The Importance of Time of Day and Peak Hours in Auction House Sales
Feb 29th, 2008 by tyson
I’ve been digging for a few hours for actual studies to support a peak time economic theory, but have thus far come up short, so if anyone finds a link, please feel free to contact me.
There are two main peak times in an MMO. The every day peak hours and the “entire weekend”. In any adult-played MMO, where work becomes a factor, peak hours every day are around 7-8pm. This is when the majority of people are logged on and searching or posting. Then there is the weekend. The population on weekends is noticeably higher in any MMO, and the peak hours are greatly expanded, from about 3pm to 10pm, with many more people logged on throughout the day.
During peak hours you’ll find the auction house fuller and more rife with deals, but you’ll also have to weed through more of the bad during these same times. So what does this mean for the keen auctioneer? Should you save your best, costliest items for the weekend?
For the answers, let’s look at exactly what types of items and transactions are affected during peak hours.
During peak hours you’ll have more competition and prices will generally be lower. So on the weekdays, you’ll typically find higher prices for most everything. This has held true throughout my 3 years of experience in World of Warcraft. That means that if you want to sell something at a higher markup with perhaps slightly less recognition, the weekday or off hours is the time to do it. I have had great success selling during the weekdays and in fact other than making sure to search for deals on the weekend, typically make no other distinction. My prices are usually based on general market desire anyway, not on finicky weekday to weekend differences, and priced accordingly. However, there are exceptions.
Peak hours, especially during the weekend, attract more casual players, so as a buyer, this is the absolute best time to look for deals. If you look 3 times on the weekend vs. 3 times during the week, the same person on the weekend would theoretically be much richer after a set time. There is not only more to look at and thus more to find, but casual players can be a big source of opportunity as well. They (the more casual player base) a) spend less time (because they usually have less time) worrying about what to price something at the auction house and b) more often fail know the actual value of an item, which both lead to many more opportunities for the intelligent searcher.
For selling your own items, for the rarer, costlier item, you’ll have an easier time selling it on the weekend, but you should definitely put it up during the weekdays as well, as they attract more niche buyers and you usually don’t have to worry about competition with the same item or competing for general pricing in the same category.
When you hawk your items on the trade channel, the weekend and peak hours are the best time to use, though I have nothing against using the trade channel from time to time regardless of time of day. More people mean more exposure to the same item and even a slight feeling of competition between the masses for one advertised item is a good thing. Be somewhat warned that if you advertise when few people are around, those few are usually the hardcore or vocal minority, and you are perhaps more apt to get some negative feedback in the trade channel regarding the price or how much that item just stinks. Dealing with “hecklers” in the trade channel is another post however.
I do not claim to be an expert in commodities, but know that prices are lower on the weekend with all the competition so were I to try and corner a market I would want to do it in off hours, non-weekends, and buy up some of the low weekend prices on those same commodities for selling during the week. In fact, prices can wildly fluctuate in commodities such as trade goods over the weekend, so if you buy in bulk, your profit margins are going to be better if you use a strategy such as this.
Don’t leave out the weekdays or off-hours for finding deals however. On many occasions I have found an “impossible” deal in the wee hours and have wondered how it was that I found it. Well without as much exposure, sometimes you can capitalize on deals that almost wait for someone to find them. The fewer people, often the longer they wait. During the weekend, with the volume so high, amazing deals can also get lost in the magnitude of auctions so the general point is, though you are able usually to find deals at all times of the week, if you had to specialize, look on the weekend a few times a day.
Happy auctioneering!
Very nice idea - although I hadn’t really taken the time to consider it, I fully acknowledge this post as 100% fact, for pretty much every reason he listed above
You also have to factor that a lot of the quick moving items - enchanting supplies, potions, herbs, ore, etc. (our bread and butter, gatherers!) - moves pretty fast on raiding days. And raiding days, as most of us know, are on the weekdays, which just further supports the audience that you’re selling to (since a lot of raiders are the adult generation anyways) 
I often have a hard time selling things on the weekend, which often has me playing undercut wars (which I do purposely for certain items, so it’s not always a bad thing), but that just means more room for deals to be snatched up
I have to second the “wee-hours” theory… I can’t believe the deals I get when there is hardly anyone on… probably just dumping items for quick sell to pickup when raiding (or whatever), begins the next day/night.
There needs to be *just* an auction house game, called Undercut Wars. Of course, there would be no auction house if there weren’t meaning behind the items, people who’s time investment in acquiring an item was taken into consideration.
However, I think such a game could still exist in a computer simulation with some of the things we’ve talked about built in: server maturity, item rarity and frequency, etc. Stick a bunch of random but consistent values for items on each “server” and see what happens. Would be interesting and different for each server.
Excellent post. One thing I’ve found on my main server, is that some trade goods tend to sell for very cheap during the week. But on the weekends, with higher demand, the price jumps. I have repeated bought a stack of light leather for 20s, then sold it a few days later for 1g. It’s small profits, but still a nice mark-up.
Thanks Yvelle. It’d be interesting to see what kinds of goods sell for less during the week. Over the weekend, perhaps the higher demand on those items you sell isn’t also met with more competition (to drive the price back down) and that is a great niche to find!
Excellent advice. Thank you, once again, for sharing!
It’s also worth considering placing some bids just before server maintenace. It’s an easy way to buy a few hour’s grace on an otherwise competitive bidding process.
Gerbil, great point. I have also had good success with this. If it’s a long maintenance you’ll often end up getting items you might not otherwise when you log back on.