Auctioneer/FAQ

From Norganna's AddOns

General Questions and Answers

Q1: What versions of Auctioneer are available for my use?

A: Auctioneer can be downloaded from our official download site, where all supported versions of Auctioneer are always available for download. We generally have a release version (known to be stable) and a preview (i.e. beta) version, which includes more features but a greater chance of unresolved issues. Our preview versions are generally quite stable, however, and we have no qualms about suggesting that even very new users try out the preview versions in order to get the benefit of our latest features.

In addition to our own site, we currently maintain official versions on WoWInterface and Curse.

In this documentation, you may find occasional references to "Auctioneer Classic" or "Auc4". These were earlier incarnations of Auctioneer, which have since been decommissioned by the development team and are no longer available for download or supported here.

Q2: How do I update to the latest preview or release build if I was previously running an earlier preview release of Auctioneer?

A: In many cases you can update by simply installing the new files over top of your existing installation. However, some updates require a more thorough installation procedure. In these cases, different errors might crop up if you don't completely remove the previous versions of Auctioneer from your directory prior to installing a new version. If you are experiencing errors after updating, or if you just like being thorough, please follow the instructions below:

Delete any and all of the following folders if they currently exist in your interface/addons folder:

!nLog !Swatter Auc-Advanced Auc-DB Auc-Filter-Basic Auc-Filter-Outlier Auc-Match-Undercut Auc-ScanData Auc-Stat-Classic Auc-Stat-Debug Auc-Stat-Histogram Auc-Stat-iLevel Auc-Stat-Purchased Auc-Stat-Sales Auc-Stat-Simple Auc-Stat-StdDev Auc-Stat-WOWEcon

Auc-Util-AHWindowControl Auc-Util-Appraiser Auc-Util-AskPrice Auc-Util-AutoMagic Auc-Util-CompactUI Auc-Util-EasyBuyout Auc-Util-FixAH Auc-Util-Glypher Auc-Util-GlypherPost Auc-Util-ItemSuggest Auc-Util-PriceLevel Auc-Util-ScanButton Auc-Util-ScanFinish Auc-Util-ScanProgress Auc-Util-ScanStart Auc-Util-SeachUI Auc-Util-SimpleAuction Auc-Util-VendMarkup Auc-<Any_Value>

Babylonian Auctioneer BeanCounter BtmScan Configator Constructor DebugLib Enchantrix Enchantrix-Barker EnhTooltip Informant LibExtraTip Plotter SlideBar Stubby TipHelper

The main point is to remove all Auctioneer-related files before upgrading. Once all such files are removed, install the latest preview or release build of your choosing from the download site.

Q3: What is the deal with the new GetAll, fast-scanning functionality? Does it really work that fast?

A: Yes, GetAll is fast. Really fast. Yes, we are getting all the auctions, we're not skipping anything. The GetAll scanning process should take about 1-3 minutes, if you have a reasonable connection and CPU, as compared to ~8-10 minutes or more using a regular scan on a typically-sized Auction House. We can do this now because Blizzard provided new functionality that lets us download the whole AH in one big chunk, rather than having to page through 200+ pages of 50 auctions at a time.

There are some trade-offs and caveats, though:

• You can only do one GetAll scan per 15 minutes, unless you logout and back in. This shouldn't be much of an issue, since why would you want to do two complete rescans so quickly?
• GetAll may cause you to disconnect. This appears to be an issue on Blizzard's side which we cannot do much about. We have, at best, anecdotal suggestions about how you can minimize the chances of this happening: have a reasonably recent computer and CPU; do not try to scan when the server itself is behaving sluggishly, or when you have high latency ping times; do not attempt when there are lots of people using the AH; do not attempt when a lot of people are physically nearby. Basically, try using GetAll at off hours and at the less-populated AH's (e.g., Silvermoon City for Horde, and Exodar or Darnassus for Alliance) if you have trouble getting disconnected while using GetAll.
• GetAll will sometimes get interrupted in the middle of downloading or processing; the post-scan summary will indicate that there was an interruption, and your snapshot may contain many fewer items than you would expect. This most often happens soon after a server restart, whenever the server cache is cleared (i.e., after patches or major maintenance). Running a page-by-page scan first will frequently make it so that GetAll scans are once again functional for you.
• GetAll will not have seller info for most auctions. This is caused by a Blizzard limitation in how quickly we can request seller names for auctions. We have adjusted our code so that most of our Auctioneering functionality is not affected, but this will affect any seller filters you have in place (as you won't be able to filter them out if we don't know who the seller is when the scan is processing). If you want to get seller information, your only option is to use the regular, page-by-page scan (possibly in conjunction with a GetAll scan).
• When using GetAll, we no longer have to worry about items slipping between pages while scanning, so any items missing from the GetAll scan are immediately removed from the snapshot (as opposed to needing to be missing from two successive scans, as we require during regular scans).

Q4: I have noticed an item where the statistics reported are well beyond reason, often known as "poisoning". How do I reset the statistics for a single item, without losing all of my scan data?

A: At the chat prompt, enter "/auc clear [ItemLink]". Do not enter the quotes; the [ItemLink] can be the item's shift-click link.

Q5: Actually, most of my statistics for most items are now out of whack, and I'm thinking about getting rid of them all and starting over. Should I do this? How?

A: It's a decision that only you can make for yourself, but many of our expert users now feel that old data can really hurt some of your price statistics, particularly right after a new version of WoW is released and many new items are added and old items become more or less in demand.

If you do want to start fresh, there is no easy command to do so in game. You will need to exit out of WoW completely, then go to your WTF set of subdirectories, where addon data is stored. First, back up your data, just in case you ever want to restore it. Then go ahead and delete or move any data file that starts with the name Auc-Stat. (Do NOT delete the AucAdvanced.lua file, as this is where your preferences data is stored.)

The next time you log in, first go to your AddOns screen and ensure that Auc-DB is disabled. This is because Auc-DB will continue to report prices even if all your other stats are reset. Now when you log in, you should find that all your price data is gone and you can start fresh with new scans. We recommend a week or two of daily scans before you begin to use your new price data for anything, and as always, Auctioneer is just a tool, you have to be the brain behind the tool whenever you think about whether to buy something. Caveat emptor.

Q6: What is the snapshot and/or Auc-ScanData, and how and why would I clear it?

A: The snapshot (aka Auc-ScanData) is where we store the list of all auctions currently up on the AH. When you run a getall or page-by-page scan, the snapshot is updated with the auctions we saw. All Auctioneer searches are made against this snapshot, so the snapshot must be up to date in order for your searches to be useful.

Every once in a while, the snapshot can get corrupted. In these cases, you might hear one of the Auctioneer staff suggest you clear your snapshot. Doing so will NOT make you lose your statistics data (it is all stored in separate places). Doing so may have some minor impacts on some statistics that rely on the snapshot, such as Auc-Stat-Purchased, so for this reason we do not suggest clearing your snapshot frequently. But doing so once in a while when you are having other issues is a fairly minor impact.

To clear your snapshot, you can do one of two things:

• From in-game, you can type the following into the chat line, exactly as written, but without the quotes (note the mixed capitalization): "/run AucScanData.scans=nil". Then reload your interface, or log out and then back in again.
• While the game is NOT running, go into your WTF set of directories, and find and delete the Auc-ScanData.lua file. (Do NOT delete the file of the same name from your AddOns directory.)

Q7: What are all the different prices I see on the tooltips and in the Appraiser options?

A: Here are descriptions of the currently available Statistic Modules for Auctioneer:

1. Market: This is not a stat module in and of itself, but rather a confidence-weighted average of all of the reporting stats modules. Since this calculation is rather complex, it has its own page: Market Price
2. Simple: 3-, 7-, and 14-day exponential moving averages, or EMA. An EMA buckets all your prices into days, gets an average value for each day, then averages those values together in a complicated non-linear way (see the previous link if you want more info). The 3-day EMA is the one used to calculate market price.
3. Histogram: Returns Median and IQR values, based upon a Histogram of pricing data. Essentially, a median value, based upon all prices ever seen; no data are ever discarded.
4. iLevel: A standard-deviation statistics module that bases the suggested price on the item type, quality, and iLevel rather than specific names or other criteria. Note: This could cause sales prices to be displayed for BOP items; these values can be seen as another way to evaluate the item or ignored.
5. StdDev: A price obtained by filtering out data falling too far away from the mean value, in an attempt to remove outliers/scam data. This is reported as the Normalized price in the tooltip, and is what is used to calculate market price.
6. Purchased: 3-, 7-, and 14-day EMA of inferred sales prices. Be very careful with this stat - it does not record only actual sales made. Instead, if you scan multiple times in a day, you sometimes see items disappear from the listings before the earliest possible time they might have expired. The purchased stat module sees this happen and infers that they might have been sold at their buyout price, and then calculates an average of all such inferred sales prices. Note that this stat can be skewed high, because some such disappeared auctions haven't necessarily been bought out; they may have just been canceled (for legitimate or scam reasons). The 3-day EMA is the price used for the market calculation.
7. Sales: Works on the principle that if you have sold something for a certain price in the past, you can likely do so again. To this end, it uses the BeanCounter historical database, that is, your previous sales history, to enable you to use that as your new sales price, too. Since Sales is already working with the BeanCounter historical data, it includes a breakdown of your purchasing history so that you can roughly judge your long-term profits in specific markets.
8. WOWEcon: Only functions if you have WOWEcon installed. This displays the price WOWEcon reports for your server and/or all servers; it is the median price for which an item has previously sold. You should see the WOWEcon site for more details, but essentially these are actual sale prices (successful auctions) on your server-faction (and/or all servers (global)). The key drawback is that the amount of data per realm/faction appears to vary greatly, making these data somewhat less valuable; however it shows the number of sales used to determine the recommendation in parentheses, next to the price. If your server usually has average prices relative to other servers, you can use the global price with confidence, since it usually has hundreds of sales for an item.

Please note that all scan data will first be filtered by the "Outlier" filter, if you have it enabled. This means that data which appear to be outliers (i.e., very far away from the mean value, which to us indicates that it is probably scam data meant to corrupt our Auctioneer statistics) will be discarded outright and will not affect any of the above stats calculations.

Note also that there is a different category of modules called Utility modules. These Utility or Util modules may also provide various specialized prices for items (along with lots of other functionality), but they are not directly used to calculate statistics. Util Modules are primarily used to provide various functionality throughout the application. A technical description of the differences between these two may be found here.

Q8: SearchUI is not finding any items for me anymore. What could be wrong?

A: Check the SearchUI options, especially the options for "IgnoreItemPrice", "IgnoreItemType", and "IgnoreTimeLeft". Try disabling them all, then re-run the search and see if any items are discovered. They can sometimes be a little restrictive, so you should really learn more about them before you re-enable them. See the SearchUI Basics page or the main SearchUI wiki page for more.

Also check the reserve amount you have selected, as well as the maximum price you have selected (both in the global options, and for the particular searcher you are using). These are often found to be the culprit by folks having trouble with no search results returning.

If you're still having trouble, go to the Search tab, and select "Global Settings" from the left hand list, then enable the "Show debug line in tooltip for auctions" option. Be sure to also enable the searches you regularly do just below. Now go to the browse tab, and manually search for some auctions that you think your searches should be returning in the results list. Mouse over the auction, and now the tooltip should have a new "SearchUI" section added which indicates the reason why the auction did not meet the criteria for being returned by Search.

Q9: My eyes; CompactUI is just too small! Is there anything you can do to help? While we are at it, we want to move the AH window around the screen and adjust the sizing. Is that possible too?

A: Indeed, it took a bit of Goblin and Gnome coordination, but finally, one of our most requested feature sets has arrived in the form of the Auction House Window Control Utility. Look in the Auctioneer settings, under Utilities, and then select the AHWindowControl sub menu. AHWC provides the ability to move and resize the entire AH Window, adjust the font size used to display data within the CompactUI, protect the AH Window from being accidentally closed during configurable operations, and save settings between WoW sessions.

Q10: My chat window is inundated with scan statistics after even the most simple search.

A: This is the intended behavior. For those who cannot stand having some extra information, Auctioneer allows you to either suspend this output altogether (Option1) or to direct the output to the Chat Frame of your choice (Option2).

• Open the Auctioneer options and select the General subsection.
  • The options are accessed via the Configure button at the top of the Appraiser frame or by clicking the "coin stack" icon on the SlideBar, installed by default just below the minimap along the right edge of the screen.
• Option1: To completely disable the display of this data:
  • Uncheck the "Enable the display of the Post Scan Summary" check box.
• Option2: To divert the Post Scan Summary to another chat frame:
  • Create a new chat frame by right-clicking your General chat tab, and select "Create New Window".
  • Give this new chat frame a cool name, perhaps "Auctioneer" or "Sales Stuff".
  • Look further down in the General subsection and find the drop-down box named "Preferred Output Frame".
  • Set the drop-down to the setting of your choice; that will direct the Post Scan Summary and other Auctioneer-initiated messages to that frame.

Note: Some Auction House messages may be displayed in other channels as they are system messages and are not generated by Auctioneer.

Q11: I like to scan only certain Auction House categories. How do I accomplish this?

A: You can select specific categories to scan on the Browse tab / CompactUI by Ctrl-clicking each category you wish to include in the scan, and then clicking the play-type button at the top of the Browse frame to start the scan.

Q12: Auctioneer isn't saving any of my prices any more, the way Auctioneer Classic did!

A: Auctioneer no longer modifies the Auctions tab in any way. All the posting/pricing is now done via the Appraiser or Post tab.

We think the new look and functionality of Appraiser greatly simplifies the process of posting single and multiple auctions, but if you prefer the Auctioneer Classic style of posting, simply click on the Post tab, provided by the SimpleAuction module. Note that the Post tab has many fewer options for configuration.

Q13: My old slash commands are not working; does this mean there is no way to change any options in Auctioneer anymore?

A: There are very few slash commands to view and set the options for Auctioneer. Instead, we use the graphical user interface provided by our Configator library.

To open the configuration options, simply click the "coin stack" icon on the SlideBar menu. The SlideBar menu is installed by default just below the minimap along the right side of the screen. When at the Auction House, you can also access the settings by left-clicking the Configure button, found along the top of the Appraiser tab frame.

Auctioneer now provides numerous configuration options, including supporting profiles. When newly installed, each character will use the Default configuration. You can set a single profile for each character or use a number of profiles with each character, if you so choose.

Q14: I only see the three standard Blizzard AH tabs. I am missing Appraiser, BeanCounter, and the SearchUI!

A: Are you sure you installed the Auctioneer SUITE? The Auctioneer stand-alone package doesn't come with anything but the very basics: the scanner, a couple of statistics, and Appraiser.

Q15: Where is the search tab? (or for you old schoolers, the bidbroker and percentless reports)

A: You open the new, revamped search frame, the SearchUI module, by clicking on the magnifying-glass icon on the SlideBar Menu, installed by default just below the minimap, or by right-clicking on the magnifying-glass icon along the top edge of the Browse tab. The SearchUI is also available from a tab along the bottom of the AH frame when you are at the Auction House.

Q16: It's been over a day since my last scan. After I run a scan in Auctioneer, I notice fewer items reported in the DB than there are in the AH. What gives? Is Auctioneer missing some auctions?

A: Because of the way we scan, we will sometimes miss auctions that shift between pages as we are scanning. There is no easy way to fix this with the tools available to us now. With the advent of GetAll, we are able to address the issue to a point, but only for those able to use GetAll.

Q17: After a scan of all categories, Auctioneer reports a greater number of items in the DB than there were in the scan. How is that possible?

A: The reasoning is technical. The scanning engine does not remove existing auctions from the snapshot until they have expired, even if they are missing (i.e., likely sold or canceled) from the current scan. This is because of the way we scan - auctions which are on the edge of a page can move between pages as we are scanning, causing us to miss it. We compensate by not removing auctions until we know that they have expired, or once they have been missed twice in a row, resulting in an item DB larger than the total size of the AH, especially for people who scan multiple times per day. (This may not actually be an issue now that we flag active and missed auctions - needs testing.)

Q18: All the tooltips for items in my bags are gone. Help!

A: This is almost certainly caused by one of your other addons. As with all issues of such a drastic nature, we highly recommend disabling all non-Auctioneer related addons to aid in the determination of the cause.

• Note: When first upgrading to the release version of Auctioneer, some of the defaults have changed, so you may need to go in and set up the tooltips to show the information you require, set a specific statistic to show in the tooltip, et cetera.

Q19: What happened to that item icon that used to be displayed in the tooltip?

A: We did not include this in the current version intentionally, to save some overhead; because the icons are reused so many times throughout the game; and since, most often, you will be mousing-over the icon to obtain the tooltip.

If you cannot live without the icon, there are numerous addons that will allow you to see it. We recommend http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11411-TooltipItemIcon.html, which is maintained separately by one of our developers, Brykrys; or http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9923-QualityID.html#info, which was created and maintained by our QA Manager, Anaral.

Q20: I want to make my own Filter, Statistic, or Utility to go along with Auctioneer. Is this possible?

A: Yes, indeed! Auctioneer was designed from the ground up to be modular, lightweight, and extensible. For more about creating modules, take a look at the Auctioneer Modules API wiki page. If you are interested in the Core API, check out the Auctioneer Core wiki page.

The modular nature of Auctioneer extends to the internal functions of each module where appropriate. For help with the creation of customized Searchers and/or Filters specifically for use in SearchUI, The SearchUI technical details provides a great starting point.

Upgrade Issues

Specifically for those who used the 4.x version of Auctioneer or earlier.

For those who are more visually-oriented, see the Changes from AC to Auctioneer wiki page.

Q1a: How do I search now?

A: Searching is now done through the Search UI. You can get to it in several ways: click on the Search tab on the AH, right-click on the magnifying-glass icon at the top of the browse tab, or left-click on the magnifying-glass in your SlideBar. More documentation for using SearchUI is here (it is in progress).

Q2a: I'm having trouble posting auctions... / How do I get this thing to remember my prices?

A: Just to be clear, you now have two options for posting in Auctioneer. The Appraiser tab is our advanced posting interface, containing lots of options for power sellers. The Post tab is the simple posting interface, and is a throwback to the old Auctioneer Classic posting interface. It is designed to be simple and straightforward, with very few configuration options. We no longer modify the default Blizzard Auctions tab. You need to use one of the two tabs above in order to get extra functionality like remembering prices.

Q3a: I want to post auctions using pricing by stack, not by item. How can I do this?

A: Click the button to the left of the bid/BO prices in Appraiser to switch between per-item and per-stack pricing. In the Post tab, all pricing is done per stack.

Q4a: When I use Appraiser, it is missing auctions! The Browse screen shows a lot more auctions than the competition screen in Appraiser.

A: Starting with Auctioneer 5.6, this should no longer be an issue, as the Appraiser competition and SearchUI screens should now also display even items which were filtered from the scanning process. The following is included for anyone using Auc 5.5 or earlier.

After you do your refresh on the Appraiser screen, is the post-scan summary showing items being filtered? If so, this is the cause of the disparity; most likely it is the Outlier filter. This filter is enabled by default, and set to 200%. This means that any auction with a buyout of more than 200% (i.e., double) of the item's current appraiser price will be filtered out of the snapshot. So it will not appear in the Appraiser competition list, nor in any SearchUI searches, but it will still appear in the Browse tab (which shows live, unfiltered data). You can disable the Outlier filter, or adjust the options to suit your tastes, especially now when prices are fluctuating wildly. But remember that this filter is the one which prevents most price poisoning going forward, so keep it in mind if you start seeing your appraiser prices getting obscenely large for some items down the road.

It might also be caused by other filters (seller filters, or the "Ignore own auctions" filter). Another possibility is that you do not have the competition window scrolled all the way up.

Q5a: Nothing is displaying in the tooltips! Have I lost all my data?

A: As part of earlier releases, we've reset a bunch of settings, including turning off most of the statistics tooltips by default. If you've scanned using Auctioneer before, click Configure at the top of the Browse, Post, or Appraiser tabs, and look under the Stats subsection. Ensure that the statistics you would like to see in the tooltips are enabled. If you've previously used Auctioneer Classic and this is your first time with Auctioneer, your Auctioneer Classic data are probably unavailable. You will have to scan for a few days before the statistics are generated on the tooltips and the pricing suggestions on the Appraiser and Post tabs.

Q6a: I really miss the old Auctioneer Classic tooltip that showed me the median price, and told me if the item in my mailbox or bags could be profitably listed (e.g., it showed "cannot undercut", "undercutting by 5%", "competition above market"). How do I get that back?

A: The Auctioneer Classic median statistic had a few problems, so it has not been implemented in Auctioneer, exactly. That said, there are a few different options for the pricing statistics that you might want to try: - Histogram computes a median value that many find to be very useful. - Simple and StdDev statistics don't use a median value per se, but they calculate fairly straightforward statistics that you might like as well. To use these tooltips, go into the main Auctioneer options, select the stat you wish to see from the list on the left, and make sure its tooltip option is enabled. Most stats have additional options to let you fine tune what gets displayed in the tooltip.

The colored text which indicates the state of the competition can also be enabled separately. Go to the Match Modules section on the left, and select Undercut. The bottom set of options allows you to enable the matcher tooltip. Be sure to select the appropriate pricing statistic in the drop-down.

Q7a: Where is the "Auctioneer" folder in the current downloads?

A: That was Auctioneer Classic, which we do not support any more. It will break if you try to load it in WoW 3.0. Please delete this directory or disable the Auctioneer addon in your addon screens. The new Auctioneer is in the AucAdvanced directory, which is included in the ZIP file from http://AuctioneerAddOn.Com/dl.

Q8a: What happened to Bottom Scanner (BTM)?

A: BTM is no longer supported. We suggest you use the RealTimeSearch search portion of the SearchUI (get to it from the magnifying-glass icon on the top of the Browse tab, or via the Search tab), as it duplicates the real-time scanning capability of BTM. It can now also be configured to allow one-click purchasing via a blocking pop-up, similar to BTM. Note that this will pause your scans while it waits for you to make a decision, unlike traditional SUI functionality, which just puts the items into a list.

Q9a: When I open up the mailbox, all my mail gets instantly flagged as read and changes color.

A: This is BeanCounter, which has to read your AH mail in order to process it. You can fix the problem by going to the BeanCounter options (BeanCounter tab, Configure) and changing the Mail Re-Color Method to suit your taste.

Q10a: Where is the Scan button?

A: The Simple posting interface (Auc-Util-SimpleAuction) has an option to enable the big red Scan button (Browse/Post/Appraiser tab, Configure, Util Modules, Simple Auction, Scan button, check "Show big red scan button at bottom of browse window"). Otherwise, Auctioneer uses the play-type button at the top of the Browse tab or the fast-forward-type button to start a GetAll. Note that, as the pop-up states, this isn't officially supported yet, as it may cause you to disconnect, particularly if you have a slow or high latency connection. Caveat emptor.