Underground Economy: What the Hell Happened to the AH?!

The AH has been a big part of my life. I worked the AH like a Wall Street pro; I would roll up on a new server on an alt, work the AH by selling niche items, and then have enough money for a mount before I was even level 40. There was one time, and I think some of you already know the story, where I had so much gold that I bought everything off the AH and put it back up for 1g bid with a 1g buyout. I single-handily ruined my servers economy for months.


Not to long ago I moved from Burning Blade to Aeire Peak and I decided to roll up on the AH since it had been such a long time. I was SHOCKED to see that every item was overpriced. Now, I don't know if it was because of Cata, boosting the cost of items and throwing the economy into it's own cataclysm, or the server, but it was ridiculous. The price of mats as well as gear was either WAY to expensive or WAY underpriced.

Back in my day, seeing lowbie greens on the AH for 1g+ was not uncommon and was a good way to make money. Obviously, 'of the Boar' gear was cheaper than 'of the Eagle' or 'of the Monkey' gear. I made a good deal of my money running RFC and collecting greens to AH, but the nice of the business I hit were materials and recipes. RFC was a great place to farm cloth and low level recipes. There wasn't a market for it, so I started one off. I usually sold stacks of Linen for 25s buyout (BO), Wool for 40-50s BO, and Silk for 70s-1g BO. Mageweave and Runecloth ranged from 5-10g BO and Felcloth was a pretty big sell too. Even though I made a ton of money from selling a stack of Felcloth or Runecloth/Mageweave when a stack would sell, Linen and Wool were my biggest sellers and I could crank out a stack of Linen a few minutes and Wool was easy enough to get since I could skin Sheep/Rams for it; which is no longer possible.

I then hit the WoW TCG Loot market as soon as the TCG came out. I'll have an article later on about my time playing the TCG, but I played it enough to get a good amount of loot cards. Except for the last 3 sets to come out, I have pulled every loot card at least once EXCEPT for the Spectral Tiger Mount. The first loot card I pulled was the Tabard of Flame, which I used and still have on Zuty. Every loot card afterwards, I would sell either for real money or gold in-game. I made a good amount of real money this way (~750-800$) which I would put back into buying cards, not for the loot, but because I liked playing the game, but I was raking in gold by the truck load. I was one of the original pioneers of this bold new frontier and I even helped thwart the people who lied about having loot cards just to cheat some poor person out of a couple hundred gold.


Anyway, back to the present. I don't understand the AH anymore; not just because I have been out of the game for so long, but I will see an item go for 5g bid/BO and then the same time going for 200g bid/BO. This may just be Aerie Peak's economy, but it is sickening to see the price jumping around so much. I've pretty much decided to just forget the AH and vendor everything. I hate everyone right now ... GJ ruining the economy! ... jerks ...

~Zuty