speaking of banning, I've seen on numerous occasions in the last couple weeks (as he's been leveling at the same rate as me somehow), some guy has got four identical draenai shaman, all synced up to one main one. he leads one around, and the other three all mimic the leader's exact movements, down pat to every spellcast, every piece of gear.

On my old server, Archimonde, there was a little warlock gnome that would run around AV right when it came out and mass-dot people with his 3 gnome warlocks cleverly names Curly, Moe, and Larry, using what I assume is the same setup as that person. Was very lol.

Anyone have some brief tips on how to beat the AH? I've been turning over some strange dust and stuff but I think I made too many and so I can't get a great turnaround on them.

I have like 10 stacks of 20 now and there are only like 5 listed on my realm.

It is a really new realm. Thanks!

Also, wtf good is Auctioneer? I only use it to see how much stuff sells to vendor for.

One trick I used to use if I picked up a large amount of something, is to only sell it one stack at a time and leave the rest in my mailbox until I need to sell them. Be careful going too crazy buying stuff; people will intentionally post overpriced items just to skew people's auctioneer databases. If the popup says "for vendor", then that means it's selling for less than what you could sell it to a vendor for; obviously always buy these as they are free money.

Even if I didn't "game" the AH, I would use auctioneer just to price the items I post on the AH. And even if you don't sit around scanning the AH for bargains (can't blame you, most people would rather just go play the game), you can turn on automatic scanning while you list your own stuff so you can at least pick up the obvious stuff like vendor bargains.

Yeah, if you have too many items only put a couple stacks on the AH at a time. People will undercut you. If you find your bags/bank becoming too full, create an alt and mail yourself extra stuff. It takes any hour for any items to go back and forth (but not gold), so be careful what you send, but it can take some items you want but don't have room for off of your hands.

You can make money in any crafting profession easily, you just need to find which items are profitable to make on your server (and most good ideas you find will be profitable across all servers). Not every item will be profitable as there are too many idiots out there that sell stuff for less than the raw materials are worth, or are just trying to dump the item because it was easy to level up on (if you find an item like this, just sell the raw materials to maximize profit). Obviously if all you care about is leveling your profession from 1 to 375, then you will waste a lot of money. If your smart about it, it won't cost much to level and you should make money along the way (if your patient enough). If you want to invest more into getting to 375 faster then great, and the best opportunities await you at 375.

There is also lot's of money to be made in the AH. Not just buy low, sell high, but there are lots of items that can easily be converted into something else, that will sell for a good profit. A very basic example is that greater nether essences can be turned into 3 lesser nether essences (no tradeskill requried for this), and you can on average make 2-3 gold on each greater essence you buy (as long as you only buy when they are priced reasonably) and convert to 3 lesser nether essences. Essences are free to list too so you don't have to worry about AH posting fees. There are tons of other examples that make more money but i'm not willing to give away all my secrets here. All i have to say is that if you use your time wisely, you can make a lot more gold by buying cheap off the AH and selling higher. It can be as simple as buying a single item low and reselling for more, or finding neat combinations of converting items (whether it be through tradeskills or other methods), to buy the raw materials low and sell finished product high. Good luck!

For the most part, gathering professions (mining/herbalism) are way too time consuming to be worth it. Concentrate on buying cheap from all the gatherers and make your profit with minimal work. My formula is just to buy as cheap as possible, convert (often just click create all in the tradeskill window and walk away for a few minutes), then list everything higher, and wait for the profits. It really can be that simple if you look for the opportunites that are out there on every server.

I think it should be pointed out since this is 2p2 that becoming a miner and befriending a jewel crafter is the closest thing to poker/gambling in WoW. The JC will prospect whatever ore you give him (sometimes reluctantly, always tip), and you'll have a random chance of finding gems which can be cut and are used to socket in items that have slots for said gems.

For people just starting, something like mining/skinning is pretty foolproof. I would think (though I'm no WoW expert; highest lvl char of mine is a 62 hunter) that it's easier to level if these are your professions because you don't have to spend as much time in town bargain hunting; you can be out questing and many quests will have you killing some species that can be skinned or are near veins. It seems more efficient that way, imo. And if the market prices are higher than average for mats, I think it'd be better for you to have gathering professions than crafting. When the market is low, you can justs store your stuff till it goes higher.

@ OP - You see all the crazy, obsessed answers in here (counting my own)? This will be you in a year if you keep at this game. Fair warning.

If you want to get into trading on the AH, you'll need auctioneer for sure. Basically, it's a mod that keeps a database of price data (provided you scan the AH regularly). Also, use wow.allakhazam.com and www.wowecon.com as extra tools to figure out prices for items. Why is this stuff necessary? Well, here's why. You find item X and you want to sell it. WTF do you price it at? Yeah, you can "PC item X" in chat, but a lot of people will give you ******ed prices.

Now, when using those tools, use a little intelligence. Many items are not heavily traded, and with such a small sample size, the prices won't be super accurate. Also, prices vary from server to server. I found that generally items sold for ~3/4 of the Allahkazam listed median price because the general population just happened to be cheaper. Also, don't just run a scan with Auctioneer and be like "Wow! This item is 60% of the median price!" and buy it right away. Look at the sample size, check Allahkazam, think if people actually use it. Like someone said above, some people post bogus prices to **** with people's auctioneers.

When deciding what items to trade, make sure you have a feel for their "tradability" as I like to call it. I guess another word for this would be trade volume. Some items, like ores/dusts/other mats trade very fast. Some, like epics (well, most epics) have very low tradability. There's a tradeoff in the sense that the higher tradability a particular item has, the easier it is to trade but the more efficiently that market will be priced. It's easier to find inefficiencies in low volume markets, but it may take a week's worth of "WTS xxx" in the trade channel to unload it.

Trading can be a lot of fun, but at times it's really time-consuming. We're poker players, so use your poker background to estimate the potential gold/time. Don't fall into the stupid mentality that any 2g profit on a trade is a "free" 2g. A lot of young WoW kids think this way. If I buy an item for 10g and I have to WTS in trade chat for 3 hours to get 12g, forget it. If I can buy a stack of dusts for 10g that I know will immediately sell on AH for 12g, meaning the time invested is extremely little, then hell yeah, I'll take it. Generally, if you feel that you're going to have to sell an item in trade chat, it should be making you more profit since you're investing way more time.

Here are some tips on pricing in AH. When people want something, they want it now. This means if there's an item for 10g/10g bid/BO as well as another listing for 8g/12g, which one do you think will sell first? So always try to be marginally undercutting the competition. This could be as ridiculous as listing an item for 9g99s when all of the others are 10g. I generally favor higher turnover to higher profit. Meaning if the lowest price for item X is 20g right now, I'd prefer to price at 19g and get my gold faster than price at 22g, even if I know it will eventually sell. This is assuming I'm still making a decent profit at both prices of course. When I was playing, the items were ordered by buyout price, so it was important to make sure my buyout was the lowest. Now, I believe they're ordered by bids, so you need to look at both numbers. For example, if the cheapest in the list for item Y is 10g/20g, then you should do 9g99s/20g. Being listed first matters a lot. There have even been times where someone listed theirs as 9g99s/9g99s, but I just do 9g/10g and mine get bought first.

Lastly, apply your poker bankroll management to trading. Even though this is pretty obvious and probably not that important, I'll mention it. If you have 100g, don't buy 50g items. OTOH, if you have 500g, then 50g items are probably fine. First, you won't be able to trade until that item is sold, and second, you might have to sell it at a loss. Not every item you buy will make a profit. Sometimes you'll realize that an item is worth less than you originally thought, or you'll find you would prefer to have the gold back rather than spend more time in trade chat, so you unload it at a loss. Unfortunately, at some point trading probably won't be worth your time anymore since the potential earn from trading gets capped out pretty early. When I didn't have that much gold, I was happy whenever I made 50g profit or even 10g. After I worked my roll into the thousands, there just aren't any items flying around that cost 500g and give 100g profit.

This (below) is something I posted in another WoW AH thread before. Maybe you'll find some use out of it.

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Here's what I've learned in my short time trading on the AH. Just a warning, I've only been doing this for the last week or two, but I've probably spent as much time trading as I did grinding. Also, I'm including trading in the trade channel along with trading on the AH. It's all the same to me.

First of all, get the add-on Auctioneer. Learn how to use it. Also, you can use Allakhazam.com and look up median AH prices on that site. Between those two tools, you should be able to get a good feel for what an item is worth. Auctioneer has a built in tool to scan for auctions below the market value. Of course, you don't want to just scan and then buy every item on the list. You need to eyeball the options and make good picks.

I try to pay attention to the trade volume of different items. This will determine how easily you are able to unload items after you buy them. It's just not worth it if you pick up an item for 1g but it takes you a week of "WTS xyz item" to unload it for 5g. I will categorize things below.

Green weapons/armor (tradability: low)
I personally think these are terrible. (These can be good to disenchant if you can get them low, but I'm just talking about straight trading here.) If you post them on the AH, it's so unlikely that someone is going to be looking for your specific item, so that basically means you have to sell it in the trade channel. I personally think this is a huge pain and I don't deal with these. Tried a few times, got stuck with [censored] items.

Blue weapons/armor (tradability: medium)
These are a little better, but you need to have some idea of which ones are good/bad. As an example, casters use cloth, so stats like intellect, and to a lesser degree spirit and stamina, are useful. I haven't played any of the fighting classes so I don't have that great idea of what amount of which stats are good. In general, I try to avoid these unless I can get an amazing deal, like < 25% market price, or if I know it's a high demand blue.

Purple weapons/armor (tradability: high)
These are the easiest to trade out of these 3. People want epics, and it's so much more likely that someone will do a scan of the AH for new purple gear, than blue, and moreso for blue than green.

Green recipes/books (tradability: low)
Don't bother.

Blue recipes/books (tradability: medium)
Some of the recipes are really high in demand (ie. fiery enchant, mongoose). I find that recipes < blue are not worthwhile, and even a lot of the blues are crap. The prices for the books (to teach spells) seem to fluctuate a lot and I've found that sometimes I can pick up something like Book: Gift of the Wild for 1g. But then it ends up taking me awhile to unload it, because 24h in the AH isn't always long enough, even if I'm listing it at 75% market price.

Purple recipes (tradability: low)
I've had a couple experiences with buying epic recipes for 500g that were supposedly worth 600-700g. My theory is that these are pretty rare, so if someone wants what you're selling, it's not going to matter to a rich 70 if it's 600g or 650g. You might not want to jump into these right away, as you'll find you can be stuck with them sometime. And it's hard to get a good estimate on the price. If you make one bad buy on a recipe that Allakhazam lists as 600g but it turns out you're server values it at 400g, you could be out a good amount of gold in the process, wiping all of your small 5-10g trades.

Goods used in crafting (tradability: high)
These include ore, cloth, dusts, essences, etc. In general, I'm not searching these for deals too much. It should be obvious that items with higher trade volume also tend to be more efficiently priced. I think if you get into this stuff, you'll find yourself nickel and diming for 1-2g at a time.

Cards (tradability: varies)
If you're going to buy/sell the cards (you know, the furies, blessings, warlords, etc cards), make sure you know which ones are good. I picked up the 2/3/4 of warlords (3 of each) at ~1g each, and I found myself having trouble unloading them for even a low price. On the other hand, the blessings cards are really in demand. I think these can be worthwhile if you're smart about it.

There are other items too, but I'm getting too lazy to list them all out. Basically, I look at the tradability of items. The higher it is, the lower profit margin I need to make it worth my time. If I see someone selling a stack of arcane dust for 12g, and I know I can immediately turn around and sell it on AH for 15g and it will be bought, then sure, I'll do it. On the other hand, if I can buy a lower traded item for 12g and eventually sell it for 15g after WTSing in the trade channel everyday for a week, forget it. You should look at your profit margins in nominal values rather than relative values. Making 50g on 200g purchase is obviously better than making 2g on a 2s purchase.

Items that you know people will search for, like dusts, ores, etc. Basically the high volume items. It's better to list these in AH. Much simpler on your part and you can dedicate your time elsewhere. Items with low trade volume should be sold in the trade channel.

Also, understand the idea of undercutting. Sorry, it's just a stupid joke I'll make because the kids who play WoW are sometimes way too young and stupid to understand the idea of basic supply and demand. I see people do this all the time: "Undercutting prices blah blah blah" and then I go take a look and I see 10 singles of item xyz for 10g and that guy's 5x stack for 60g. I was initially skeptical that an MMO which has been around for awhile would have such an inefficient market, but I was proven wrong very quickly after spending some time in the AH. In general, if I buy an item for 10g and I can sell it immediately for 17g or spend some time and squeeze 20g out of it, I will take the first option. You only have so much time/chat resources to spread among trading your different items, that instead of focusing on an extra 3g for this one, you could be focusing on acquiring a new item for 7g.

I'll post more if I think of anything, but I'm hoping that someone else will contribute their little tips/tricks that they've picked up during their playtime.

Oh, and to the OP, GL and HF. It's true that MMOs can kind of **** up people's lives, but there's some hefty selection bias behind all the stories you hear. Obviously, no one's going to write a new article about a healthy guy (or girl) who plays WoW a couple hours a week and lives a perfectly normal life. You're only going to hear about the people who play 80+ or 100+ hours/week (I was one of these for awhile ). Hopefully you don't get too into it and neglect poker. Assuming you don't, I think MMOs can be really fun. My problem is that I can't just be satisfied with being "ok". If I play an MMO, I want more and better gear. I want to be rich. I want to be high level. If I can't have those, I'd rather not play. So in the big scheme of things, it's obviously more profitable for me to just spend my time playing poker than WoW. In the long run, neither will give me much in terms of real life skills, but at least one brings in teh moniez!

Is there a way to edit auctioneer to take out the highest 10% and lowest 10% of prices? That would fix the ridiculous sell price problem.

Played for 5 hours last night. Gained almost 500k experience points, leveled to 65, got my epic ground mount, and played in Eye of the Storm for the first time and won! Pretty good night, imo.

Now I only have 3g.

For listing items you definitely can; there's an option now called "Stats: Std Dev" that does something to that effect. For buying items, I don't remember (I'm not playing wow right now) but if you hover the mouse over the item before buying it it shows you all kinds of stats that you can use to help infer if you're being had.

I tried my first instance last night and got owned. My group was a bunch of weenies anyways.

Which instance/what level were you?

Yeah, it happens. I realized once I hit 70 that doing instances < 70 with PUGs generally ends up in disaster, since people don't understand the idea of structured pulls and having a (real) tank/healer/3x DPS party.

Yea, I'm pretty much an instance snob in that I won't do them unless it's with good players I know or those from reputable guilds.

It was blackfathom deeps. Since I'm not going to poker tonight I might try it again. Hopefully someone will invite a huntard. :-/

Every now and then I read a thread like this and get close to convincing myself that I could balance WOW into the rest of my life and enjoy it.

Then I realize that this game is ****ing heroin and don't do it.

I feel like a recovered(ing?) addict who will have that small urge for the rest of their lives. All because of the deep, dark, evil hole that is WOW.

I only played for 3 months. I couldn't imagine the life-scarring that has occured to the people who have been playing since it came out.

Maybe most just don't have such an obsessive personality like me...

Cliff Notes: Keep off the junk.

I just went back and read Dazrath's entire post and this is gold. FWIW this is another reason not to buy items that cost like half your gold; you can afford the occasional mistake at small fractions of your money, and so it can be more efficient to buy up a ton of questionable items hoping that the profit from the good purchases > the loss from bad purchases. You can't buy enough items to do that if you tie up all your money in two or three bids.

Having a separate account with the risk of being banned is way more EV than manually farming for gold....

I guess $15 a month is worth less to me than several hours a week.

This isn't bannable if that is what you are trying to suggest. If a person wishes to play 4 accounts at once its his choice. Some people like the added challenge.

oh, i realize that if someone had four accounts and was playing them at once, there's nothing against that. but that's not what he was doing.

How can the clones mimic the original guys gear?