I actually like the OP’s idea. Instead of “Market” orders for commodities (now on a regional AH), he’s suggesting “Limit” orders.
This is kind of how WoW tokens work now…
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Minimum price to make transaction: If a buyer wants game-time but thinks the gold price for a token is too high, they just wait. If a seller thinks the gold value for $20 is too low, they just wait to buy a token.
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The AH, sets the price based on supply/demand: The game adjusts the token price every N hours based on the imbalance ratio of buyers & sellers (i.e., when demand=supply, the price doesn’t change, when one or the other is above/below some threshold, there’s a price adjustment up/down based on the ratio).
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Commodities in the queue sell first-in-first-out (FIFO). You can certainly cancel a listing still, but the only motivation to do so it because you made a mistake. You can’t undercut because the AH sets the price on a moving time-window of supply/demand ratio.
This only works with commodities where there’s a constant stream of supply and demand. It doesn’t work for non-commodities (like transmogs, crafted gear, etc.) that may not have any prior supply or very low demand.
The only drawback I see is that it is much less of a mini-game for the goblins out there. That might be an acceptable thing for Blizzard though and it would certainly make commodities truly “normalized” as it eliminates player-based undercutting.
It is not at all what should happen with the new DF professions where crafters can specialize in a skill to make things better than a standard item (including consumables). Standard consumables could still be in the AH price set, but anything special-made should be in the original player price set.
That’s exactly how a partitioned economy that suddenly is unified will work. If goblins on small servers were sitting on TONS of inventory, and they suddenly can no longer control the market, many will unload as quickly as possible driving prices below cost-to-make. That situation will persist until the excess supply dries up and starts to match the market demand.