Asking someone to refrain from posting unsuccessful auctions over and over again is actually something we ask of ALL users, regardless of rank or donation status. Auctions that no one wants gets annoying to see over and over again, we simply ask you try again later, that is literally all. My hour was merely a suggestion, not a hard and fast "I'm gonna stalk you for an hour and MAKE SURE you don't do it again" Nah, we're not about that. The auction cooldown exists to prevent users from hogging auctions as well as using the channel overmuch to allow others a try, we don't even have rules for spamming Trade anymore - we used to, since however trade channel has an enforced cooldown. Auction however isn't a single message every x minutes, every auction runs several messages, to every player in the channel(which is most people tbh), even with /auc spam enabled The page which quote is more of an information page on Auctions, and is not an official rules page. I am aware that many other pages do have specific guidelines and rules related to certain things, but generally if there isn't specific rules then that aspect of ECC falls under the general rules - which tbh most everything does. In this case we, staff, consider it a form of spamming - which is in the rules, something we have enforced for every single user, for well over a year. Shouts have their own policy, which tbh are much stricter than they used to be back in the day, shouts cost ECD and are meant to be attention grabbing, so we allow some freedom with them. If users go overboard tho, Staff are supposed to rein it in, obviously we are not trying to let big balances make the game unenjoyable for others. This is actually the same concept with auction spamming - QoL keep the experience pleasant kind of deal. We also tell people off for pricing things far too high, as it is a form of trolling auction, which is also not explicitly stated either, but we consider it trolling.
I wouldn't call $500 each a troll auction, but in my experience if something doesn't sell you have to make some adjustments. Try lowering the number of items. Sometimes it's the combined price (in your case $19,000) that is the barrier to someone buying the items. If you auctioned 2 for $1,000 (same price per unit), you might get a bidder. Also, Clar's right. An auction isn't a single chat message. There's the initial auction posting (which contains three lines of text), then a 30 second warning, then a 10 second warning, and then the 3, 2, 1. Then you get the "had no winner" message (which contains two lines of text, if you're the one who'd auctioning the item). That's seven messages and ten lines of text in chat over the course of one minute. That's an average of one line of chat every six seconds for a minute. And that's all without a single bid! That said, I've seen auctions where an expensive item (like a nether star) is auctioned with a starting bid of $10 and a bid increment of $100. Most of the time people try to get it cheap, so there are tons of $100 bid increments. I would say those auctions are more troll-y than the one you were describing. They result in dozens of lines of auction spam until someone finally bids a realistic amount. Even worse are the auctions for a single item at a very reasonable starting price but a ridiculous bid increment. Like one diamond for $10 but a bid increment of $500. These are the very definition of troll auction as they're designed to have multiple people panic bid with "/bid" only to realize they were the second or third bidder and they just bid $1,010 on a single diamond. These are evil and should be prevented. I think the most important thing you left out of your post is that the cheapest store (selling ancient debris for $700.00 each) is mine at /warp tribus. It's a great shop and everyone reading this should come and buy something there to show your support for great products at great prices. For a limited time only, I'm dropping my price to $699 for people who are anti-troll auction. Come to /warp tribus and show your support today.
