Auction House Much Slower Today - June 16

[Sep-burning-blade]

@Leinadh-stormrage

To me it’s rather clear - they’ve detected that playing the AH is way too profitable and contributes to gold inflation, and they can’t have an increasing group of players with over 10 million gold in their pockets, especially now that we can pay our subs with gold.

It’s all about the money.

Without directly disagreeing with your point, I want to address the “gold inflation” and token aspect.

The AH does not inflate gold. It actually deflates it. Due to the AH cut, the AH is a net loss of gold from the server. Gold is added to the game via quests, mob loot, and – here’s the real kicker – “mission table” type rewards (ie, garrisons).

I have mixed feelings on tokens. I could pay for my main account with tokens for about, oh, the next 15 years or so. I don’t. I still pay money for it because in generally I’m not a fan of tokens.

However – they don’t directly inflate gold. If Blizzard is actually being honest with how the token system works, it’s 1:1. By person A not paying real money for game time, Person B is paying for it in their place, in exchange for gold from person A. They may indirectly inflate gold by encouraging people who otherwise wouldn’t farm (which adds gold) to start doing so. Though I don’t think it’s as huge a deal as people think it is, but I could be wrong.

Inflation wasn’t really a problem in prior expansions. It was a fairly linear increase per expansion up until WoD, which is when the economy came totally crashing down. Garrisons and garrisons alone forever changed the economy in this game. It allowed massive amounts of gold to be added to the economy for doing nothing. Prior to garrisons, if you wanted to add gold to the economy, you actually needed to go out into the world, kill things, level new characters, and do quests. That takes time, so it’s naturally regulated by time itself.

The problem of inflation was literally created by Blizzard. When the BMAH was added in MoP, it was supposed to be the ultimate gold sink, to help take money out of the economy from the ultra-goblins. I dropped millions into the BMAH back in MoP to buy T3 and gamble on containers – back when 1M gold was “a lot”. That was a good thing. And then everyone complained that things were being gold capped immediately. And to help with this problem — they started giving EVERYONE more gold in the very next expansion. The timing isn’t a coincidence. Ultimately, it solved nothing and made it worse.

TL;DR – gold inflation in this game is easily solved: Nerf gold rewards and eliminate mission table/emissary gold rewards and never, ever, bring them back in any form.

[Akaelys-hyjal]

I am a casual goblin, a little alchemy here, a little transmog there, some enchants and a couple bags of pets. This change is of huge impact to people who are not driving the economy. I can not conceive how this was thought to be a positive change. It needs to be returned to a state where it functions without negatively impacting players that use the AH the most.

[Ferath-eldrethalas]

Have they come out and said anything about multiboxers on twitter at all or have they been silent about that. Because that is something that I always hate to see.

[Misery-darrowmere (Misery)]

You guys definitely missed the mark on tuning this. Your current limit hampers even normal usage of current trade goods.

[Kerpz-moon-guard]

It’s funny how before legion the AH would work just fine…with more people I’m sure but then hmm here come’s legion and BAM

[Pickpawkit-wyrmrest-accord]

Good change, Blizz, though I think you should’ve just broken TSMs listing/buying options completely.

[Thekk-bleeding-hollow]

Oh, we can all agree the competitive advantage part is them just trying to sugarcoat it and is just BS. The roots of this change 100% are because of performance.

[Hudsonsbayco-exodar]

I speak as a player who does not use an Auction House addon and whose gameplay for the next several months will be entirely focused on raising gold to buy the Brutosaur.

Players who use Auction House addons do not have an unfair economic advantage over those players that have chosen to not use addons. The addons are freely available to all players.

Players that don’t use addons have chosen how they wish to experience World of Warcraft.

Deadly Boss Mods is an invaluable too for people who enjoy raiding. The great majority (100%?) of guild raid teams require their members to have it installed and kept up to date. It provides an enormous advantage to the raiders that use it over raiders that don’t. Will it be addressed as well?

Yes that player that posts fifty Blue Linen Shirts for 5g each is irritating when I’m posting one Blue Linen Shirt for 100g. However it is not the quantity that they post which I find irritating, it’s the low price. (Seriously! Raise the price up to at least 50g my good competitor!).

Do I feel like they have an unfair advantage because they’re using an addon? No.

Do you know who I feel has an unfair economic advantage over the entire player base? Blizzard.

When BFA launched and introduced the Brutosaur, you knew it would be removed with pre-expansion and didn’t tell us. When you did tell us, you gave us LESS THAN ONE YEAR to earn FIVE MILLION GOLD.

Now players finished their BFA content, got their AotC, gotten bored with the game, and unsubscribing. The gold value of the Blizz Token dropped by 45%. Now its slowly climbing again.

I can only surmise this change is to force those who want the Brutosaur at this late stage in the game to buy tokens for real money and sell on the AH for gold to pay for their Brutosaur.

According to the Brutosaur Calculator, assuming the Brutosaur is removed on Oct 1st, I need to earn 16000g per DAY. 94000g per WEEK. All while working my part time job, cooking food, maintaining my home cleanliness, and getting sufficient physical excersize.

At my current rate I will probably have to buy tokens to cover my deficit.

The Brutosaur leaving is what really needs fixing.

[Sagiri-shadow-council]

Thank you do much for doing this, Its stupid that most people cant sell anything because one person thinks its fun to sit in the AH all day.

[Korflixis-terenas]

I agree that it was frustrating to have just set up TSM before 8.3 hit and suddenly having my posting time increased substantially. That being said from a buyer’s perspective, especially the casual buyer, the new AH is wonderful. The new filters allow for much easier access to finding missing transmog, mounts, or upgrades.
The 8.3 AH changes showed noticeable differences in quality of life for buyers which makes the minor inconvenience for sellers acceptable in my eyes (that being said I am on a small server so my scans only take marginally longer than they used to).
This throttle though is not a change I can support unless Blizzard shows us metrics on a significant reduction on overall server strain due to the reduction in queries.

[Muricas-fairbanks]

I understand it, and clearly something needed to be done, but they could have done it in a way that didn’t assume players causing the problem are bad and playing the game in an unacceptable way.

The issue is a design philosophy one:

Playing an open world game where the right way to play is to do what you find fun

vs.

Playing a virtual amusement where there’s a right way and a wrong way to play

[Cassetto-icecrown]

And let me add this: the goldmaking community and enthusiasts are the only ones, alongside with completionists, who value the game as a whole, who value your 15 years of content. And by value I mean appreciate and VALUE it, it gives things a price.

With this change, we should all focus on the latest patch only and farm Zin’Anthid to craft 3 flasks for us and 3 more to sell?

[Azlynn-bonechewer]

I am on a low/medium pop server, and as far as the economy goes, it’s completely empty. There are basically 4 people on my server who use TSM to post things, and without them, there would be far less than half the items on the AH. No one on my server seems to want to do professions, so you will punish me who actually wants to play the economic aspect of WoW?

I had a random player come up to me just last week and thank me for “gearing all their alts”, because they bought so much of my crafted gear that I am able to mass produce and mass post on the AH. I have never spoken to that player before. That is not BAD for the economy and players… this new “hot fix” is bad for economy and players.

[Mok-bonechewer]

Hi,

I understand the problem you’re trying to solve here. I just wanted to bring to your attention a side effect of limiting mass AH posters like me.

I post thousands of old content and transmog items on the AH per day. There are hundreds and hundreds of transmogs on my server’s AH that are only posted by myself and not purchasable elsewhere. Since it’ll now take an absurd amount of time to post transmog, I’ll probably not do it anymore. As a result, many of these farmed or crafted transmogs will be no longer purchasable from the auction house. I also think many other transmog posters will stop posting as well. This also applies to old content crafts and materials as well.

As an aside, if you still choose to limit mass AH posting, I request that the throttling be slightly increased. If a regular player is using their professions to craft every day, it’s not unlikely that they will be throttled with the current throttling settings.

Thanks,
Mok

[Kaelaeth-illidan]

A lot of the issues with the AH would be fixed if we were just able to place buy orders.

[Pickpawkit-wyrmrest-accord]

Guess ya’ll shouldn’t have broken stuff and used add-ons that degraded the game service and had automation like TSM.

[Powerworduwu-wyrmrest-accord]

Buy Orders would also be a tremendous benefit to the mythical “average user” that apparently can’t engage with the AH at all, according to posters here.

Really not sure why they didn’t do this.

[Uhlir-shadowsong]

100% buy orders would be such a QoL increase

[Kerpz-moon-guard]

Just remove being able to cancel items

[Fixi-garrosh]

Well lets be really clear here:

• Yes only a “few players” use addons and stock the AH with goods of all kinds

• But you have to also realize that when other players want to find “the parts to make an auction house for my garrison” - they ONLY way they will EVER get it is if you have those above players managing the AH

• same goes for a LOT of things like rare battle pets, stuff people want from non-current xpacs, even intro gear for 120s…

So, basically, you have completely destroyed the marketplace for most players and thinking you did a good thing… it’s not a good thing.

The AH will drop off in value in game and become ineffective. It will happen and then you will revert this change and claim you are “listening to your players” - but you will have done and incredible amount of damage to the in-game economy.

And here we go again with an anti-social developer change in a supposed MMO game. The AH is gonna get small people, really small… and not useful except for just current xpac mats… that’s it.