New Rules – 3/16/10
Its a thrill to introduce the return of New Rules this week. Today’s new rules are brought to you by the one and only Jaedia of The Lazy Sniper. I’ve been a lurker over at Lazy Sniper for some time now and so I’m very excited to share with you the following new rules. Also, any errors in formatting are due entirely to my own ineptitude with basic copy/paste functionality. Enjoy!
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New Rule – Gearscore will only be used to measure if a player’s gear is ready for current content.
A player can complete heroics, Naxx 10, Naxx 25, Sarth 10, Sarth 25, even some later instances, in full blues, greens, maybe the odd epic. It’s understandable that you want a certain gear level for Icecrown, or hard modes, but anything less is close to pointless! A simple "come to me for gear inspection" is much more effective than asking their gear score. This way you can find out what kind of achievements they
have, how much effort has been put into their gear, and whether or not they’re a moron from their reaction. Of course, the latter can be a little difficult to tell at first glance, but with a response of, "Wht? Where r u?/ My gs is 4.8k inv now plz." You can generally tell who the Donalds are.
New Rule – Ulduar now gives free chips.
I hate to see the best raid of this expansion fall to abandonment. The first time you walk into Ulduar, in fact, just from flying up outside, you think, "Wow, this instance is huge." And as we all know, huge = epic. It’s so mixed, there are vehicle fights, stand and nuke fights, don’t stand in the shit fights, use multiple tanks for this fights, split the DPS fights.. I could go on but I won’t. The gear looked good, the fights were good, everybody loves the XT sound files, the hard modes were tuned well, and having to activate hard modes in different ways like, kill the heart, press the button, made it more fun! I love Ulduar, but nobody will do it anymore, because they can’t get "epic loots" from there anymore. Sigh. I want to see more people doing Ulduar.
New Rule – Undercutting by any more than a few silver now automatically gives your character a heart attack.
You say you will sell something faster if you undercut by 100g, but here’s the kicker: if somebody is going to buy your shit, they’re going to buy it, you might as well undercut by 1 copper or even sell at the same price and undercut the bid. All you need is for it to be the first one on the page, visibly cheaper. Oh, and these heart attacks? Yeah. Can’t resurrect from them.
New Rule – From now on, guild based drama is prohibited.
It’s childish and annoying. Where exactly do you get from, "Wah, he stole my trinket!" or "Uh that bastard rerolled AGAIN." So something happened, somebody is either to blame or not. What good is starting arguments going to do. If you’re unhappy, speak to your GM/officers about it. They are the only ones who can do anything about it. If they are involved, might be time to find a new guild.
/cheer Jaedia :)
Tam´s last blog ..Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
[Reply]
Tam
16 Mar 10 at 8:14 am
Sorry, but I have to /boo at the third rule. :P I often undercut things by more if they repeatedly don’t sell or if I simply think that the current AH price is ridiculous. “What, twenty gold for a cloth hat with no stats? That’s just dumb, I’ll list mine for ten.” I’m idealistic like that.
Shintar´s last blog ..Dual spec confusion
[Reply]
Jaedia Reply:
March 16th, 2010 at 11:54 am
I do that, I won’t price a gem over 250g :p
When it’s something that will sell though.. And AD prices are insane on low level greens!
Jaedia´s last blog ..Why I Don’t Raid: Part 1
[Reply]
Shintar
16 Mar 10 at 11:28 am
“if somebody is going to buy your shit, they’re going to buy it, you might as well undercut by 1 copper or even sell at the same price and undercut the bid.”
Nothing is a surer indication of a good Rule than a feeling of glee at the thought of breaking it. “Socially responsible” undercutting is one of my favourite things to do in the game.
If ever you see a listing for a popular glyph/enchant/gem with a bunch of dog-eat-dog Auctioneer/QA jockeys fighting their penny wars at the top and a flood of near-production-cost specimens at the bottom: I’m that flooder.
It’s for the common good, comrade.
[Reply]
Soli
16 Mar 10 at 11:30 am
Hehe, and here I thought I would be the only one to comment on the third rule.
First of all, I’d like to preface this by saying that I ALMOST always agree, and I’ve seen enough people undercutting foolishly to know the sentiment this rule comes from. However, my last year of college I took an Econ 101 class, and was amazed just how often I found myself thinking of the Auction House during class. In particular, the following principle applies:
Price Elasticity of Demand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
The basic principle is that with some goods, if you lower the price, a lot more people will want to buy it and you end up making a lot more money.
The biggest practical example of this I found in the gem market was with the hybrid gems (oranges, purples, and greens). There are so many varieties and combinations, that a lot of them are only listed by a couple people and aren’t undercut very often. Thus, the price on some of them can stay very, very high, and an epic strength/crit gem might be going for 50-100g more than an average epic gem.
There comes a point where it just gets so expensive that people will say, “screw it, I’ll by my own uncut and get my JC friend to cut it for me.” Or they might say, “I know this strength/crit gem is technically better than the attack power/crit gem, but it’s also 150g more expensive… You know, I’ll probably replace this gear fairly soon anyway. I’ll just buy the cheaper one.”
Like I said, usually I agree with rule 3 wholeheartedly. But sometimes “socially responsible” undercutting is just plain more profitable. :)
[Reply]
Veren
17 Mar 10 at 12:50 am