AH Sales and the Merge

runebane · October 2013

Did you guys change your mind about cancelling all the auctions or what? The stuff I bid on before the servers shut down is still listed on the AH. My auctions are still up too. Just wondering what's going on.

dezstravus · October 2013

runebane wrote: »

Did you guys change your mind about cancelling all the auctions or what? The stuff I bid on before the servers shut down is still listed on the AH. My auctions are still up too. Just wondering what's going on.

Hey Runeblade,

During the maintenance the engineers were able to preserve the auctions and allow them to stay intact, rather than forcing them to end early or be sent back (at the cost of losing some AD). At first we didn't think it would be possible to preserve the auctions through the shard merge, but once we discovered that it could be done, we decided to move forward with it to minimize any potential player AD loss.

Thanks for requesting clarification! I'll just make this a sticky to let people know.

runebane · October 2013

Heh, thanks for the info.

galagar · October 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey Runeblade,

During the maintenance the engineers were able to preserve the auctions and allow them to stay intact, rather than forcing them to end early or be sent back (at the cost of losing some AD). At first we didn't think it would be possible to preserve the auctions through the shard merge, but once we discovered that it could be done, we decided to move forward with it to minimize any potential player AD loss.

Thanks for requesting clarification! I'll just make this a sticky to let people know.

!! THANK YOU !!

From a technical standpoint, why did you think you would NOT be able to?

As a DB programmer, I can't imagine a scenario where they wouldn't be able to merge the AH listings.

nwnghost · October 2013

While that is of course a good thing, I am somewhat miffed about staying awake until 4am in the morning to bid on stuff

melodywhr · October 2013

well played, cryptic. well played.

goddessunique · October 2013

Epic news. lol Thank you.

ceryndrion · October 2013

galagar wrote: »

From a technical standpoint, why did you think you would NOT be able to?

I don't think that it was ever truly a case of not being able to, but as I am sure that you are aware, the auction house is an extremely complex database structure, and the engineers were not able to be 100% confident that they could do the merge without some data loss, so a decision was taken to go down the original route, of expiring all auctions, that way the merge could be done cleanly. However, at the eleventh hour, the engineers were able to create a new routine that would allow the merge to work without fault, and thus save the auctions.

And now, everybody is happy.. I hope.. you are happy right? you'd better be happy.. or else.. its october you know.. strange things happen in the month of october..

runebane · October 2013

ceryndrion wrote: »

And now, everybody is happy.. I hope.. you are happy right? you'd better be happy.. or else.. its october you know.. strange things happen in the month of october..

All happy here.

fondlez · October 2013

I'm ecstatic! No extra posting fee extortions and everyone gets to see the real prices.

kattefjaes · October 2013

I'm rarely one to praise Cryptic these days, but that is unexpectedly cool. It will be interesting to see how that influences the eventual economy, not having to start from some sort of unknown "ground state".

Also, a bit of a curve ball for those people who sniped those last minute auctions; hopefully they can laugh about it.

Still, good work, Cryptic.

pestilence149 · October 2013

THANK Goodness.. I was about to waste a decent chunk of AD in postings and now glad to see the people who were trying to troll and win minimum bids are no longer going to be so happy. ON a side note Cryptic it hasn't been 29 hours since I last prayed and the server merge was at 8pm last night and I prayed 1pm last, I now log on at 8:00am and all my coins are missing, it has not been a full 29 hours yet you still somehow managed to poof all of my celestial coins? Is anyone else in this boat because I am missing a TON of wonderous coffers now

Sadly,
Pestilence

mctankypants · October 2013

All my characters were at 0/7 when I logged on. I had two sitting at 6/7. Bummer.

darvinthesixth · October 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey Runeblade,

During the maintenance the engineers were able to preserve the auctions and allow them to stay intact, rather than forcing them to end early or be sent back (at the cost of losing some AD). At first we didn't think it would be possible to preserve the auctions through the shard merge, but once we discovered that it could be done, we decided to move forward with it to minimize any potential player AD loss.

Thanks for requesting clarification! I'll just make this a sticky to let people know.

This would have been really great to know before myself and MANY others waited all day/night until the servers were about to go down, attempting to snipe auctions, tying up time and millions of diamonds in potential snipes that would have turned a profit. I'm all well and glad the developers were able to preserve the auctions but the time lost and the AD tied up by ALOT of people now for up to 5 days is absolutely ridiculous.

In the future if you're going to change something that could affect the economy so drastically it would be nice to know beforehand.

Lets not also forget the poor people merged from Dragon whos auctions were preserved with their AH prices....you do realize how bad that server just got screwed as with any effort to to check you would see their AH economy was 20-30% below Beholder and Mindflayers.

This decision was awful and ill thought. We were all expecting a fresh new economy, which would have taken a few weeks to settle, now instead 1 server which i didn't invest in, Dragon was screwed completely. Wealthy Beholder and Mindflayer players who were able to log in immediatley upon launch after the merger just made huge profits, and the potential for players on ALL servers to have made some minor profits was taken away.

Outrageous and poor planned.

syka08 · October 2013

As I stated on FB I'll state here. Many thanks! I love having gotten to keep my AD deposits for the items I put up many days ago.

beckylunatic · October 2013

There isn't a single Ancient weapon or off-hand item listed with a buyout. Someone is trying to corner that market.

fondlez · October 2013

beckylunatic wrote: »

There isn't a single Ancient weapon or off-hand item listed with a buyout. Someone is trying to corner that market.

Don't know what you see, but on my screen at this exact time I see 124 Ancient mainhands with 2 without buyouts, 55 Ancient offhands with 1 without a buyout.

frishter · October 2013

Now I wish I did a 4 day aution instead of 1 ):

beckylunatic · October 2013

fondlez wrote: »

Don't know what you see, but on my screen at this exact time I see 124 Ancient mainhands with 2 without buyouts, 55 Ancient offhands with 1 without a buyout.

Thanks. You inspired me to search again actually using a keyword this time. My problem was apparently that while *just* searching for level 60 purples would have all of those at the top of the list prior to the merge, the sheer number of items for sale now filters these out of the 400 displayed (without narrowing the search down, anyway).

azlanfox · October 2013

For once I'll praise Cryptic and capitalize the name. Not ending the auctions early saved many their posting fees, but it also prevented a lot of greedy swindlers from taking advantage by sniping the bids. Well played.

tripsofthrymr · October 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey Runeblade,
At first we didn't think it would be possible to preserve the auctions through the shard merge, but once we discovered that it could be done, we decided to move forward with it to minimize any potential player AD loss.

If you found out it was possible minutes before the server merge, that was a very dangerous thing to do from a QA perspective. If you knew longer than that, you should have communicated the change to your player base once you knew.

I personally spent time bidding on items that were about to expire. Given that I bid on items literally seconds before the servers went down and was outbid on 70% of those items, I'm sure many other players did the same thing. Ultimately I (and others like me) received none of the items due to the "change of plans." You wasted many man-hours of your player's time because you could not spend 5 minutes to communicate the change of plan.

If this were the first, second or third time a lack of communication wasted people's time I would be totally silent on the issue. This is however a pattern. You need to fix how you communicate with the player base. Search the forums for Cryptic Communication for many examples of players that feel the same frustration over a wide range of issues.

j4k06s · October 2013

This is great news. I was afraid I lost a lot of my posted auctions for pennies.

The only problem now is it is not possible to see all auctioned items at all!
With a line cap of 400, nobody can see all items and buy the cheapest or cheapest pr count.
Before the merge this problem was a little rare, if you set the right search parameters. But now this is very common.
Try checking Preservation Wards which (probably) has well over 400 auctions. Using the gateway you are not able to find any stacks for more than 5000 AD, because of sorting by total price and because of the cap.
In game I don't know which part of the results is returned, but it does look more mixed.

Why not just remove the 400 cap and(or) create a better filter to search by, including unit price or something?

fondlez · October 2013

j4k06s wrote: »

Why not just remove the 400 cap and(or) create a better filter to search by, including unit price or something?

I would much welcome a unit price (Buyout) sort - at the very least on Gateway.

zebular · October 2013

tripsofthrymr wrote: »

If you found out it was possible minutes before the server merge, that was a very dangerous thing to do from a QA perspective. If you knew longer than that, you should have communicated the change to your player base once you knew.

I personally spent time bidding on items that were about to expire. Given that I bid on items literally seconds before the servers went down and was outbid on 70% of those items, I'm sure many other players did the same thing. Ultimately I (and others like me) received none of the items due to the "change of plans." You wasted many man-hours of your player's time because you could not spend 5 minutes to communicate the change of plan.

If this were the first, second or third time a lack of communication wasted people's time I would be totally silent on the issue. This is however a pattern. You need to fix how you communicate with the player base. Search the forums for Cryptic Communication for many examples of players that feel the same frustration over a wide range of issues.

. . . . . Even if they told you when they decided it was possible, you wouldn't have been able to do anything about it because the servers were down.

tripsofthrymr · October 2013

zebular wrote: »

. . . . . Even if they told you when they decided it was possible, you wouldn't have been able to do anything about it because the servers were down.

Then to my first point... "finding out" that one can preserve the auctions during the migration and then doing so is terribly risky practice devoid of any QA effort.

colonelwing · October 2013

tripsofthrymr wrote: »

If you found out it was possible minutes before the server merge, that was a very dangerous thing to do from a QA perspective. If you knew longer than that, you should have communicated the change to your player base once you knew.

I personally spent time bidding on items that were about to expire. Given that I bid on items literally seconds before the servers went down and was outbid on 70% of those items, I'm sure many other players did the same thing. Ultimately I (and others like me) received none of the items due to the "change of plans." You wasted many man-hours of your player's time because you could not spend 5 minutes to communicate the change of plan.

If this were the first, second or third time a lack of communication wasted people's time I would be totally silent on the issue. This is however a pattern. You need to fix how you communicate with the player base. Search the forums for Cryptic Communication for many examples of players that feel the same frustration over a wide range of issues.

This is what one gets, for being greedy. :rolleyes:

Karma 1 : 0 You

slayorian · October 2013

colonelwing wrote: »

This is what one gets, for being greedy. :rolleyes:

Karma 1 : 0 You

Most certainly. These are delicious tears. However, it still doesn't make up for the damage the AH exploit or nightmare exploit caused. But, at least it's a step in the right direction.

When banking on some new change/patch/shift/whatever, you always run a risk. Sometimes you lose.

tripsofthrymr · October 2013

colonelwing wrote: »

This is what one gets, for being greedy. :rolleyes:
Karma 1 : 0 You

Greedy? Someone was going to get it. Except Cryptic changed the rules without telling anyone until after the fact. My point is not that the AH decision changed, but that this is the latest in a long string at failed communication with the player base.

I'm glad that they were able to preserve the AH (which apparently they miraculously figured out during the migration and seemingly pulled off without trashing the AH. I guess we don't need QA in software development after all). I'm not glad to see another example of non-communication.

rhoric · October 2013

There would have been nothing you could have done about it even if they told you. They found out during the merge not before.

tripsofthrymr · October 2013

slayorian wrote: »

Most certainly. These are delicious tears. However, it still doesn't make up for the damage the AH exploit or nightmare exploit caused.

Don't forget the "Perfect Enchantment" exploit. :cool: Next time you see TR xxGS + Perfect Vorpal lfg fast/exp only ask that TR how many Coalescent Wards they used creating the Perfect Vorpal. The honest answer 99% of the time is zero.

frishter · October 2013

tripsofthrymr wrote: »

If you found out it was possible minutes before the server merge, that was a very dangerous thing to do from a QA perspective. If you knew longer than that, you should have communicated the change to your player base once you knew.

I personally spent time bidding on items that were about to expire. Given that I bid on items literally seconds before the servers went down and was outbid on 70% of those items, I'm sure many other players did the same thing. Ultimately I (and others like me) received none of the items due to the "change of plans." You wasted many man-hours of your player's time because you could not spend 5 minutes to communicate the change of plan.

If this were the first, second or third time a lack of communication wasted people's time I would be totally silent on the issue. This is however a pattern. You need to fix how you communicate with the player base. Search the forums for Cryptic Communication for many examples of players that feel the same frustration over a wide range of issues.

So basically you're mad coz you tried to exploit the market and failed. Hey I don't blame you, I tried the same thing before I went to bed, but that's no reason to complain about not being able to take advantage of something that wasn't intended to happen outside of necessity.

AH Sales and the Merge

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