12.27.2014

Is Savage Blood Being Duped? Here's The Evidence

I was tipped off by Twitter user @OriShmori that there's a strong chance that Savage Blood is being duplicated ("duped") on several servers.

@PowerWordGold @CM_Lore Hopefully something will be done about the rampant Savage blood dupes. http://t.co/wbaEzSI298
— Ori (@OriShmori) December 26, 2014

If this is true this could be very bad for anyone hoping to make gold selling Savage Blood or selling items made with Savage Blood.

This isn't the first time I've written on the topic of item duplication and its effects on the economy (see Strong Evidence of Rampant Item Duplication in WoW and Proof Of Jeweled Onyx Panther Duping And Its Effects On Pricing). My guess is that (sadly) this won't be the last. Read on for our evidence and the ability to check the data for yourself.

The Undermine Journal Pages

Below is a list of links to the Savage Blood page for each and every US server listed on The Undermine Journal at the time of this writing.

In the interest of time and space in this post I created a (admittedly somewhat unscientific) rough representation of the 247 realm pages listed below I selected only the realms that were the first realm that started with each letter of the alphabet (A-Z). Thus Aegwynn for "A", Baelgun for "B", and so on.

I then captured screenshots of the 2 week "Snapshot" graph showing Market Price and Quantity Available (as of 12/25/14) of these representative realms.

While the images below represent only about 10% of all the realms they should be able to give us a rough idea of what's going on.

If you play in the US I encourage you to follow the link to your realm page for Savage Blood below and take a look for yourself what's happening with Savage Blood on your realm.

In addition, feel free to use the links below to do your own full-scale research.

After the links are the graph images. If there is rampant duping of Savage Blood or even the beginnings of duping we should be able to see a very large and sudden rise in the number of Savage Blood available. This will show up in the red line.

Also keep an eye on the Market Price (the blue filled area) as that will indicate the effect that the possible duping will have on the price of Savage Blood.

The Sample Realm Images

Below are images from the Snapshot chart for the 26 sample realms.

Thoughts

Now that I've looked at a representative cross section of 26 server what are my personal thoughts on whether Savage Blood is being duplicated or not?

I think the evidence as seen above shows that Savage Blood duping is very likely happening. I'm just going to reiterate a few examples below to demonstrate why I think so.

Examples

First let's take a looks at the realm Uldaman:

From the graph above we can see that the number of Savage Blood on the auction house up until yesterday was holding steady at around 50 or so. As of the 27th there are over 350 for sale. That's not a small jump. That is a 700% increase.

Let's look at Onyxia:

Much like Uldaman, Onyxua was fluctuating between 30-70 or so Savage Blood available on the auction house. As of sometime yesterday there were suddenly around 250 available for sale.

For one last example let's look at Galakrond:

This has the same steady supply of around 100 or so Savage Blood consistently available on the auction house up until around December 26, 2014 when it started rising. It spiked at around 700 Savage Blood available as of the 27th.

If you'd like to view the above realm's Savage Blood data for yourself I encourage you to click on the links above each image and look for yourself.

Not All (Yet)

It should be noted that not all of the realms samples above show such start evidence of duplication. The reasons could be that there is no duping going on.

It could also mean that dupers on that realm are being more careful about how fast they release their items into the market.

The dupers in all these cases are just normal players who have chosen to break the game's terms of service (and make the game less enjoyable for the rest of us). They're still people and they still make their own choices.

While all servers may not have rampant duping my guess is that there are people out there on every server who, if given the chance, would take advantage of this in a heartbeat.

Conclusion

As with many other item that have been surreptitiously duplicated in the past, my hopes of Blizzard taking (or even being able to take) swift action to curtail this likely Savage Blood duping aren't high.

I think that if this duping becomes wide spread we will continue to see the decline in Savage Blood value on realms where people are selling duplicated Savage Blood.

My advice to anyone who was making gold in this market is get ready to see your earning potential drop. If duping these items continues the only way prices have to go is down.

But all hope is not lost. You can fight back against sellers of these duped items by reporting anyone you suspect of selling massive quantities of duped Savage Blood.

I've known of many gold-makers who have reported getting auction-bots and supers banned in the past by continuing to report them to Blizzard via the in-game reporting methods.

While it often took a long time for them to get banned they eventually did. In addition, past experience and anecdotal evidence suggests that Blizzard tends to wait and ban dupers and botters in large waves.

I could be wrong about all of this but I don't think I am. If you think you have the analytic chops to be able to provide a viable alternate explanation for the sudden huge increase in Savage Blood on the auction houses of the game I encourage you to show your own evidence to the contrary.

I've given you the links above to all The Undermine Journal Savage Blood pages for all the US realms. Go for it.

I personally haven't got to the point in professions yet on any of my characters to be getting or using Savage Blood but I feel sorry for those of you who do.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

And who knows, maybe Blizzard will jump on this problem and "nip it in the Blood" before it grows into more of a problem than it already is.

Just as a final bit of anecdotal evidence I just saw this in my trade chat: "WTS [Savage Blood]x50 1.1k each".

Can you guess what level the character was? Yup. That's right. Level 1.

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Labels: Breaking , Flipping , Harmful , Mats , Professions , Warlords of Draenor , WoD

1 comment :

Kody PendantJan 4, 2015, 12:17:00 PM
Quite a few toons lvl 1 with names like "Gssffd" selling these in lots of 100 lately (US-Kil'jaeden)
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12.27.2014

Is Savage Blood Being Duped? Here's The Evidence

The Undermine Journal Pages

The Links

The Sample Realm Images

Thoughts

Examples

Not All (Yet)

Conclusion

1 comment :

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