Beware of nasty scammers in the auction house of World of Warcraft. Their trick is simple – but very effective and can cost you a lot of gold.
Anyone using the auction house in World of Warcraft needs to be careful. Because right now there is a nasty trick with which you can lose a lot of gold and resources if you’re not careful. We will reveal what the scammers do – and how you can protect yourself against it.
What do the scammers do? Scammers manipulate prices with small amounts of resources to entice other players to sell their goods for far below their value – and then resell them for maximum profit.
An example: The ore Bismuth (“Bismuth” in English) currently has a market value of 39 gold per unit. This means that Bismuth ore costs about 39 gold in the auction house. Some are offered for 40 gold, some for 38 gold – but everything is in that range.
If you want to sell Bismuth, the auction house will suggest the currently cheapest selling price – so 38 gold. This ensures that your Bismuth ores are sold first.
However, some people exploit this trick. They repeatedly post Bismuth in small quantities for significantly less gold – like only for 13 gold pieces. What seems like a foolish act at first glance often pays off.
Because if at that very moment another character wants to get rid of their Bismuth in the auction house, they will immediately be offered the selling price of 13 gold – a single click will then post the ore at that price.
Since many don’t check when selling if the lowest price is an exception – and often also want to sell many dozens of items – they quickly click through and accept any price.
However, this is exactly what the scammers are waiting for. They hope that you offer your resources far below market value so they can buy them at their “scammed” price. They then take your resources and sell them at the normal price.
The profit margin on these scams often ranges from 50% to 300%, depending on the scale of the deception.
By the way, the trick works so well because hundreds of transactions take place every second in the auction house. After all, the auction houses of the servers are (partially) connected in a region.
Cheating is legal, only caution helps
Is this forbidden? Basically, it is probably not, no. After all, you are responsible for the price at which you post your items in the auction house. If you thoughtlessly accept the first price shown, you will have to live with the consequences.
The only effective way to protect yourself against this is to briefly check all positions in the auction house before each sale and see if one or two traders are offering an extremely low price to exploit others.
If you want to sell your resources in the auction house after a long farming session, pay close attention to what price you demand and that it is appropriate. Because with so many buyers, it often only takes a few seconds before the goods from hours of farming work pass over the counter. Farming can be an easy way to earn gold like never before.
