The end result is that I've been vendoring a HUGE amount of stuff (I can disenchant lower level stuff, but I'm starting to get quite the supply of soul dust, dream dust, etc) Yes, I save on the AH fee, or paying a posting fee every time it falls off, but it still has me bugged.
Does this happen often on other servers or at certain times of the year?
It kinda sucks if you're trying to make some profit from your farming, and it's also frustrating when you want to buy a nice piece of kit (like a nice tanking weapon) and there's just nothing really there.
I've only been playing since May-ish, so maybe I just haven't seen that many cycles in the game, but it has me puzzled. I could "understand" it, if the Cataclysim expansion pack were about to come out, or something similarly HUGE, but even if the Icecrown update/patch were to come out tomorrow, I doubt it would have THAT much of an effect.
*shrug*
What say you?
Apologies in advance for a very long-winded comment. Brevity does not come easily to me.
ReplyDeleteI think it's mostly two things:
1. Quest rewards at low levels are crappy or poorly-itemized enough that people would prefer BoE greens from the AH. (Cataclysm may change this. We'll see.) This means that it's well worth selling lowbie greens.
Especially "of the Bear" to the pre-40 mail post-40 plate crowd, "of the Monkey" to the pre-40 leather (whether they're post-40 leather or mail) crowd, and... I dunno what to the clothies. Something caster-y, never played one so I'm not the one to ask about the stats they look for on lowbie levelling gear.
Non-cloth with spellpower is also noteworthy (and sale-worthy) just because it's so damn rare before 60.
However (getting off my tangent), at Outland and especially Northrend levels, your green quest rewards are honestly so good you don't *need* to go spending money on AH greens to be passably geared. And that's setting aside any blues you may nab from levelling instances or group/chain quests.
This pretty much establishes that there'll be relatively little trading of greens at higher levels for the actual sake of equipping oneself.
Barring the not too frequent occasion of someone taking up a new role and thus needing whatever they can scrounge up for, say, healing/tanking gear when they've always been DPS in the past, or something. But even in that case people won't go much lower than blues (if even that low), given crafted gear and rep rewards, and let's not forget the ToC-regular pinata.
So, very occasional trading for this purpose, sure. But not a lot.
2. So then, who *does* want to buy those greens? Obviously, if you sell them for under vendor price, anyone with Auctioneer will promptly snatch them up so they can pick up their auctions, march them over to a vendor, and unload for a profit. But at/over vendor price? You've got green gear, but green gear that people aren't actually gonna wear. So who's gonna want to buy it?
Enchanters.
And that's only if the expected value (factoring in that, as I'm sure you know from your mention of DE'ing yourself, there's a random factor involved here in both type and quantity) of the dust, essences, shards, or crystals that the item will yield, is a better deal than just buying those enchanting mats directly.
So if someone can spend 5G to DE something to get 10G worth of mats, they'll do it. If they can spend 5G to DE something to get 5G (or possibly less if they're unlucky) worth of mats, they probably won't do it.
Long story short (far too late): Expect that your buyer will be an enchanter. Even if the stats are good. Because people generally won't even be looking, given their quest rewards.
Use Enchantrix (comes with Auctioneer) to determine the expected DE value of the item given the current market prices of enchanting mats. If said DE value is less than the vendor value, vendor it. If greater, throw it up for sale for around the DE value.
First thanks or the info and reply!
ReplyDeleteI learned about "bear" and "owl" stuff selling well a while back, and have even noticed that level 20-40 gear has dropped off lately.
I hadn't thought about the level 60/70 (Outlands/Northrend) stuff making AH purchasing kind of rare.
I have an alt that I use for enchanting so I know the DE routine, and I know a couple folks that are among the few buyers of my items. Evidently they are pretty picky about what they grab, (doing the DE calcs) because they will buy SOME of my items, but not the others... (I know the one Auction addon I use will say "auction/DE/Vendor" depending on the "value".
Thanks again for the info though! I would have NEVER thought about the higher level aspecst. :)
:)