In the current version of WoW, all servers are blended — there’s no longer a clear separation between PvP and PvE environments. But the Auction House still rewards a kind of hyper-competitive, zero-sum behavior that feels more like PvP than cooperative gameplay.
You don’t need skill — just relentless cancel-reposting, market flooding, or bot-like activity. It pushes out casual players, flattens profession value, and turns the economy into a battleground where the most aggressive win — not the most engaged.
I’m not against playing the market, but I think the system could benefit from small changes that add friction to this kind of AH dominance.
Something like:
A cooldown for reposting identical items
Penalties for constant canceling
More protection for casual sellers and profession-based income
The goal isn’t to punish market players — it’s to make sure WoW doesn’t reward PvP-style behavior in systems where there’s no actual PvP anymore.
Would love to hear thoughts from others who’ve felt this too.
I’ve had to edit this because I first noticed the issue in Classic and assumed Retail also had PvE / PvP servers, but I think the issue is still relevant to retail.
There’s really not a good way, at least one that blizzard would put the money and resources into, to regulate because as soon as you put in account wide restrictions people will just start using multiple accounts to play both sides of trades. And combating that requires too much time and investigation.
But it would be nice if there were 15-30 minute account wide timeouts from selling the same type of item you just bought or buying items you have up for sale. And actual penalties for cancelling auctions.
A cooldown on same item listings sounds like a good idea. I just don’t buy into the idea that bots are unstoppable. I think the real issue is that this kind of market control isn’t recognized as a form of PvP. If it were, I think developers would see more reason to regulate it.
Some things people have suggested is maxing out how many auctions someone could have at one time (not per day).
I think having 200 auctions going account wide would be good enough for 90% of people, though people would bypass that by having more than 1 account, which probably happens right now even without any restriction.
Letting this artificial market run it’s course, where for a lot of items there is no barrier to farming infinite amounts of a commodity, would see a lot of items value tank to coppers per item. ( or coppers above the vendor value )
Also, without any information on transaction volume it’s really hard to say if we’re seeing market manipulation on a grand scale or a markets working properly.
if i have to guess its the undercut thing op might be trying to undercut people and its backfiring or he is getting fooled by the undercut prices sometimes they do
It’s not really about being undercut or prices being low — those are just part of any economy.
What I’m frustrated by is how certain markets get dominated by players (or bots) who post constantly with no friction.
It flattens prices to the point where gathering and other in-game efforts feel pointless — not because of actual player supply and demand, but because of saturation and manipulation.
And to be clear, I’m only suggesting this as a potential system for PvE servers, where that kind of economic domination doesn’t really align with the cooperative, immersion-based culture those servers are meant to support.
A little regulation could go a long way in making sure different playstyles — including gatherers — still have meaningful ways to participate in the economy.
That’s a fair point, and I agree that without access to detailed market data, it’s hard to say definitively how much of this is abuse vs. just high supply.
But I think part of the issue is that “infinite supply” only exists in theory — real players don’t farm endlessly. It’s bots or economic power users doing that.
I’d argue that a small amount of friction — like a cooldown on reposting or a limit on identical transactions — might actually help normalize prices. It wouldn’t stop farming, but it could curb mass reposting and give casual gatherers more space to participate.
At the very least, I think PvE servers are the right place to experiment with a system that favors world interaction over AH min-maxing.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a blue has already said theyve looked at the AH complaints and found that very little of what you see in the AH is bots.
Its players who are just better at it than most.
If theyre somehow driving prices down, good on them…I love low prices. Its the flippers like myself who I detest lol
I think you might be missing the core of what I’m saying. I’m not claiming it’s all bots — I’m saying that the behavior being rewarded is hyper-aggressive, constant-market control, which feels more like PvP than a passive economy system.
Whether it’s bots or players, the point is that people who post/cancel/repost 100+ times a day gain dominance through aggression, not smart trade. And that kind of playstyle might make sense on competitive servers, but on PvE servers, it doesn’t really align with the slower-paced, community-driven feel the game is supposed to have.
I’m not asking Blizzard to ban people for using the AH well — I’m asking them to recognize that the current system favors behavior that overwhelms other players, not engages with them.
Im not sure why you keep mentioning pve and “competitive” servers, all we have are normal servers and all players are posting on same region-wide AH.
Region-wide AH is the thing you are having problems with, the competition among sellers.
I came to similar conclusion, so that’s why I’m trying to come up with some kind of regulation that’s automated. I’m not looking for anything revolutionary, just some reasonable limits to balance trade the same way they balance combat.