As part of the general Inscription job, you have to keep an eye on herb prices. Now that I have enough gold in the bank to buy herbs in bulk when they're cheap, that's what I do. Whenever I'm in the auction house, I scan the herb prices.
On my server, the good herbs (Lichbloom, Icethorn, Adder's Tongue - all of which mill for 6 inks per stack) go for about 1g per, give or take. On a busy day, they can drop down to 75s, or spike up to 1g50s per, depending on supply and demand, but you can usually expect to spend about 1g per herb, which works out to be about 20g per 6 inks of the sea, or 3.3g per ink. So at 1g per, that sets the profit ceiling at about 4g per glyph, including the auction house cut and 50s for a parchment. If you can get your herbs at 75s per, that reduces your ink cost to 2.5g / ink and means you can make more money selling glyphs at the same price. I, of course, subsidize my glyph making by selling snowfall ink-related objects, such as the ink itself, runescrolls of fortitude, and the occasional darkmoon card. That means even if I sell my glyphs for 2g per, I make an overall profit over the cost of the inks.
But what happens when something changes that cost calculation significantly? Say, you log in one day to find an absolute ton of icethorn on the market for 10g per stack. That's 50s per herb, or 1.6g per ink. That's a HUGE price reduction, and can lead to tremendous profits. I also got a ton of frost lotuses for pretty much half-off, to feed into my burgeoning flask industry (harder to get a handle on, since there are so few actual flasks to sell, but with all my excess herbs it is pretty much a needed thing).
Given the volume of the herbs being sold (over 1000 herbs- 50 stacks), it seems clear that the seller is either (a) a botter or (b) someone cleaning out somebody else's guild bank. There's a slim chance that the seller could be really interested in quick cash and had a backstock of herbs, but my experience in dealing with human herbalists (as opposed to botters) is that they tend to sell about 10 stacks at a time, give or take, which represents an hour or two of farming, rather than letting their bank fill up with herbs.
So, it's likely that I just bought stuff from a gold-seller. Should I feel guilty? If I didn't buy them, someone else would have. But I still feel vaguely bad about it.
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I think you are confusing a couple of things. Most people align buying things from botters as buying stolen goods. However, that is not true.
ReplyDeleteTo date, blizzard has not removed a single item obtained by botting. Why? Because they were gathered the same way anything else is. Yes, it is a computer making them move from point A to point B, mount, grab herb, go to next. However, as long as they are not hacking the game code to teleport, they are gathering legal items.
The reason they sell items so low is to simply force a sale. They know Icethorn/Lichbloom are used in the major flasks, and are the best inscription herb. They make gold off of it, yes, and then that gold is transfered to a middle man to then sell it. Problem is, the only thing the botter is doing to get banned for is botting. They aren't breaking any other rule.
So, you're not buying stolen goods. Think of it like you are going to a restaraunt and the dishwasher is an illegal alien. Don't feel guilty about eating the chefs food at that restaraunt, feel outraged that the manager is so hell-bent on profits that he allows such things.
So, don't feel guilty, just continue to be angry with the people that actually buy gold.