We Have a Robin Hood
“Hello Gold Queen! I have a question.
“On my server, I’m selling glyphs. A few weeks ago, sellings glyphs was no problem. Then I started getting some serious competetion.
“We made a ‘group’ (a ‘pact’ if you will) to help eachother and try to keep the glyph market in our hands. It went amazingly well. We bought out some low sellers, we bought eachother out (and refunded G) and we made a nice profit. All of us. Until this week….
“There is 1 guy who is posting Glyphs for WAY to0 low prices (sometimes under crafting costs), just to crash the market. His response: you guys sell for way too much, I don’t like people making money of other people’s backs..
“I tried to explain him that he could also make money, if he upped his buyouts and that markets would stabilize soon enough without him. But he made it his lifegoal to get the glyph market down, because he feels it should be. As it turned out, he is a horde player, playing the AH on Alliance side… So he has no affection and care. Besides that, he feels like a Knight in shining armor, like Robin Hood, to help the poor. He already made 100k, he told me, so… he doesn’t need money. And he doesn’t care, other need money…..
“What can we do with this kind of behaviour? Any tips or something?
“Hope to hear from you!
Frustrated Scribe”
We Have a Robbing Hood
Hi Frustrated Scribe,
I’m so sorry to hear about your problems with this fake Robin Hood. I call him fake outright to his face, because Robin Hood never made 100,000g by selling things cheap to poor people.
He doesn’t give a crap about the wallets of the buyers. He doesn’t give a crap about the wallets of his competitors. So you’re going to have to show him who’s boss. In a nice way.
You can:
- Run him out of town
- Talk to him nicely (tried that, didn’t work!)
- Bore him to death
- Leave him to it
Number one is easy, you undercut him, hard, constantly, deep undercut him in return, and use your cartel to wall him out of the market. Glyphs cost 8g to make? Then you sell them *ALL* for 8g 01s. No one will profit here, except the customer. The goal here is to show him that you have muscle, your cartel, and you won’t take any crap, and he can either join in, or get lost.
Number two, you’ve tried, and given up.
How about a combination of numbers 3 and 4? Keep undercutting him, use TSM to automate your work to minimize your own boredom levels, and babysit your glyphs. Make a cartel-wide pact to always undercut him and bore him out the market.
Number four means expanding into other markets, which I hope you do anyway!
Over To You
I want to throw this question open to the intelligent Gold Making Community of which we are a part, and ask their help, support, and opinions for your problem.
image: Robin Hood Statue in Nottingham England, close to my old home
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
On my server i have few good glyph sellers, few noobs who sell glyphs way down under (2-3g each) and one single moron who i don’t know how to deal with… He show up max 2-3 times every week and post glyphs…
Sometimes, he post all his glyphs at 50g, no matter if some of them are already undercut… Sometimes, he walls most popular glyphs with 10 glyph wall selling for 1g each…
Guy is just behaving retarded…
Not sure I’d say “retarded” but possibly “not sure what on earth to do” would be how I would phrase it. I guess as long as he’s making a profit, and so are you, then everyone is a winner.
If he is posting glyphs for as little as 1g each then just buy them up. The fact he is showing up just 2-3 times a week and posting at low prices shows he only just wants to crash the market and is not interested in the profit. Chances are he is also selling on another char and could well be also one of those good glyph sellers and is using that other undercutter alt to try and push other seller’s out and dominate the market. Its shrewd behaviour and I reckon its also going on in my server.
Did he get bored?
I’m going to sound like a noob, but how do you work out that 8gold is the break even point for a glyph?
To be honest with you, it really depends on the serve.r On my server I saw one glyph starting at 50 silver…I bought it out and raised the price to 50 gold. But on another server I play, that same glyph was at 100g…It depends on the server.
What Catherine said.
The price it costs to make a glyph depends on, well, herb prices.
If herbs are 1g each, 20g per stack, that’s roughly 20g per glyph.
I’m sure someone can step in and give a strict price for glyphs, depending on herb prices?
Anyway, I said 8g per glyph, I could have said Ng per glyph. If you sell yours for Ng+1c then he has problems undercutting and making a profit.
It never ceases to amaze me to hear glyph “cartels” whine when someone wants to sell glyphs at reasonable prices. There is no other crafting market where an item is made for 5g and sold for 500g. People live in auction houses to undercut every few minutes by 1 copper so anyone that wishes to try and make a few gold with this profession are driven out.
I applaud the new entrant and hope he drives all glyph pricing down to something more reasonable.
In order to learn every glyph you need 72(I think, may be higher) Book of Glyph Mastery, these books cost 1000g+ (at the time I did them. So that’s 72,000 gold to learn all these glyphs, and you couldn’t just learn the glyphs that you wanted to, you learned a random glyph. Then there is all the daily research for the minor and a few of the LK ones, and of course the cost of leveling, etc. Also there is the time involved with milling, creating inks, then making the glyphs themselves, after all “Time is money, friend”.
I made a huge investment, I would like to be able to recoup some of that gold.
In my main server they sell for about 200% of the crafting price.
There are lots of markets where you can sell things for a lot more than they cost to gather or make. Players are paying for the time, skill, and effort to do this, not just the materials.
Think of the orbs from bosses that were used for crafting. Some guys demanded that their price should be free because they didn’t cost any gold to acquire. Those guys didn’t impress many crafters 🙂
I don’t really have a Robin Hood, but looking at the comments gave me the idea to buy all glyphs under 7g. I hate milling, then creating inks, then trading inks, then making glyphs. Thanks for the inspiration.
On a side note, if Blizzard were to make a new interface for milling/prospecting in mass quantities, do you think that would bring a lot more competitors to the markets?
Go careful! Some of them are under 7g because they’re completely bloody useless, and the scribes needed to make them in order to level up and have then put them on the AH in a desperate bid to regain some of their gold spent on mats.
Another thing you may want to think of, is going to the other faction buying all theyre herbs so he cant keep costs low on horde too i prtdonsllu buy my herbs/ink from alliance sometimes, although i only have 100k or so over there, its plenty to buy ink/herbs
Yes, reduce your prices to his level to “drive him away”.
Never mind that that was his stated intention in the first place, as he believes that you’re posting your glyphs at unreasonably high prices. So yeah, reduce your prices to where you make little profit and common players can obtain their glyphs for reasonable prices. That will sure show him.
It depends on his tenacity and whether he’s going to harass the glyph makers for a long time.
I think it would be quite exciting to reduce all the prices temporarily and let players benefit.
We’re not here about ‘showing him’ but being also allowed to play. At the moment he’s taking all the goodies for himself, and we want him to share nicely.
Something very similar is occurring on our server. The guy in question insists that he finds it offensive that low level characters have to part with nearly 1k to buy 3 lvl 25 glyphs. However this individual is far from the pinnacle of generosity as he claims to have a net worth of gold himself and thus has used the auction house for his own gains. This robbing hood is masquerading under the pretence of good will when his real motives is just to ruin the market for everyone else. Even if we have undercut him on any of his glyphs he never undercuts back even though he has logged on at the auction house. He only undercuts when the glyph prices have increased again! The costs of herbs on this server are increasingly high meaning very little profit can be made from a 20g glyph!
Same thing is going on at my server, a lvl 1 toon is posting each and every glyph sometimes for as low as 4 gold …
At first I was worried, but now I just buy, buy, buy as many glyphs as I can to complete my stockpile.
For this low price – and I have no work with milling and crafting.
Just great.
hehe
Find out where he lives! That’s how I “handle” my most stubborn competitors.
I don’t think I’ll be undercutting you!
I know this has nothing to do with the current topic at hand but I just want6 to say. I been trying to get the motorbike, it seems I always spend more money then I make..so it was hard for me to get the gold and save it, but with tgq’s tips along with some other guides she referred to, I came up with 12.5k plus enough left over to give a tip…now to start rebuilding gold, and with this guide here, glyphs should sell well! heading to wow to start selling some glyphs =) Thanks again Alysande and everyone else. Listen to her tips and her referrals!
Buy him out. He will get bored very soon and you have a nice stockpile of glyphs to sell during the next months.
Long term investment, I like it.
I’m facing this same exact issue on my server, but the chick barks in trade with a macro. It’s gotten so bad that people don’t even check the AH anymore, they just ask for her. If she’s not on her friends (band of merry men??) tell people in trade to wait to buy until she’s on. I have flat out called her a wanna be Robin Hood LOL So your title made me laugh. Since she’s not posting on the AH I’m not sure how to combat it, and she’s been doing it for months already and promises to continue through MoP for the same low price. *sigh* All the scribes on the server are pissed, but not much we can do I feel. Very frustrating situation. (I might add she’s branching to other markets as well, crashing gems, belt buckles, weapon chains, transmog gear, etc)
Do two things with this one,
Firstly start barking yourself guaranteeing cheeper than her prices (you may take a bit of a lose but your aiming to cut her income)
Secondly and more importantly, cut her supply if she’s supplying your whole server she cant gather that amount of herbs alone so make sure she cant get them in the AH, if she gathers she’ll have to spend most of her time herbing no time in citys to bark and hopefully she’ll soon get bored of it
considering she’s branching out she must be making a profit off what she is doing which means there is room to undercut her buy out all the herbs to a point where her costs are higher than she sells you of course can now sell cheaper and still make a slight profit
If your funds are short (even if they aren’t) grab a few other scribes and let them know what you are doing try to get them to help, if you do each time she barks that she’s selling cheep glyph’s you’ll see 3 or 4 other barks all selling for less
Thanks for the advice. Yes that’s pretty much what I’m doing 🙂 Myself and another 2 scribes are buying out all the herbs, though we haven’t started barking. We’ve been trying to avoid a war, b/c she’s a mean one, and she will pounce and have her friends pounce. We are pretty sure at this point though that she’s NOT buying off the AH, she said in trade that she NEVER buys herbs and has several gatherers supplying her. And she also tells people how glyphs only cost 5g to make..which is just not possible if you’re buying herbs from anyone imo. There is also speculation that she’s botting on a secret account, but since there’s no proof…nothing can be done. She NEVER leaves Org. We plan on keeping chugging though, not just for our sakes, but for ANYONE who wants to make gold on the server >.<
From experience this happens quite often usually they get bored and go away after a few weeks you can use some tactics like adding him to your friends list on the character he posts on, once he logs off you go repost 🙂 it may seem a little bad mannered but hey all is fair when your trying to make gold
I do this all the time. I have three people who are using tsm bots for gems, meta gems, belt buckles and enchants on my server. I have every profession in game maxed so when they are on in my friends list I run the bag, epic gem and potion market. Between the three of them they will drop the market of meta gems down from 130g to 62g in a matter of hours. The minute they log off I buy out their items and re-list along with my own at a higher rate. The only time this doesn’t work is when one of the bots is on for three and four days straight.
Good advice
I agree, buy buy buy. If he is crafting at or below cost then he’s already saving you the effort of milling and creating the glyphs. He wont last, 1) he won’t be content making 0 profit for his time and 2) its not smart of him to blow away his stock this close to patch.
Undercutting him or walling him at those prices and at this time I DO NOT reccomend at all. You arn’t going to make huge profits by giving your stock away.
experience: long time glypher, 1 million gold liquid, 10k glyphs and 40k inks in stock
maybe i’m a noob, but how on earth do you get space enough to *store* 10k glyphs and 40k inks??
Quick answer: guild banks, personal banks, big bags, and sending mail to your alts.
Two comments. This won’t last. Let him run his course and have fun. I doubt he will last a month. I would also see how low he will go. If he camps the ah see if you can get glyphs to a selling price below cost and then buy out the glyphs you want for mop.
I agree with mithrildar, I’m having the same problem as the post at this right moment, so I just put up a reset scan, and well, It seems to be helping me reach my goal of having a X number of glyphs minimum, without needing to mill and craft, gotta love those robbing hoods once in a while.
I would suggest a completely different approach to this situation:
Buy him out. Normally I and my fellow Windtraders would tell you that you would need alot of gold to do this, because of the risk involved. But this Robin Hood couldn’t have picked a better time for you to do this.
5.0.4 (pre-patch to MoP) will be on the live servers in less than 2 weeks. This patch will switch out the current ink trader with one that doesn’t accept Blackfallow Ink anymore and instead wants the new MoP ink.
This means that after this point anyone who hasn’t stockpiled and traded inks before that won’t be able to craft any glyphs and prices will skyrocket as people demand vanity glyphs they never had before.
If you decide to buy him out, you can sell these glyphs for in the 100g region in 2-3 weeks.
I would say this robin hood is a blessing in disguise, someone that does all the crafting for you at minimal fees, someone that helps you get your stock for once the ink traders get removed.
Mithrildar, Windtrader on the consortium
If he’s posting under crafting costs, why not buy him out? If he’s not a native alliance player, he can’t have that much stock or gold on hand and he’d have to incur the 15% Neutral AH cut (or a $25 real life fee) to move more over.
Reading this post scared me for a second or two, as I JUST today started deep undercutting, and posting super cheap on my server, with the intention to drive some people out. Thought they may have been onto me already. =0
Was relieved once I read the whole thing, and saw it wasn’t me, hehe.
While you can’t make 100k selling cheap in 1-2 weeks, if he keeps it up long enough, (and you do nothing to stop him), he will make some decent G. 5-10k a week is totally possible depending on the server, even at 10g/glyph profit.
I second what the Queen said, and emphasize on the “take him out!” option. The longer he is able to post unmolested, the more confidante he will become.
Also – if you decide to go for him, don’t tell him, don’t bait him, don’t taunt him. Anything like that will simply encourage him, and keep him interested. Don’t add him to your ignore list, as he will see, and think he’s getting to you – just ignore his whispers and don’t respond. He’ll eventually lose interest.
Wow, this comment turned long. Cheers!
Z
If you have a cartel of sorts, use its buying power to buy out inexpensive herbs and inks. Relist for higher prices to reset the herb market and hence drive up his crafting costs or force him to spend his time gathering to keep it up.
See how far he down he will undercut you, and post walls just above that. The idea here is to make him sell as many glyphs for as little profit as possible. See above, make him work hard and long for each of those sales.
If you can, find his other markets and make them unprofitable. This may take a bit of detective work to find his alts, but skill at this gets better with practice.