Auction House Much Slower Today - June 16

[Jezal-aggramar]

Well this is crap. How are you supposed to post glyphs, if your going to throttle us after 10?

[Arganthe-azralon]

“Fix” is not the right word for it.

[Sabrictora-darrowmere]

You are punishing far more of the player base than you may realize for simply playing the game in the style they prefer. As someone else said, all addons are intended to give players some kind of advantage as they play.

Completely unacceptable to implement this measure as you have. The speed (or lack thereof) of the AH now is just absurd.

[Sapy-tichondrius (Sapy)]

The current “budget” is way too low. It was already too low before today, with the AH being orders of magnitude slower since 8.3. Now, it’s another order of magnitude slower still. I’m having a hard time understanding how this is now a huge problem after 16 years of the game existing. I’m also struggling to see how searching for 12 auctions via an addon would be considered abnormal, yet this now takes almost a minute. People regularly post hundreds of auctions via TSM, which will take hours with this change. Is posting hundreds of auctions which people have crafter / gathered abnormal behavior? If so, this means that Blizzard is saying that anybody who tries to make gold via the AH is not welcome.

I’d love to hear more about what “addon-based automation” you’re referring to, and why you view this as a bigger problem recently than it was in the past. I’ve offered suggestions and expressed my willingness to make changes to TSM to address excessive AH queries on multiple occasions since 8.3, but have yet to hear back from you guys on any these topics. I continue to hope to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. If we are part of the problem, then please just let us know how we can help, rather than stonewalling our suggestions / ideas for changes and breaking all AH addons in the process.

[Felafel-bleeding-hollow (Felafel)]

Can we just admit the AH revamp has been a total failure already and revert it back?

[Volsie-illidan]

there is no reason for me to continue playing as i enjoy the gold farming aspect of this game most. literally won’t stand for this and go through this, i am sure many others would agree - if this is still like this in a month and not reverted i will unsubcribe easily, and i am sure most of the people who drive the economy in this game will do the same.

unacceptable. change this immediately.

[Sharpbladez-proudmoore (Sharpbladez)]

This is AWFUL! This is one of the worst decisions Ive ever seen made in this game. You are destroying part of the game that some people ONLY play and will easily lose subs because of it.

We’ve been able to mass post for YEARS thanks to the people at TSM, who have spent countless hours designing an incredible addon and now youre basically making all of their hard work almost useless.

This needs to be reverted. Im furious about this.

[Sep-burning-blade]

That it is intentional is … disheartening. To say the very least.

@Kaivax

Through our continuing work to address service issues as they crop up, as well as our constant efforts to find gameplay issues and fix them, we’ve observed that a small minority of all players generate the majority of Auction House traffic.

Honestly, this is an irrelevant reason. Of any given player base in, basically anything, there will always be a subset (minority) of players who focus their play time on a particular game activity and generate the “bulk” of that activity. I’m sure there’s an small subset of players that make up the “bulk” of, for example, RBGs.

@Kaivax

The players who generate all of the AH traffic are using addon-driven automation to gain a competitive economic advantage over other players, in addition to the increasing strain on the game service. Neither of these things is good for the game as a whole.

Ther’s three points here:

1. As previous posters have said, literally any addon gains that player some advantage when compared to players not using that addon, whether it be TSM, a gathering addon which generates waypoints between known nodes, or anything else.
   There have been addons in the past which have long since broken due to unintended aspects of the API being changed, and I can understand such a change in some scenarios. Which brings me to my second point:
2. This has literally worked in basically the same way for the greater part of a decade, if not longer, going back to BC and Wrath. Before TSM is was Auctioneer. Why the change now after it has been LONG established that players who focus their time, energy, and monthly subscription money on the auction house are being penalized? The only thing that makes sense is that the problem was too difficult to solve the right way, so this is sweeping the problem under the rug. At least that’s the way it feels.
3. If this wasn’t sweeping it under the rug, and you’re legitimately looking for feedback, don’t wait until after you break the world to solicit that feedback and gain data points on what the best solution will be to some arbitrary problem which you haven’t fully detailed what that actually is.

@Kaivax

With this hotfix, we’ve implemented a new system that effectively gives each player a “budget” of AH actions per minute, and only kicks in once that budget has been exceeded. The system is tuned so that is should never affect players using the AH typically: buying consumables, listing gathered or crafted goods for sale, searching for specific items you want to purchase, etc. It should be essentially impossible to encounter the new limits for most players.

The new system will, however, throttle players who are using addons to run rapid queries to scan the AH for specific goods, or buy and relist huge quantities of items.

That doesn’t help the legitimate players who have been playing the game this way for years. What changed?

@Kaivax

The current tuning values are a starting point for this. We very much welcome feedback on AH activities are hitting the throttle. If the current settings are too strict, we’ll want to relax these measures.

1. Revert the hotfix.
2. Describe the actual problem you’re having to give us some insight into your reasoning for this change.
3. Solicit feedback from the community on how they play the game, use the AH, what operations could be consolidated. Provide new APIs which simplify the load these players place on the AH.
4. Implement the changes.

[Vahdis-dalaran]

Goldmaking has been my main focus in WoW for the better part of the last decade and I’ve spent 10’s of millions on tokens and bought and sold hundreds of thousands of battle pets over the years.

Playing the AH has kept me playing through WoD, BFA, and every content drought this game has ever brought.

If this limit stay in place then I’m not sure I’ll be as willing to stick it out through the slower parts of the game. Nearly all my AHing is done on servers where the AH is fast, and there aren’t a lot of people slowing it down. This change should be dynamic and throttle people at a slower rate and throttle less at off peak hours as well as on lower pop servers where this limit does nothing but hurt the player base.

Please rethink these changes and do not rush this out in it’s current state, there is right way and a wrong way to fix things. This is a wrong way that just needlessly wastes time for a lot of people and makes it unfun to use the new AH.

[Wovey-herod]

I have all the professions across all my characters and regularly craft thousands of items per week. I also search for mats multiple times per day. This change is terrible and severely impairs my preferred play style. Please revert this “fix” for those of us that like to play for the economy.

[Ehefkay-area-52]

This has to be one of the dumbest things Blizz has done in a while and they thought Diablo Immortal was a good idea. Please fix this “fix”

[Slapnutzz-silver-hand]

Nice way to screw us players over who like to play the way we want to play.

Granted I dont live off the AH, but I do make a decent living buying and selling items.

This hotfix should be rescinded until an acceptable balance can be found.

[Highbeams-doomhammer-1027977]

I noticed you didn’t have as many undercuts this morning

[Hellojintao-wyrmrest-accord-1027969]

This is absolutely unacceptable. The auction is house is already slow enough as it is and this will only make things worse. I am firmly against this change and hope it will be reverted. If only there was a way to vote on that post to oppose it.

[Jd-grobbulus]

Will this reduce lag?

Will horde and alliance be able to attack each other’s cities again with out lagging out?

[Aleuenia-moon-guard]

This is unacceptable and a good way for blizzard to lose a lot of subscribers. Most of us just use our professions and mogs that we have gotten while leveling and trying to get mounts to drop. Yet i cant post a few hundred auctions in less than 2 hours, now.

[Kitten-korialstrasz]

I would not consider myself a ‘power user’ of the ah at all, mostly posting up knick-knacks that I happen to have in my inventory and already I’ve bumped up against that throttle wall. It needs to be dialed back quite a bit.

[Caltania-the-scryers]

The WoW economy is the primary reason I am still playing the game - I enjoy the challenge of learning what items sell, experimenting, etc. I like to dabble in different markets, and enjoy supplying things that people might not readily find on lower population servers, like older transmogs. With the slowness, it’s no longer going to be viable for me to post a variety of items, particularly transmogs and glyphs. I also enjoy using the gold I make to help bring more friends and family into the game, so I can help them get on their feet with gear, mounts, etc. If this change sticks, I’m not sure how much I’ll be playing any more, as my favorite in-game hobby has now been decimated. This is such a shame.

[Adamfang-area-52]

This is totally unacceptable. In your chase of hunting down costs you have minimized the overall ‘server-farm’ globally and instead of addressing this head on and increase the transaction speed, you are now limiting paying players instead.

This has to stop now!

[Mayia-ravenholdt]

@Kaivax

The players who generate all of the AH traffic are using addon-driven automation to gain a competitive economic advantage over other players, in addition to the increasing strain on the game service. Neither of these things is good for the game as a whole.

To me this reads as: The people who use the AH the most and provide the most benefits to the economy must be stopped from doing it efficiently. It is very upsetting and will go down as another thick black mark on the BFA era as the least player-friendly and engaging expansion of the entire dynasty.