Hello.
The performance reported above is expected and intended, following a hotfix that went into effect a few hours ago. The hotfix is intended to both address service issues, as well as address an imbalance between the vast majority of players and a very small minority.
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.
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.
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.
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.