Aren't auction house mods like Auctionator effectively cheating - TheMouseNest/Auctionator GitHub Wiki

Of course, I don't think so at all, but that's not to say that there aren't problems with the auction house experience. In particular, the problem of auction house campers, who continually monitor and undercut anyone who undercuts them is a real issue, and when it occurs, the victims' frustration is quite understandable.

But the solution is not to make the auction house so tedious and time-consuming to use, that campers give up. Not that they would anyway. Imagine that the standard auction house user interface were more logical and user-friendly. Would anyone suggest making it less so, just to attempt to deter auction house campers?

Now there's nothing wrong with undercutting - that's the way markets are supposed to work. And as much as I don't like when my own auctions get undercut, the other side of the coin is that it's a good thing for buyers. The problem is that, the way the WoW auction house works, undercutting by a trivial amount yields far too much benefit to the seller and almost no benefit to the buyer. Being the cheapest auction, even if by only a single copper, always pushes you to the front of the line. There's no real-world market I can think of that works like this. Who would pick one music store over another because it sold CDs for a penny less? Or cross the street to a different gas station that sold gas for 2.39.98 per gallon rather than 2.39.99? In real world markets there are always other considerations (eg. "I'm already on this side of the street") that trump trivial differences in price.

The solution needs to be inherent to the mechanics of the auction house. Blizzard needs to make it so that it's much less effective to camp the auction house. My current thinking is that a good solution would be for Blizzard to implement a minimum undercut of say, 5 percent. That would have the effect of increasing the cost of reposting to sellers and increasing the benefit of lower prices to buyers. Not clear though what the unintended side-effects of this might be but I think it, or something similar, would be worth a try.