Auction house bots took whole auction house in their hand.
I've been doing auction heavily for months (if not even a year) now and there are just few specific items that you are able to sell constantly without being undercut immediately by a bot. I find it very unhealthy for the game if level 2 and level 3 characters are undercutting you every 2 minutes 24/7 and never going offline for weeks, effectively making you lose gold or just not be able to earn gold. I have personally came across many bots and reporting them does only so much - they get banned (using vpn) - they make new account - do same thing on new level 3 character - repeat.
A way to fight it:
Simply put auction cap per level. If you are level 3 character there is absolutely no reason to put 600 auctions a day. Instead of everyone being able to post freely, if there was level restriction up untill higher levels you could fix botting problem.
How exactly would I make auction scaling per level? I would put that on each level you get to post 5 auctions per day untill level 40, then the restriction ends. Why level 40? Because any less level is just easy and fast to level up to. If you put level 20 as a cap, they can just level it fairly quickly and do the same for a week untill they get banned and repeat. Level 40 without heirlooms (Which you cant get unless you already have 80 char on account) takes few hours even so it would significantly decrease botting, if not even completely stop it.
Someone would say if it's level 40 cap then they can just make Death Knight - for that you need to have character over 55 first so they would have to level it up anyway.
There is no actual human player without malicious intent level 3 posting 500 auctions per day, only bots. And even if there is an actual human on character level 3 (I came across 2 actual humans out of 100 bots), you can just post auctions on your main character OR if you want character whose only purpose is for auction house posting, I don't see an issue investing hour or two leveling it up to 40 ONCE and have it just for auction since you will be able to keep that character and won't be getting banned if you are a human.
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Member
Auction House BOTS fix suggestion
Edited: October 4, 2024
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Forum Veteran
1) Most of the players that you think are bots aren't bots.
2) Some of us prefer to post from our level 1s to avoid issues.
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Member
!) Posting from auctions from stormwind mailbox is actual human whilist staying online 24 hours? No sleep biohacking? I'd like to know secret how you stay up 24 hours reposting every 2 minutes.
2) What issues would you face posting from main character or normal alt character rather than level 1?
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Forum Veteran
1) I've never seen people do that 24/7. Many people complain about it, but I've never seen that. Most I've seen is 12 hours or so.
2) Harassment, false reports, etc.
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Moderator
Relisting items on the AH every 2 minutes just to have the lowest price sounds like a decent gold sink.
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Member
Not really since you don't post in bulk. Lets say for example you're selling relentless meta gems, on alliance there are currently 5 people and 1 bot bidding so instead of posting 50 gems at the time, you'd post 4 gems costing you only 90s (per gem) to post while profit you make on each gem currently is 30g (if you buy mats instead of farming). If you were to repost in bulk then obviously you'd lose tons of money but bots, obviously made to maximize gain are not posting 50 meta gems every 2 minutes. Also if there is no one online from those 5 people then obviously bot will not be reposting since there is no undercut.
Similar thing with many other items, such as Faces of Doom (inscription off hand). There is bot bidding for months now who's been reported and banned multiple times and yet it keeps happening over and over again (you can check yt vid from ********) and track character named ***** who never left game for days now and is sitting on mailbox in stormwind and yet reposting inscription stuff. At this point there's no real way to combat it since we can spend hours recording them and they'll just make new account in 30 seconds (VPN exists) and run to stormwind and so on and so on.Edited: October 4, 2024 Reason: Remove part that violates rule #9
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Moderator
What about the claim about doing it with 500 listings 720 times per day?
Bots are banned permanently so I highly doubt one has been banned multiple times unless you're referring to the person doing it. Now if someone is making new accounts just to have them banned along with all the items I'd say it's definitely a gold sink.
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Member
They are selling multiple items. I'm personally into meta gems and inscription the most and the bot I've been bidding agains reposted chaotic skyflare diamond 52 times during my 8 hour auction session, we've just been reposting over and over. Similar number with relentless, that's 100 reposts just on 2 meta gems. I said 500 just to make point but realistically it's closer to 300.
Bots are banned permanently, yes, I was referring to the person doing it. It is not a gold sink because atleast once a day they mail it to main character or put it in guild bank. There are many many ways to avoid it, it's not very complicated and I've personally done it couple of years ago on different servers.
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Forum Veteran
It's obviously someone who has no clue.
Reposting 52 times? That's like 180g lost on deposits. Cost to transmute one is ~100g, you can sell it maybe 130g. They need to sell like 100 gems just to break even. It's mathematically impossible, there is no "bot magic" that can make things proftiable just because they undercut.
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Forum Veteran
Or they are simply doing it out of spite - how many times have I wasted gold just to piss someone off?
