Friday, January 25, 2008

Update On Funked Search In Auctioneer Classic

There's a slew of activity over on the Auctioneer forums on the search problem in Auctioneer Classic. You can read through the nearly 50 comments (and growing) here.

Here's the short of it as I understand it:


  1. If you use Auctioner Classic and haven't grabbed the most recent release of the Auctioneer suite (build 2778 and release a few days ago on 1/19) then don't! This bug was introduced with that release.
  2. There is no fix yet, however there are some work arounds (keep reading)
  3. The Auctioneer team is kicking into high drive on this and a solution is in the works
  4. Have patience around this problem. The Auctioneer team is made up of volunteers and many have to work. They feel the pressure already.


If you are one of the unlucky ones that's having this problem, read through the thread. In some cases it looks like turning off BottomScanner will bring back the search results (a temporary fix for now).

Good luck. Hang in there. And give the Auctioneer developers your support. If you have something insightful, go post it on that forum I linked to above. If you don't, just show your support...like doing a cheer:

Here we go Auctioneer Team, here we go!
Here we go Auctioneer Team, here we go!

/shake pom poms
/jump off top of human pyramid

12 comments:

Unknown said...

I tried all those thing mentioned last night, with no success. There is also a new build up today, but that doesn't have a fix for it either. In the meantime I'll just keep scanning and hoping a fix arrives soon :(

Omellette said...

So, I don't actually use Auctioneer Classic anymore, having made the switch over to the new Auctioneer Advanced when 2.3 hit.

I'm not seeing any particular bugs myself -- but searches work a lot differently with AA than AC, if I've followed your methods correctly.

Any thoughts on what I should do if I'm just using AA?

Og said...

No - I feel your pain. Hang in there.

Omellette - You are correct - the bugs do not affect Auctioneer Advanced (AA). On your question about using AA solo, there are two methods you can use until they get search functionality in AA.

1. Eyeball the deals. Since AA color codes the price of auctions compared to what it believes is a good price you can very quickly spot the really, really good deals. Pick a category/sub-category, search without criteria and flip through the pages sorting on the percent column.

2. Combine #1 with BottomScanner (BS). With BS active, not only will it scan the last page, but it will automagically suggest buyouts as you flip through the pages. If you are not used to BS be careful with it. However, once you get it configured properly, it's a pretty powerful tool.

Omellette said...

Yeah, that's basically what I've been doing recently.

For a long time, I was a disenchanter that sold off the mats. But constantly fighting with the undercutters wore me down to the point where I don't do that at all, any more. But, when I was doing this, BTM was the bee's knees, pulling green-after-green for my disenchanting fun.

I've started trying to just focus on some of the high-end recipes, and have seen some limited success with that, but I was just curious is there was a more "hands off" way to go through it all.

Thanks for the feedback!

:-)

Unknown said...

Og, you need to do the blog where you tell us the secrets of your settings :) Waiting for that one with much anticipation!

Og said...

Omellette - "the bee's knees"...lol. I'm going to have to work that into one of my posts.

No - Patience, Grasshopper. Soon you will be able to take the pebble from my hand.

Anonymous said...

Hey Og, not really a funked search, but remember my problems with AC's growing and growing database? I applied for access to the auctioneer forums, never got it and played around with the problem myself a bit.

What I found: sometimes AC, the December AND the current version, end with an error message and, maybe coincidental, maybe not, don't delete any old auctions. I scanned the AH again right after that, and low and behold, the second time around old auctions are getting purged.

Today, with the most recent version, I scanned again and had about 20k new auctions - no way there could have been posted that many since my last scan yesterday. So I rescanned the AH, got again 20k new auctions, but also 60k (!) purged auctions. My Auctioneer database has been reduced from above 90 percent to barely 70 percent, so this workaround seems to work for now.

Question for you and all other Auctioneers: how much does a double scan screw up the database and the median value for items? I know that sometimes I scanned twice and the second time just got a few hundred new auctions, the other 20k or so still remained unchanged.

Totally unrelated: I hate undercutters who undercut way too low - going from my 2.49gbo to 1.99gbo. They would make more profit if they'd sell at 2.49gbo. ;)

Anonymous said...

Arrrr, what I meant was 2.24gbo. And even at my rate of 2.49gbo people are buying Golden Fish Sticks. ;)

Og said...

Robur - Not sure what was going on with your crazy database, but it sounds like you're in a good place. And to answer your question, multiple scans a day to not play havoc with Auctioneer. It's pretty smart and knows which auctions it's already seen. You don't have to worry about the numbers (medians, counts, etc.) getting skewed.

Anonymous said...

Okay...nooblet question here, Og. I think I've read all your articles, so I'm sure I glossed over something.

When you talk about using AC for searches, exactly what kinds of searches?? Because I seem to be able to look for things just fine in AA.

What, exactly, SHOULD I be searching for, that I can't find with AA?

I don't mean to be a smartass; I really don't understand what I'm missing!

Og said...

Kestrel - First off, thanks for reading all my articles. You deserve some commendation for suffering through all my rambling posts and bad jokes (Rumor has it that Opus Dei has approved the reading of Og's Ledger as an acceptible form of corporal mortification). I'll have to think of something.

As for your question - it's a good one. Auctioneer Classic has the ability to search auctions and bring back those items that fit a set of profitability criteria you set. Auctioneer Advanced doesn't have this kind of targeted search...yet. It's planned for the final release of Auctioneer Advanced.

I wrote about Auctioneer Classic's search functionality a couple months ago if you want to find out more about it.

If you're happy with Auctioneer Advanced there's no reason to be using Classic.

Unknown said...

Here is a nice tidbit I just discovered from AA...

you see, my database got deleted due to the fact I messed up my puter. I've been scanning twice daily and as I have been trying to catch up with Tyson on the epic/rare/recipes market I noticed a nice thing.

When you have a nice db in your AA, start looking for the epic/rare category with 100% price. Check the items one by one, because most probably those items are either new (only 1 or 2 seen) or they are something which is moving rarely.

In the case of being new, check Allakhazam and/or Wowhead to see the overall median price: voila, auctioneer just automated the bargain find on the high priced items!

Copra