Thread: Reporting, does it work?

Hi guys, I'm a very long timer reader/follower and first time poster, be gentle, and get a drink because the post might be long.

So during cata I only played glyph market and got enough gold to get tgc mounts I always wanted, but I knew there was an overlord on the gems market. I'm not joking, for a while during Dragon Soul EVERY GEM in the ah was his (and they weren't cheap), a friend of his told me that he made over 20 million and sold 10 million to a website for 8,000 usd.

Come MoP, he's moved on to inscription and enchants. The situation on the server is horrible for small town goblins like myself. This guy has dropped glyphs below 7g per glyph. He's got now a second account which I'm pretty sure it's just his AH bot for gems. At first I couldn't understand, until I realized that the ore/herb bot farmers had stopped posting on trade (you know, those guys that sell ghost iron stacks at 15g per stack) So one day I followed one of those farmers when they were in town and just as suspected, they were standing for a while next to one of the toons from the new AH overlord.

My guess is that not only he's botting at the AH (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a link to his TUJ profile) but now he's getting unlimited mats supply from bots. This is allowing him to keep everything at depressingly low prices. Plus he'll spend days on end on his main account milling/disenchanting/prospecting every second of the day.

So far I've decided to pull out of the inscription market, all of it, Darkmoon Cards are to unreliable for my liking. My newest strat is to undercut his gems by posting just one. His bot still cancels/reposts every single gem, so I'm trying to make him loose a couple hundred every hour. I am sitting on bank tabs full of ore and still got lots of enchanting mats, I'm low on herbs but I don't mind it since I got a full stock of glyphs, waiting for him to reset the prices maybe one day, but it seems like he's got nothing to lose

So the two questions are:

1. Should I start reporting his ass? Will it do any good? Does blizzard even care? I guess I'm questioning my faith in them since the AH on my server has had dupped mounts for months now and every time I get into a BG it's battle of the bots.

2. Can I get some advice on what market to try? If someone can find an opportunity on my realm (US-Saurfang Horde) to make some decent profits I'd be eternally thankful

Happy gold making to all !

I had this exact problem a few weeks ago, he would be on a level 1 toon sitting at the AH all day every day, canceling and re posting 2 times every half an hour with his other account crafting right next to him 24/7. i did report him and his level 1 DID get banned (reported a few timers per day saying they are still doing the same thing, same path, etc) but, he came back on a new account the very next day.

You cant win, i got out of that market once he came back, i still report him though.

Originally Posted by Sinshroud

Reporting DOES work, the main problem is how long it takes to actually have affect. Blizzard enjoy banning botters in waves for impact rather than on-demand.

It's not really for impact. They don't do a ban wave until they can come up with code that will identify the bots du jour and put a fix in place to "break" them. Neither of which is easy or fast. I.e., detect and break the bot without adversely affecting legitimate game play.

Sounds like you're doing everything you can, you just have to wait. I suspect that said person is enterprising enough to have several secondary accounts so that they can continue quickly is one gets banned. Have you tried checking to see if he's got a price floor on his gems? Some people will forget to put a floor on prices, so you can list items at 1c and buy up all of his gems for nothing Then when he gets banned, you have a supply ready to go.


Have you looked into any of the other markets that don't involve crafted items? Transmog gear, plans/patterns, and twink/leveling gear are very profitable markets.

Omg Saurfang Horde represent!

I presume you are talking about Cancel aka Cheapgems aka Kgp aka Blart aka (I think) Shadheals.

We know for sure he has been botting since Cata, many many people have reported him but to no avail. I assume he monitors his toons closely as he answers tells and trolls trade chat a lot.

So forget about gems, enchanting and glyphs because he has destroyed those markets over the last 2 years. Focus on alchemy/bs/tailoring etc as they are still profitable. I've made almost 1 million since MoP dropped so there is still plenty of fat to be found, look at supplying the raiding market and the people leveling alts market and you'll do well.

UPDATES.

First of all thanks for the advice and suggestions, really appreciate your ideas.

Now, as far as other markets go, yup, I'm getting there. I haven't leveled or learned any of the LW/tailoring/BS patterns that are profitable in my server. The main reason is that I haven't leveled my crafting toons, so I'm not collecting SoH at all. I've been paying friends to craft me pieces and posting them, making a little profit, nothing to brag about. The greens market (Cata and MoP items) is good, but Saurfang-H is somewhat small, so you get a couple of sales a week, same goes for transmog gear. I tried the rare recipes market, I actually have a guild bank tab full of them The problem is, again, very few buyers, and there's an stablished person already posting all of them already, I'm thinking of keeping these and maybe transferring, more on this below.

The funny bit is this: after making this post, the person in question (yes Dirtycache, we're talking about Cancel) has been extremely cautious on his botting account. He's gone from his steady 18+ hours a day of resetting, and he's now starting later and taking a break or two during the day. He's still extremely aggressive during peak server activity hours. He's very paranoid, so he's usually around, his botting account is there doing its business and his main account is usually by the mailbox destroying things (sometimes he'll afk and automate the destroying) but he'll come back and troll trade. It's kind of hard to get support from regular people in the server because they LOVE him for making everything so cheap... can't blame them, sometimes I'd rather buy a scroll off him than make it myself nowadays lol

Things I've done successfully: reset one item at a time. Specially glyphs, if there are only 3 glyphs of XXXX available at 7g, I'll buy them all (21g spent) and repost one of them at something ridiculous (750g) and it sells. Obviously next time he'll post 20+ of the same glyph so I just stay away from that item and shift into a gem, or scroll. He's got no floor on his gems, well, I think his floor is vendor price, but I'm not willing to risk finding out. I'll keep on my strat of posting one of each cut gem at a time so that his bot cancels/reposts hundreds and looses on his deposits.

I've talked to other gold makers and they confirm what Dirtycache said: everybody knows he's botting, but nothing has happened to him. Some of them have reported him and he's still there using the same accounts. I am sure he's now using only materials he gets from bots and there's nothing we can do, I'll submit my repots and keep you posted. Again, thanks for the advice

Maybe I'll just transfer to a healthier server I'm already somewhat stablished on another server too that has lots of competition but, the higher population + the lack of goblins using bots as much as Cancel is, makes the AH a very enjoyable experience.