[phage]

Since Covid began in 2019, a single person has held control over all North American auction house deals for two years using grey area tactics. If you're subscribed to The Undermine Journals' paid feature, you'll have noticed a scarcity in killer deals as of April of 2021. This is all thanks to a single player who has had almost no competition because of the limited access the average player is provided when it comes to the complex nature of programming.

There was a program created to combat this player called [Goblin Stock Alerts] that gave non-programmers the ability to call the web api as fast as the other person could, but this project was quickly killed off. Through manipulation by the same person with their exclusive api program, a newer, and of course private addon was created. This addon provides what GSA and TUJ can, but without the need of the web api. Similar changes to a popular addon called Auctionator reflect just how powerful a shopping addon can be with the right code. Once again, this person has a personal, exclusive addon that no one else will ever be able to use. Is this fair? Why not, that's modern day capitalism at work. However, because they're able to be on for the majority of the day, no one has any chance of finding cheap mounts, rare patterns, removed transmogs/mounts, or cheap pet deals. So the question is now "should this be allowed"? Multiboxing was permitted since Classic only because

On top of that, every TCG mount that has appeared on TUJ that has been listed for under 3m has been sniped by this one person and flipped. This has given them enough gold to control the markets of every high pop'd realm. This has led to the creation of a syndicate, consisting of three dozen accounts that are always online, running this, for lack of a better word, bot. The command that controls shopping isn't a protected api call and has therefore been turned into a weapon against the average player. If you've mispriced an item when posting, only for it to be bought up within a few seconds, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

So, to the point of my post. Is this fair? If you're interested in buying the items on this person's list, you're forced to pay their prices as long as they're at their computer or spend weeks farming the item, if it still drops. You have zero chance at getting anything below the suggested market average according to TUJ, all because this person's able to automate the shopping process, removing most competition. One simple change to the auction house api, specifically protecting the call which allows for automated scanning, would kill this addon in its tracks. One step further, which is restricting access to the web api for common players, would eliminate this abusable grey area completely. Is it fair for one person, with unlimited free time, to run this kind of script most of the day for two years straight?

The amount of money you make outside of the game shouldn't let you dominate the trade market for a whole region just because your computer and internet speeds can handle three dozen accounts running a custom script. This is as bad if not worse than what multiboxing did to the open world resources for a decade. An investigation should be done on this player and the system should be changed.

What do you think?