make an easy buck by just blindly listing things everybody farmed, but a great time to stock up on materials and level professions.

The point I am making here is, yes the server has way more gold now than it used to have a while ago, but on a per capita basis wealth decreased, and prices even on level 60 reflect that.

And once this huge generation of new players starts raiding, the demand will rise sharply again, I am not sure the availability will keep up with it, now that the maket is so weak. I expect people, that stocked up before the crash, will make a huge profit in the coming weeks.

The server having more gold and people having more gold does not = in any way shape or form mean the AH prices have to be at the floor. More gold should mean more people buying items from AH which means supply goes down which means prices go up. What we have here is no one buying or selling except the few players than can afford to do so.
Or more gold = less people needing gold = less auctions posted.

[Meownaa]

So there are a handful of items that make money. Those very few items that are in demand almost all the time. That's normal. What's not normal is everything on the AH at the SAME PRICE as the vendor. How can you make gold if it's the same price as vendor? Why put anything on AH? I have posted less than half a dozen things on the AH because the only profit margin outside of that is a couple silver. If I made 5s on every auction I posted, which is wishful thinking the way the AH is right now, it would take well over 1000 auctions to make mount money.

So the only way to make gold is to drop my professions and pick up engineering to sell items? You see this is unsustainable right? What this does is cater to those few professions. I'm sure the server was much different a few months back. As of now the only thing worth even posting on the AH is armor and weapons. Maybe things will change higher levels but under level 40 there is not one thing I can farm to post on the AH to make gold. A lot of that has to do with a high population and supply and demand. But the market got so messed up with free postings and dragging the prices down to vendor price.

I want to note that everything being vendor price on AH is my main argument. There is no option to make gold above vendoring items.

So I have to ask, at level 40, how would you recommend making money on the AH for a mount? Farm leather and sell it for the same price as vendor? So why am I even using the AH?

Yes, my point exactly.
A lot of new players → saturated market for low level materials → They sell for vendor price.
That was my argument yesterday for why we do not need to manually cut the item flood, it regulates itself.
So what does the fee introduction do now?
Every item get's more expensive to sell. This heavily affects low level trade items, which might not be affordable to the people who previously bought them (because high level players usually don't care about stuff below lvl 40).

So I see you are frustrated and take an interest in the topic. But what frustrates you is not being able to sell materials as you maybe did on a server with a more balanced population. With the still incoming surge of new players on turtle, this one option is simply not good, but the fees will only make it worse for players like you, as I am fairly sure you will find it even harder to make money with low level mats. Low prices are a result of high supply, and now it will drag the prices down to vendor price + fee, so no difference to now except a little more expensive to buy.

At level 40, I recommend dropping a strategy that does not work currently. There were always professions that simply did not make money, for example tailor, enchanter, leatherworker in most cases. The good news is that 40 opens up new leveling zoney, better quest rewards, farm different things that sell for more (for example, as stated above, fishes or high level herbs).

[Vociferous]

So there are a handful of items that make money. Those very few items that are in demand almost all the time. That's normal. What's not normal is everything on the AH at the SAME PRICE as the vendor. How can you make gold if it's the same price as vendor? Why put anything on AH? I have posted less than half a dozen things on the AH because the only profit margin outside of that is a couple silver. If I made 5s on every auction I posted, which is wishful thinking the way the AH is right now, it would take well over 1000 auctions to make mount money.

So the only way to make gold is to drop my professions and pick up engineering to sell items? You see this is unsustainable right? What this does is cater to those few professions. I'm sure the server was much different a few months back. As of now the only thing worth even posting on the AH is armor and weapons. Maybe things will change higher levels but under level 40 there is not one thing I can farm to post on the AH to make gold. A lot of that has to do with a high population and supply and demand. But the market got so messed up with free postings and dragging the prices down to vendor price.

I want to note that everything being vendor price on AH is my main argument. There is no option to make gold above vendoring items.

So I have to ask, at level 40, how would you recommend making money on the AH for a mount? Farm leather and sell it for the same price as vendor? So why am I even using the AH?

Yes, my point exactly.
A lot of new players → saturated market for low level materials → They sell for vendor price.
That was my argument yesterday for why we do not need to manually cut the item flood, it regulates itself.
So what does the fee introduction do now?
Every item get's more expensive to sell. This heavily affects low level trade items, which might not be affordable to the people who previously bought them (because high level players usually don't care about stuff below lvl 40).

So I see you are frustrated and take an interest in the topic. But what frustrates you is not being able to sell materials as you maybe did on a server with a more balanced population. With the still incoming surge of new players on turtle, this one option is simply not good, but the fees will only make it worse for players like you, as I am fairly sure you will find it even harder to make money with low level mats. Low prices are a result of high supply, and now it will drag the prices down to vendor price + fee, so no difference to now except a little more expensive to buy.

At level 40, I recommend dropping a strategy that does not work currently. There were always professions that simply did not make money, for example tailor, enchanter, leatherworker in most cases. The good news is that 40 opens up new leveling zoney, better quest rewards, farm different things that sell for more (for example, as stated above, fishes or high level herbs).

The point where you tell me I can't play how I want to play, I have to play how the server operates i.e. get the correct professions, shows me there is something really wrong and won't have a sustainable player base of new players because most of them are going to jump ship. If there was a fee for posting auctions at my low level that means that ALL the auctions on the AH are going to be marked up. Those people that 'might' lose money will stop posting crap on the AH and only sell what they farm and know will sell. THIS helps the economy. This allows for other people to try and price things. This server is worse than socialism lol.

if you factor into your price the AH fee and cut and mark up accordingly, what's the difference to you? you make the same amount of gold. the difference is low level players can compete at this point. that AH cut and fee is going to throw your price scheme off and allow for more than a 5s gain.

[Meownaa]

The server having more gold and people having more gold does not = in any way shape or form mean the AH prices have to be at the floor. More gold should mean more people buying items from AH which means supply goes down which means prices go up. What we have here is no one buying or selling except the few players than can afford to do so.
Or more gold = less people needing gold = less auctions posted.

I can assure you the herb market is very lively, with more people buying and selling than ever, which has lead to more affordability and an overall drastically cheaper lifestyle compared to half a year ago.

You have to keep in mind that inflation is not just "more gold overall" but "more gold per person".

[Meownaa]

The point where you tell me I can't play how I want to play, I have to play how the server operates i.e. get the correct professions, shows me there is something really wrong and won't have a sustainable player base of new players because most of them are going to jump ship. If there was a fee for posting auctions at my low level that means that ALL the auctions on the AH are going to be marked up. Those people that 'might' lose money will stop posting crap on the AH and only sell what they farm and know will sell. THIS helps the economy. This allows for other people to try and price things. This server is worse than socialism lol.

if you factor into your price the AH fee and cut and mark up accordingly, what's the difference to you? you make the same amount of gold. the difference is low level players can compete at this point. that AH cut and fee is going to throw your price scheme off and allow for more than a 5s gain.

I am sorry if you felt offended. You asked for a suggestion on how to make money from lvl 40 on, I gave you some.
Vanilla Wow is not a balanced game. Most people will tell you: "Want money? Play alchemy or go home." And there is truth in that. I am really sorry for it to be like this, but the real world is the same. Many cute ladies love to knit on Etsy and would love it to be a fulltime job, but the demand is not there for all of them. (Sorry for the silly example) The market it literally telling them "how they can play and how they can't", and this is the same in every market, even in a virtual one.
And by any means, go ahead and skin as many things as you want if it brings you joy!! If you want to make a profit in a free market though, you can't demand the market catering to your interests, it is the other way around.

Edit:
I want to add that the fees are based on vendor price, not market value. These change exponentially the higher the level goes, for example a leather lvl one can go for 30c vendor and 1s market, a high level has maybe 5s vendor but 70s market. So when taking the fee in percentage in mind and not in silver, the new deposit fees HIGHLY impact the low level market and the high level not so much.

[Vociferous]

The server having more gold and people having more gold does not = in any way shape or form mean the AH prices have to be at the floor. More gold should mean more people buying items from AH which means supply goes down which means prices go up. What we have here is no one buying or selling except the few players than can afford to do so.
Or more gold = less people needing gold = less auctions posted.

I can assure you the herb market is very lively, with more people buying and selling than ever, which has lead to more affordability and an overall drastically cheaper lifestyle compared to half a year ago.

You have to keep in mind that inflation is not just "more gold overall" but "more gold per person".

I have to say that the whole point of the AH in blizzards eyes is - level 60 need herb. level 60 too busy raiding to farm herb. level 60 makes tons of gold in raids. level 60 buy herb. that gold trickles down. when the prices are at vendor there is no way to make gold. I don't understand how people are making any profit off the AH other than a couple silver. So what stops me from (lets not use light leather I guess I can't be so specific) posting every single day the same item at the same price, at vendor price, so no one else can put anything on the market except to lose money? What happens when no one buys those auctions except for the 1 person posting pages and pages? so 1 person makes the money. This is how this is working here.

[Karpfend]

This server is worse than socialism lol.

Dude, this server had the most free market of all servers, we are arguing for a free market. And as free markets tend to do, it resulted in very low prices for everything, allowing everybody to grow quickly.

You are arguing for taxes for the sake of deminishing supply. You are arguing for introducing market mechanisms. Who exactly is the socialist here?

(Btw I like socialism IRL, it saves lifes)

[Meownaa]

I have to say that the whole point of the AH in blizzards eyes is - level 60 need herb. level 60 too busy raiding to farm herb. level 60 makes tons of gold in raids. level 60 buy herb. that gold trickles down. when the prices are at vendor there is no way to make gold. I don't understand how people are making any profit off the AH other than a couple silver. So what stops me from (lets not use light leather I guess I can't be so specific) posting every single day the same item at the same price, at vendor price, so no one else can put anything on the market except to lose money? What happens when no one buys those auctions except for the 1 person posting pages and pages? so 1 person makes the money. This is how this is working here.

Yeah, quite possible that's the reason.
And I love that it was very different on Turtle until now, and I am afraid it will turn into what you describe.

[Vociferous]

Example. I am going to post 20 pages of fadeleaf on the AH until they all sell. I don't need the gold. I am going to post them all at the same price as the vendor. If anyone tries to compete, well they will have to sell it at a loss on the AH or sell it to a vendor. Let's say someone does want to post on the AH the same fadeleaf. if someone has 20 pages of it already listed, what are the chances anything else will be seen? Won't you just buy it from that 1 person and move on?

Point being is that 1 person that holds the lowest buyout always has the most profit. This is the reason AH fees are needed!

Yes a flat fee that can be calculated into the cost won't have much affect but to raise the already low prices. But an AH cut at a % cannot be exactly calculated with ease into the price and fee. Makes the market move. A fee will cause the poster to post only x amount of the herb and hope they sell, allowing for others to buy that herb and post more either lower or higher priced.

[Meownaa]

Example. I am going to post 20 pages of fadeleaf on the AH until they all sell. I don't need the gold. I am going to post them all at the same price as the vendor. If anyone tries to compete, well they will have to sell it at a loss on the AH or sell it to a vendor. Let's say someone does want to post on the AH the same fadeleaf. if someone has 20 pages of it already listed, what are the chances anything else will be seen? Won't you just buy it from that 1 person and move on?

Point being is that 1 person that holds the lowest buyout always has the most profit. This is the reason AH fees are needed!

Honestly, please do. I love Fadeleaf, you can never have enough of it. I'll make Shadow Oil and Invisibility Potions and sell them at a profit, thankfully those are always in demand. Fadeleaf at vendor price will be gone in minutes because they are a sought after commodity. You can also notify me if you put them up and I'll buy them, no sweat. Or sell them to me directly to spare us both the fee. (Look at me devs, I am being encouraged to make deals by talking to people instead of using the ah, as somebody said you want us to!)

[Karpfend]

Example. I am going to post 20 pages of fadeleaf on the AH until they all sell. I don't need the gold. I am going to post them all at the same price as the vendor. If anyone tries to compete, well they will have to sell it at a loss on the AH or sell it to a vendor. Let's say someone does want to post on the AH the same fadeleaf. if someone has 20 pages of it already listed, what are the chances anything else will be seen? Won't you just buy it from that 1 person and move on?

Point being is that 1 person that holds the lowest buyout always has the most profit. This is the reason AH fees are needed!

Please do, I'll buy them and make pots. Because Shadow Oil and Invis potions are a lot more profitable than light leather kits. If there is no demand for something now, don't expect that to change by making the commodity more expensive. If there is demand for something, it will sell for the right price.

[Vociferous]

Example. I am going to post 20 pages of fadeleaf on the AH until they all sell. I don't need the gold. I am going to post them all at the same price as the vendor. If anyone tries to compete, well they will have to sell it at a loss on the AH or sell it to a vendor. Let's say someone does want to post on the AH the same fadeleaf. if someone has 20 pages of it already listed, what are the chances anything else will be seen? Won't you just buy it from that 1 person and move on?

Point being is that 1 person that holds the lowest buyout always has the most profit. This is the reason AH fees are needed!

Honestly, please do. I love Fadeleaf, you can never have enough of it. I'll make Shadow Oil and Invisibility Potions and sell them at a profit, thankfully those are always in demand. Fadeleaf at vendor price will be gone in minutes because they are a sought after commodity. You can also notify me if you put them up and I'll buy them, no sweat. Or sell them to me directly to spare us both the fee. (Look at me devs, I am being encouraged to make deals by talking to people instead of using the ah, as somebody said you want us to!)

And this is the exact thing that is taken advantage of, keeping level 60's with high gold amounts and low levels with nothing. Why not take advantage of the player base with a broken AH?