Profiting From The Major Changes To The Auction House (Patreon)

Normally when I write an article for patreons is has to be something I can test and verify 100%. Because the following article is as much about human psychology as code I can't make exact predictions, but nonetheless I think this will be useful. 

Tomorrow the auction-house is being changed so that commodities can be sold region-wide (eg across the enitre US, or EU). 

To summarize the general consensus as to what will happen:

1. Commodity prices will converge on the region average.

2. Gathering professions will no longer be profitable for individual players.

3. Players will find it easier to find obscure commodities on the auction house.

4. It will be a huge mess as it seems unlikely/impossible that Blizzard can handle the volumes of transactions it will be dealing with.

How to profit from this situation:

1. Almost every time Blizzard revamp the AH it creates some kind of duping opportunity focused around a new system.

2. Although in the longer term the prices of items such as spirits of harmony and ghost iron ore will converge with the items they create such as sky golems, in the short term there is likely be a profit opportunity for crafting such items on smaller realms.

3. The trick of posting a single item at a low price in order to encourage others to post below market value, has been an effective trick the auction house was updated months ago. In the chaos of a market reset and major alteration this is likely to be even more effective.

4. Buying items before the regional merge that are significantly below median region price is a good idea. Do not overdo this - the regional average of most things will likely drop significantly. You want to buy things at least half that of the current average.

5. The market volatility will likely push items way down below their true value. If items go down below the level where farming those items is poor value compared to raw gold farms (about 6k gold per hour), then it makes no sense for items to continue to be sold at that level. You can buy up those items in the knowledge that the market will likely recover.

6. In the longer term strategies dependent on micro-management are likely to prosper. For example you can acquire a significant amount of borean leather and icy dragonscales in only a few seconds at the Obsidian Sanctum once a week-gold farmers will not be able to acquire those items so quickly as they have to work to scale. By building up an alt army you can utilize strategies like this to stay ahead of the game.