The Auction House Alt - Why they are important
Feb 9th, 2008 by tyson
First, I’d like to give a nod to Og who’s similar auction house website can be found here: http://ogsledger.blogspot.com/. He’s contributed to this site’s comments and has been a supporter of my tutorial podcast series (even though his attention span needs a little work ;). His site is an interesting one and he covers actually a different market than myself, that of commodities and lower priced bargains. He’s also a big fan of auctioneer and has provided some great tutorials!
Here’s a subject that I’ve touched on a couple times, and others have mentioned. Now I’ll cover it in more depth. Having an auction house alt (alternate character) in any game is important for several reasons. First, a definition:
An auction house alt (AH alt) is another character you’ve created that “parks” him/herself right near an auction house/broker/etc., receives incoming items from your main playable characters and then you login to the alt, collect said incoming items, proceed to the auction house to post them / search for deals, and then log off. If your other playable characters need money, the AH alt sends it to them, but they should keep enough for necessities in any case.
Just having an AH alt can benefit you in these ways:
- Time Savings: When you’re out adventuring and accumulate items that you need to sell, should you just cut it short, take a trip back to the city with the auction house where you can unload your goods, then come back later to check to see if they’ve sold or repost the same items? That’s a lot of time spent running back and forth that can be better spent earning prestige, levels, and being out with your friends.
- Inventory Space: How many of you have gone off adventuring with your main character only to have all your bags filled up and no where to unload? That’s in part what makes bags in these types of games valuable. Will there be an MMO that has infinite inventory space? Maybe you might then be able to take this one off the list, but managing a whole lot of items would probably be something that many of us would procrastinate in doing any way, so the alt is the better, proactive bet.
- Money Management: If you have several characters making money using the auction house, it becomes an organizational mess to figure out where your money is, what items you have for sale and by who, and whom (did I get that right?) you need to go to for money when you need it. Instead, if you keep all of your disposable income on just one character, and items, it becomes easy to allocate money and incoming items. Just give your played characters enough to persist, and perhaps a little more if you can spare it for those unpredictable expenses.
- Your Reputation: Whether your post your items at sky high prices (which I don’t do or recommend), or if you want anonymity for any reason, having your AH alt’s name out there for everyone to see lets you play your other characters knowing that they’re reputation is safe. This is especially good if you buy low/sell high, which some will look on as unfair. In any case, it’s easier to create a new level 1 character than rebuild your reputation if something goes awry.
[...] own stuff and I haven’t stopped sending them things they can eventually use. After reading Tyson’s post about the importance of AH alts, I decided I’d be better off doing the [...]
[...] own stuff and I haven’t stopped sending them things they can eventually use. After reading Tyson’s post about the importance of AH alts, I decided I’d be better off doing the [...]
Nice article. I totally agree with you on the use of AH alts. Just started a new char (BE priest) on a rp-server and decided to directly create a AH alt for her. Only the thought of doing all the AH-stuff on my main reminds me painfully of my days as a newb to the game
One little addition to money management. I like to use Goldtracker for Titan Bar (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/5118/). This nice little addon shows the total money you have per server per faction. You can also see how much money every char has so transferring money becomes much easier. Another nice addition is that it shows the money you got during your current session and the money that equals per hour. Nice if you are doing some grinding and want to know how effective that grinding spot is(this is less usefull if you are emptying your mailbag and you get x gold in a few seconds).
Great article. I remember my early days of WoW. This was before they even had an auction house in every major city. I had a daily commute ( no mount, so public transportation). I was leveling my undead warlock, I would hearth to Ogrimar at the end of the day, and post my auctions, then the next day travel to my questing area, quest, and then heath back to Ogrimar at the end of the day. Then someone told me about a concept of a “mule”
[...] own stuff and I haven’t stopped sending them things they can eventually use. After reading Tyson’s post about the importance of AH alts, I decided I’d be better off doing the [...]