The glyph market on my server (Wyrmrest Accord-US, Alliance) is dominated by two glyphers: me and the other guy. There are about three or four other glyphers who have a big enough impact on the market that I pay attention to them, but they don't have our tenacity. When The Other Guy comes online, (and I can see him in my friend list, on all my characters, of course), I know that in about a half-hour, I'll have approximately 800 auctions to cancel. Happily, that's only about 2g50s in relisting fees, but it's still about 25 minutes of work (cancel, then 60 seconds per 50 canceled auction in mailbox delay, then relist).
The problem is, the Other Guy is more diligent than I am. He clearly has me /friended as well, because as soon as I pop off of my Glypher, he pops on to his glypher. I can see him log in, because he's a friend on all my characters (see my earlier post about Friends With Benefits). I don't know any of his regular mains, so I can't see when he's online in general, just on his character. He may or may not know my mains- I've been careless in choosing a posting toon, since my glypher is my posting toon (I'm lazy), and is guilded with the rest of my mains. Not hard to figure out in the long run. The Other Guy runs a lot more of a stealthy operation. For all I know, it's really Fizzle in disguise. But probably not.
Anyway, at this point, I seem to only get about 30 minutes of exposure during primetime hours. I can log in on offpeak hours and do a relist if I really want to, but they're called "offpeak" for a reason. As soon as I relist, he logs in and does his own undercut. Because I don't have the intestinal fortitude to keep up the tit-for-tat game, mainly because I have more interesting things to do, like raid- my guild downed Rotface for the first time last night, woooo!
I have four options:
- Do nothing about it. I keep on going. Eventually he might get tired (unlikely, though) or just take a vacation. I'm still making money, just not as much as I'd prefer.
- Offer a collusion deal. I'm not sure how "legal" this is- Blizzard has the right to hand you a suspension or other disciplinary action for "market manipulation". But I could contact the other guy and see about getting into an agreement to not undercut each other, and/or break up the market.
- Step up my game. I could get another account, transfer all my glyphs to that account, and double-box my way to market domination. The cancel-relist practice is relatively automated (a few button presses every 10-20 minutes), so if I had that running in the background, it could be pretty simple. Of course, this boils down to paying $15/month to make more gold, which is kind of hinky.
- Nuke the market. This is especially viable after 3.3.3, when all the 2-ink glyphs will be reduced in materials to require only one ink. Given my current supply costs, I can profit from selling any 1-ink glyph for 4g. So, I post ALL my glyphs, no matter what the current market value is, at 4g or so. The trick here is: I get much lower profit per-glyph, but since that's the lowest price I can afford to sell at, I can post all my glyphs with 48 hour durations and leave them be. If I get undercut, it's because somebody else has a cheaper supply of inks, and I can't re-undercut them or else I'll lose money on the sale. Better to just list at 4g and see if they get bought up by someone else.
Effectively, although The Other Guy and I are competing, we're also cooperating. It's an interesting prisoner's dilemma game: provided we both undercut each other by small amounts, the prices in the market will dip down a bit, but not too far. I tend to undercut by 2g, he undercuts by 10s. It's really only a matter of time before the market gets nuked by somebody, either myself, the Other Guy, or some new guy in the field.
Because it's only a matter of time, I should probably push the button first. Next Tuesday sounds like a good day- provided that's the day 3.3.3 comes out. I'd better stock up on inks beforehand. WTB Adder's Tongue, 50s per, unlimited quantities. PST or COD.
Posts
You're missing option 5.
ReplyDeletePick a glyph. A seemingly innocuous one that is commonly bought, but doesn't sell for a ton.
Next, start cutting that glyph down by 3-5g per post. The reason is to find his base-line. If he's cancel/reposting that many that fast, he's using QA and won't notice the single glyph. You'll then find his base-line. This baseline is very very important.
If his base-line is higher then your material cost, Nuke him now as apposed to later. It's ESPECIALLY important to nuke him now. And here's how. You find his base-line on a one ink glyph. Next, to test, drop one of your two-ink glyphs to your cost-level. That's right, drop it to your bottom threshold. Better yet, drop it to HIS bottom threshold x2 (Of course, this would be (((1Ink - 40s) * 2) + 40s)). Now, see what happens. If he actually re-posts lower, Purposely pose yours close enough to one-inks, but only post one or two just in case he's trying to trick you out.
Now he will do one of two things, and this will show what he is. If he posts his 2 inks at a 1 ink cost, go ahead and let him. If you can pull this off enough, he'll eat his profits alive especially if you fight near the material cost line. If he buys yours out, hopefully you posted small amounts, though I'd reccomend doing this one or two at a time just to make sure.
Now, if he's a gevlonee, he'll be posting Below material cost because he's making back the cost of materials by selling Snowfall inks. In order to truly nuke him, you'll need to nuke both the glyph market AND snowfall market.
And that, my friend, is my competition killing method. Enjoy.
Also, it's sadly not me, I've got my own issues to deal with currently as you'll see on my blog.