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| Do You Trust Your Sources? |
Not All Sources Are Honest
As a blogger in the World of Warcraft gold making scene, most of us have the objective of helping out our readers. With the increase in traffic and growth to a site's reader base comes an increase in responsibility. We as WoW gold bloggers are responsibile for providing honest, accurate, and timely information to our readers. Most of us gold bloggers use our powers for good, while there are some out there that will use their powers for evil.
Some sites actively engage in the art of in-game market manipulation through out of game gold blogging articles. Bogus articles designed for nothing more than to influence market trends on their own server to make their own pockets richer. The bigger you become as a site, the more reach and influence you have as a blogger. Just because a site is bigger or more popular, doesn't make it accurate or honest for that matter. Let's take a look at a completely bogus article written based on lies. Why would someone lie to their reader base? To increase their own profits at the expense of the readers who blindly follow their suggestions and fall prey to the trapped laid by the author.
Blogger Market Manipulation In Action
The Tease
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| The Tease On Twitter From @Mageshadow |
July 25th, 11:00 AM, @Mageshadow of Just My Two Copper send's the above tweet to tease the JMTC readers about the "awesome post showing a way to obtain cheap and easy Greater Planar Essences."
Current Greater Planar Essences price on Mageshadow's server at the time of writing: 23g
July 29th, 8:00 AM, Mageshadow's less than accurate post on Disenchanting auction house items for Greater Planar Essences appears live at Just My Two Copper. Review the garbage post at JMTC by Mageshadow here.
Current Greater Planar Essences price on Mageshadow's server at the time of posting: 9.25g
Within the article at JMTC, Mageshadow states,
"With Greater Planar Essence at 29g/per on my server, I can afford to pay up to 30-35g per item as each item has a chance to give me 2-3 essences."
What? 29g per? Lies...
When he wrote the post GPE was at 23 gold, not 29 gold, and by the time the post went live the price was already down to 9.25 gold. Within hours of the post going live, the price drops down to 6.89 gold each. This is a major difference from the 29 gold per Essence numbers that Mageshadow was fictitiously promoting.
The strategy that Mageshadow reported doesn't even work on his own server, like he reported. He's not seeing 29g Essences on his server. As the day continues and the market becomes even more flooded with Greater Planar Essences hanging out below 7g each almost all day, someone comes along along at 9:00 pm and buys out the aution house and resets the Greater Planar Essences to 29.98 gold each. Hrm...Wonder who that was?
The Undermine Journal also shows that the average price on all servers hovers around 14.5 gold, so the "Awesome post to obtain cheap and easy GPEs" isn't really very awesome. Hell, it isn't even accurate or a viable strategy on many servers according to TUJ data.
So a misrepresented auction house item price was posted to the blog with the most traffic and the blind followers gave it a try before checking the prices on their server's auction house. The fools created a lot of GPEs, flooded the server's market, and then someone snatched up all of the cheap GPEs and relisted them for close to 30 gold each. Market manipulation at it's best. Well played sir, well played.
Learning From This
The moral of the story is to always check if a gold blogger's strategy is going to be viable on your server before jumping all in with your gold investment. Sometimes a certain strategy may not be viable on your World of Warcraft server and other times it may just be a purposefully misleading post designed to lure you into unloading your goods at a less than ideal price. Play smart and research your markets independant of what you read on gold blogs.
Are you being used?
Anyone else seen any other examples of this type of market manipulation by bloggers?
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| Resetting the Market After a Flooding |
Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started. This Guide Can Be Applied To Multiple Markets Not Just Barking MFCs.
I kind of chuckled. Keep at it Cold
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't believe he's intentionally lying to people. He just isn't very bright and doesn't have a clue what he's talking about most of the time.
ReplyDeleteHim and his terrible articles are why I stopped reading that blog months ago.
You should always take things people say with a grain of salt. Especially when that person is trying to sell you something. I have gotten some good things off of the JMTC podcast and forum. But I also wouldn't trust Marko or Mageshadow as far as I could throw them :)
ReplyDeletestill wishing you'd avoid this crap. let your work speak vs their work
ReplyDeleteresponsibility fine, be responsible for your own work and don't waste your own time policing others
the time you put into that could have produced other things i can use
:P love Toltec
I do not know if he was trying to mislead but I only use other bloggers advice to point me in the right direction and help me form my own strategies
ReplyDeleteI wish you were wrong, but you're right. He's simply not creative enough or quite frankly smart enough to realize what's going on.
ReplyDeleteA few things:
ReplyDelete1. Good reminder in the last paragraph. You can't trust any bloggers gold tips before doing the research on your own.
2. Yesterday was Saturday. Enchant mat supply is low at the beginning of the weekend, and increases from there. Prices should have fallen through the day yesterday. That's a much simpler explanation.
3. You gold bloggers overestimate your influence. You guys are not powerful enough to influence markets individually on the kind of scale you're suggesting. If all of you together were pimping planars, we might see some movement.
JMTC is one of the worst wow blogs i've read. It a thinly veiled add for his gold guide http://www.20kleveling.com/
ReplyDeleteI hit both gold caps, 214k and 1 mil at the respective time, and wouldnt be seen dead in his hall of fame as it lends legitimacy to his terrible site.
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You really spend too much time worrying about what other people do, and you can see it's affecting your readers.
ReplyDeleteEach time you make one of these kind of posts, there are always some of your own readers that come forward and voice that they wish you would stop these kind of posts.
No one likes to see people bickering and fighting, it's an instant buzz kill and a waste of time.
Stick to raising your reputation compared to others by writing good quality posts that your readers enjoy, rather than trying to lower other's reputations to make your reputation look better when compared to theirs.
I'm surprised it took this long for you to launch a counter attack after Marcko's shot across your bow a few weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, this type of infighting is exactly why I've become so turned off by the once respectful gold blogging community. Now, the only sense of community is that we seem to play the same game.
In the past I had no qualms about directing a casual acquaintance I met in-game to your site, JMTC, Alto's or others because you all blogged more frequently than me and you all had good tips.
I'm much less inclined to refer anyone anymore just because it is a crapshoot as to whether they will get recycled tips, angry attacks or even good advice.
I don't blog anymore. I seldom read more than the first few sentences of posts. Your post today was, IMHO, a waste of my time.
The culprit in my mind is greed.
Before the advent of paid coaches, 'My Gold Guide Is Better Than The Rest', and other IRL money making efforts by bloggers the community was more genial. Yes, there was Marcko's guide but it has been around (seemingly) forever.
If bloggers would stop trying to make money off players and just offer tips that made sense, provide a platform for discussion and generally play nice together it would be a much more enjoyable experience to read various blogs.
This isn't a personal attack, this is a warning for newer readers who don't know better. This post serves as a warning to take everything you read with a grain of salt and is supported with an example scenario.
ReplyDeleteEveryone makes mistakes. Whether an incorrect post is just inaccurate or purposefully misleading doesn't matter. You should still research markets on your server, before applying any advice, including advice you read on this site or any others.
While I do appreciate your advice...I tend to agree. Whatever excuse you want to make mudslinging it is still mudslinging. You claim its not personal, yet you only sling mud at him.
ReplyDeleteI am going to investigate and see if his post is viable. I won't know until I see for myself.
Which is *exactly* all his post advised one to do.
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