There’s a common practice (often highlighted over at the greedy goblin) where people will make money off distracted (or rushed or just plain stupid) hunters by selling stacks of 100 ammo for only slightly less than the price of 1000. Depending on whether you use an auction addon or not, these stacks may even be displayed identically to you.
I am not blaming the guys who try this- in a free market, you can sell anything you want, and it’s the responsibility of the buyer to avoid being screwed. This might fall under the category of “false advertising” if your auction interface shows you the same graphic for 100 as it does 1000 (often something like “10…” for a stack size), but the reality is that they can’t overtly lie to us about the stack size. We need to have installed an addon that hides the true stack size from us. The default UI shows it.
That or we are running late for our raid prep and are just distracted.
Here’s the plan:
- When you buy ammo, don’t be a sucker. Double check in any way possible that the stack size is 1000 (or if you do want to buy 100 at a time for some reason, make sure you’re not getting fleeced). Turn off your auction addons if they’re configured so you can’t see this. Or even better, configure them so they sort by unit price instead of stack price.
- If you are an engineer (especially if you are able to make epic ammo), make sure that you list at least some of your stock for sale in 100 stacks, priced at a similar unit price you use for your 1000 stacks. This will push the fleecers’ auctions below the fairly priced ones. If someone accidentally buys a 100 stack, at least they won’t have been charged 10x the amount.
- Whether you’re an engineer or not, if you want to help and have enough cash to do this, buy full sized stacks and re-list them in stacks of 100. Heck, you might even make a profit doing this. Just don’t list them for 10x what they would cost if the buyer were fully aware of the situation.
Hunters, more than any other class, are a community. I can tell this by the fact that there are so many of your contributing in in so many ways. From answering questions on forums to writing guides and starting blogs, there’s something about this class that bonds people who play it together.
This particular auction strategy directly targets us. If you read this and say “Oh, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to me”, then it was worth my time to write it. If any of you take further steps to reduce the number of people who get tricked into buying 100 stacks for the price of 1000, then it was really worth it.
Myself, I’m doing this for blue and epic arrows, because that’s what I happened to have available. Once I get a chance to set up a supply chain (probably by bugging Darkbrew), I’ll try to make sure that there’s always 50 stacks of 100 bullets and arrows, both blue and epic, all priced at around a tenth of the price of a stack of 1000.
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[...] http://outdps.com/2009/12/21/ammo-one-for-the-price-of-ten/ [...]
You gotta be pretty stupid to fall into this kind of trap, lol.
Not true- people with a misconfigured auctioneer addon are vulnerable, as well as people who are quite intelligent, but busy and don’t double check before just buying 5 “stacks”.
Aye, when you are rushed to buy some ammo before raid, you are looking at the prices before the stacks. “Oh, wow, a stack of epic ammo for 10g? Niiiic- oh, wait. Son-of-a-bitch…” I’ve never fallen for it, but I’ve caught myself at least twice now.
I almost fell for it too- but since I do so much AH whoring in my off time, I have the financial means to ensure that these guys never make another sale.
Guilty! Right here, that’s me.
My Engineer is not a raider so I can never get the recipe to make the ammo. I am also the only Engineer in my guild. That being the case I am pretty much forced to buy the ammo at 100g per stack.
So yes, in order to pay for my raiding Hunters ammo, I bought 100g stacks, broke them into 100 and sold each 100 for 20g. The so called profit has been keeping me supplied in ammo.
If I were money grubbing I could probably have sold the 100 for 80g+ like some others on my server.
You’re selling stacks you bought for 100g a fifth at a time for a fifth of the price- that’s fine in my book. Hell, if I just needed a little splash and go, I’d probably be willing to pay a little more per bullet/arrow than I do when I buy them by the 1000 stack, but you’re not selling a stack of 100 for 100g.
I almost got burned. Someone was selling Iceblade Arrows for 10g/1000, and right below them on the AH was a bunch of auctions for Iceblade Arrows at 10g/100. Thankfully the default AH sorted the ripoffs below the good buys.
Safest bet: find an engineer with the ammo recipe you need and make a friend. “LF Engineer/BFF. Have mats, will tip in gold and leg humps.” :D
As far as I know, if the 100 stacks had been at 9.99g, they would have shown up first in the default UI :(
Oh ya, no question they would have been on top of the other ammo and I probably would have been burned. Same price, higher quantity = lower unit price = higher on the ui. Whew! :D
Sorry but blizzard is retarded for forcing a class to pay so much for this ammo
and it really pisses me off
100 gold per stack when i am going thru 3-4 stacks a night on top of repairs and etc.
what other class has to pay for each spell / auto attack they do but hunters. IMO put the extra dps on the weapons and just have hunters use vendor ammo at least then we aren’t targeted by price gouging thieves
This is a temporary situation- as soon as there’s enough engineers with the rep, this will approach the cost of the mats, which is 2 crystallized shadow or earth. A stack will go down to under 5g on the AH, and if you try hard enough, you might be able to find a friendly engineer who will make them for you with your mats.
Sry just ranting
i have a maxed lvl 70 engneer i was using to make my own ammo now i cannt use him
or if i leveled him and rep him up i could only make arrows:(
Yeah, the price being charged by Engineers is somewhat upsetting when originally the mats cost was cheap. I’m glad I stocked up on mats but so far don’t have a crafter so have to buy.
I got stung….. only realised when I got to the mailbox. Serves me right for not paying attention when topping up my bag pre-raid.
Told all the hunters on my friends and guild about this and a few of them have been done by it.
Just saw the same thing on my server, and followed your advice. I hope it really pisses the guy off.
Our AH was full of single stacks people were buying 1 arrow so for the past week I have been putting small stacks of 11 43 23 99 3 at low prices so people relize the stack size issue on alliance side
but horde side I wasn’t so nice we play on a pvp server :D
10g/1000 – what a bargain! I’ve been unable to buy them for less than 30g/1000 on my server, so am using them sparingly. “ToC random? I’ll just use my crappy arrows….”
They’re down to 5g now, and I’ve seen them go as low as 2g (which is about the price of mats). It’s just a matter of time :)
Im glad your spreading the word on this. I am a person that is taking advantage of the idiot. But im glad your teaching them to double check before buying arrows. I’ve been selling stacks of 100 arrows for 7g each making 60g profit from 1k arrows. Along with that i’ve sold ice cold milk for 50s each when it cost 1s for 5 from a vendor. I guess people are just dumb but bizzard shouldnt have made the best ammo craftable.
If I’m in the AH and need something that’s available from a vendor, I’m willing to pay for the convenience. If I (for some reason) want to buy arrows in stacks of 100, I’m willing to pay more for them. I’m not willing to pay as much as I would have to pay for 1000 though.
Long story short- if 1000 arrows are 70g, I wouldn’t have written this post about people listing 100 arrows for 7g. If 1000 arrows are 10g, though, then hopefully there will be enough outDPS readers that list 100 stacks for 1g that nobody else buys 100 stacks for 7g.
Good job with this article. At least someone tries to counter-write that greedy-stupid articles, you know who I am referring to.
In a free market, people are free to post what they want on the AH, and that includes us breaking down stacks of 1000 into stacks of 100 for the same unit price. Regardless of whether we’re doing it for profit or to keep others from profiting.
The easiest way to save money on these arrows is simiply farm the mats yourself 2x crystalized shadows and ask a engineer to make them. 5 Stacks of arrows is 5000 Arrows, wich is only 1 Eternal shadow wich is about 10g on the A/H. Beats me… i think its the cheapest way this way.
It is, but many people don’t have access to a friendly engineer willing to work for free. Also, each engineer who has the recipe invested a primordial saronite- those either cost a buttload of cash, or could have been sold for a buttload of cash.
One of the few avenues where you can still get “scammed,” but as others have said your best bet is to farm them and have an engineer make them for you if you’re lucky enough to know one. I don’t know how I feel about posting the 100 stacks… I feel bad for people who are desperate enough to need to spend their time hoping someone will buy them, but I also think it’s kinda messed up taking advantage of newbies/people who have misconfigured addons.
In the days of lineage 2, however, I think I would have said “To hell with them, they should have paid attention.” WoW, being a less “hardcore” game seems like it’s made me a nicer person towards fellow gamers :)
The AH on WOW is pretty hardcore. It’s a bigger market than anything short of the real world :)