This is going to be long and I apologize in advance for that.
So okay, I can't afford to move to another server. I'd love it, and have long been waiting for the day when Bliz offers me a free character move. LOL though now, I've been made an officer in my guild and so long as that's going well, I'd sorta hate to leave on them. If that joyful event ever comes to pass, maybe I can talk the guild into moving along with me.
As to "why can't you afford it, it's only $25" type answers. Well that's $25 per character. I've got 10 characters, and they're really interconnected. 2 of them are lvl 80, one bank toon, and the lowest I have is a 38 or so. The rest are high 40s with two in Outland. Okay, so I have severe altitis. And I'm a trade skill junkie too. So my lock main makes sure my clothies have good gear and sends everybody bags, plus DE's everything I can't sell on the AH. My druid (the other 80) farms herbs for her alchemy and my priest's inscription (the priest just hit 65 and can now level that). I like being self sufficient. I have every profession except blacksmithing, as I gave that up so my DK could do jewelcrafting. (I had jewelcrafting on my lowbie shaman before, but I didn't enjoy playing her that much, so she wasn't leveling JC fast enough to make it viable for me.) If I need something, I can usually make it. LOL or level one of my alts a bit more so that I can make it.
And if someone wants to say, "well just level up new lowbies on a new server," I've been playing the game for about two years now. It's taken me this long to get my alts as high as they are. I truly don't "get" how people suggest you can level a character to 40 in a few weeks. Maybe I'm just a crappy player. Or maybe I spend too much time doing dailies or professions or something.
Anyhow, sorry for the long explanation to get to the actual point/question. I'm on an older server (Thrall) and the economy just stinks. Not much need for anything my lowbies can produce or farm. And anything the higher level characters can make or farm, you can bet that there are several other folks who can get that too and are offering it on the AH.
So when inscription came out, I put my priest on that job and for a while the she was selling glyphs like mad. Most of her minor glyphs were getting anywhere from 7 to 25g each. Now I realize this is crazy money, and I shouldn't complain when the demand drops. (I'm grateful that I was able to get epic flying on my two now-80's mostly from that profit.) After all, eventually folks will have enough glyphs, especially since they don't have to respec every 10 minutes.
But that's not really the problem, because some glyphs are still sometimes selling for 5 or 7 or 15 gold. Except--and here's the real problem as I see it--that there are about 5 folks on the server that are offering their glyphs for nothing.
I have no problem with undercutting. It's part of the normal process and I do it too, sometimes. Something goes for 15g and you put yours up for 14g90s or whatever. No big deal. Maybe you even offer it for 14g or even 13g. That's understandable.
But we've got about a half dozen folks on the server who if you offer something for 15g, they'll offer it for 4g. If you offer it for 5g, they'll come back with 50 silvers.
I actually wrote to two of these folks and pointed out that for the cost of herbs and the cost of parchment they were losing money. One never wrote back. The other wrote back saying that she did 300 auctions a day and couldn't be bothered with checking the going prices.
So I decided to take a break from inscription.
At the time I was working on the pet achievement and I also needed more recipes for that achievement. I really wanted that skunk. But I'd been unlucky at drops so I didn't have any oozelings or baby dragons and my gold had been wiped out by paying for riding. With one last character slot available, I decided to make myself a hordie and send myself some pets and recipes through the neutral AH and my roommate who also games. Both horde pets and recipes were going for crazy money on my server.
Now I realize that buying a pet that my hordie can buy for 50s and turning it around and selling it for 10-20g or so is the height of goldrush overload. And yeah, maybe I'm greedy. But since after a week or so of doing that, my total money across 9 characters and a bank toon was all of 5k gold, I'm not, I think, being horrifically greedy. I only sold about 5-10 pets/recipes per week and I almost never buy gear for any of my characters, even my main, so it's not like I have a huge money drain. And in deference to the other players, I always keep my prices within a few gold of theirs, so I'm not really setting the price, I'm just following it.
Well that worked for all of two weeks. Suddenly, this week a horde prairie dog is going for 4g or less. Once again, folks not bothering to look at the "going" price and underbidding by more than 10g.
So do I join them at their own game? Offer pets for less than it costs me to transfer them over from horde and hope they eventually make themselves broke, or what?
Sell glyphs for less than the cost of parchment till everyone goes away? It's crazy.
Okay, let the dissing begin.