I play low pop - profession based profiteering works the same but with lower supply and lower demand.
Yeah going to be a hard “No” from me.
Honestly I don’t buy Blizzard’s excuse for this either. And yes I’m calling it an excuse. I’ll get to that.
What it sounds like is Blizzard saw their servers were having performance issues. Lag, lost data, crashing world servers, etc. So they investigated why this might be the case and discovered (?) that AH addons were producing a ton of API calls. Then, instead of investigating further to see if some other factor might be causing these issues, they pounced on that one because it’s a relatively tangential system that’s easier to modify than say… combat.
The “solution” here is so heavy handed and poorly conceived it can only have been a top-of-the-head solve to the problem. “Hey this is a thing that’s happening, let’s just put a big fat cooldown on it.” Problem solved, let’s get lunch.
Except no. While I don’t deny that AH addons probably produce a lot of API calls, there are a couple things not being considered here:
1: That’s how you’ve programmed the API to function
2: They’ve been doing that FOR 15 YEARS
If the API allowed batch processing instead of individual processing the strain produced by processing each call would be severely reduced. AH scanners would bundle their query into a batch and transmit it… the server gets the batch, does the thing, and sends the batch of data back. One call. One process. And then one more where the addon tells you how it wants to post things.
The fact too is that AH addons have existed in some form or another for over a decade now and this hasn’t been a problem in all that time on way worse hardware than we’re supposedly on now. With way more people playing the game at once I might add. NOW it’s the cause of all our woes? Really? Did that sound plausible in the meeting?
So there’s all that. What’s my “feedback?” Here it is:
I had to spend about 3x the normal amount of time scanning to get the values of my various auction postings just now. The difference is extreme. The first 28 items scanned at a good clip, less than half a second per. The next 120 items took a full 5 seconds each. I had to hop in place while it was going on to keep from being idled out. And then posting auctions was just painful. First 10 or so? No problem. The rest? 3+ seconds per posting, times over a hundred items.
I don’t think I’m at all unusual here. I sell stuff my characters collect out in the world (ostensibly what the AH is FOR). I sell mats… I sell crafted stuff… I sell transmog… I sell BoEs. Normal stuff. I’m not terribly wealthy either. You read earlier that I was only dealing with about 130 or so items today. That’s not a large number. I doubt VERY seriously that I’m in some kind of “tiny minority” of players who are using the AH this way.
My closing thoughts are this: I’m very glad I have yet to pre-order Shadowlands.
15 Likes
Totally fine with that. Healbot is a pox amongst us all.
Hell, it used to be worse, TSM used to have to do full AH scans.
Multiboxers aren’t doing anything wrong, you’re just hating on someone that plays differently than you do.
4 Likes
maybe in vanilla but what now? It’s basically a raid frame with built in mouseover macros.
1 Like
Lack of communication is (again) the problem with this Auction House nerf.
Certainly I would rather fly, quest and play in the actual game instead of being on the AH too much. I do not know exactly what too much would be, so…skip. My concern is that the AH may change again in either arbitrary direction without notice.
It may get un-throttled. It might get throttled more. The Auction House could get removed from the game entirely as it was in Diablo 3.
I feel for those negatively affected by this change. I do not know if this kind of thing can be prepared for, yet I think people deserved time to provide feedback, if not brace for impact.
Edit…
It should be essentially impossible to encounter the new limits for most players.
No. It is possible to encounter this limit just by browsing the AH. No addon required.
Also, closing the bug thread was not helpful.
I have mixed feelings about this change to the AH limit. I might be able to support the goal. The way it was implemented is not impressive. The (lack of) communication is awful.
2 Likes
I would just like to factually point out that what changes have been made are creating an even bigger problem for what has been the stated goal of these changes:
AH change 8.3: no more stacks and items are now bought off the AH in LIFO fashion
Result: more people invest time and effort into cancel scanning more than ever to make sure they get the sale. A smaller segment of the population begins to reap all the rewards of the LIFO system with the addon.
AH change 7/16: Throttling AH scans
Result: scanning now takes forever. This benefits those with more than one account. They can now sit on the AH all day, no matter how long the scans take and cancel scan and reap the vast majority of the sales.
If the stated goal is accurate - to make the AH more available to everyone and not benefit just a select few - this seems to be having the opposite effect.
11 Likes
I remember that! That took AGES to do and you had to do it every day or your market prices would all be wrong.
Now we just scan the things we intend to post and apparently that’s just too much strain for the poor servers.
I ended up deleting my paragraph of complaining because @Lilmono said it best above. Honestly, I’ve already committed so much time into getting the gold for the bruto that this will not have any impact on me. In fact. I hope it deters my competitors.
They actually recommended doing it twice a day for the most accurate pricing lol.
Multiboxers aren’t doing anything wrong because they give Blizzard more money then you.
There I fixed your post
2 Likes
It took over an hour on my server. Once a day was already a generous donation of time to that activity.
1 Like
Thank god for the external api lol.
Yay.
I think this is a fantastic change by Blizzard and long overdue. Many AH “addons” are borderline botting and I’m glad to see Blizzard finally doing something, even if it’s not attacking the semi-botting behavior directly.
it doesnt just affect addons…literally anyone posting like 20+ auctions on the regular UI is getting decimated…
Uh… did you forget to take your meds?
Yay
It has nothing to do with money - it has to do with the rules and multiboxing not being against the rules no matter how much you want it to be. Multiboxing takes far more skill than playing a single character does, particularly when you are doing multiple classes at the same time.
This is mostly going to affect the people making hundreds and thousands of posts per day, there’s no need for that volume of listings if people aren’t buying the crap.