Diablo 3′s in-game and real-money auction houses.Diablo 3 is really coming, and many players are can not wait to play the game and try to make Diablo 3 gold. And in the first few days, the auction house in Diablo 3 will be very busy. At this time, you should pay much attention to the auction house as there will be many cheats and scams in the auction house. Here are some tips on how to avoid these scams.
1) Know the prices: Imagine you checked the AH several times per week and found each time several copies of the sword of uberness listed for between $10 and $50. What do you think was the average price of all the swords of uberness that sold that week? You might be surprised to hear that the average selling price probably was around $8! Because what you can see is not the price of the swords that sold, but the prices of the failed offers nobody bought. The highest price anybody paid was $9.99, which is why the $10 sword is still there. Don’t overestimate at what price you can sell your stuff.
2) Watch the market: Different populations play online games at different times. The fabled Chinese gold farmer plays 24/7, while the equally fabled casual player with more money than time or sense plays mostly on evenings and weekends. Caricature aside, all virtual economics always have predictable price fluctuations over the week. Just observe the market for a week or two, and you will know at what time you can buy low, and when to sell high.
3) Undercut: In Diablo 3 you will be limited in the number of auctions you can have up at the same time (10 per AH). Thus anything which doesn’t sell fast will block one of your selling slots for 48 hours or until you cancel the auction (only possible for commodities). There is no use of putting anything up that isn’t the cheapest of its kind if you want to actually make a sale. Putting something up for a price where you think it might sell later, when prices have gone up, only makes sense if you didn’t plan to be online for some time anyway.
4) Consider the fees: The Diablo 3 auction houses all work on a fee at sale basis. That has consequences if you want to buy for resale: You would need to up the price considerably for this to work. For example if you buy an item for $7 and resell it on the real money AH for $10 with the proceeds going to your Paypal account, you just barely break even, due to two times 15% being deducted. You need to sell items for 50% more than you bought them for to make a profit.
5) Watch the floor: Sometimes there are considerably more sellers for an item than buyers, and because of undercutting the price drops a lot. At some point the crafting materials into which the item disenchants are worth more than the item. At this point you might make better money by buying and disenchanting.
