Commodity exchange for trade goods

The AH experience around trade goods has always been problematic. Buying/selling a large quantity of materials is tedious with the default UI. They had to add the exorbitant listing fee as a band-aid solution to prevent people from listing small stacks.

I think a better solution would be to implement a commodity exchange for all trade goods. Basically, you can always sell your materials into the commodity exchange. As the quantity available in the market goes up, the price goes down, so you get less for selling them. Of course it also costs less to buy them back. If the quantity available was low, and had been low for a long time, the price for that material would rise. Basically, apply the WoW token pricing logic to all trade goods.

Buying out of the exchange is done at a 5% (or some other nominal amount) markup over the sell price.

The benefit would be that you could always sell materials, though the price might be at “vendor price” levels if the item was common. Less need for a reagents bank tab. It would make for a better AH experience if a decent UI was put in front of it.

The AH is 14 years old, and yes it sucks. But until now, it couldn’t be easily updated as parts of the AH are integral to other core functions of the game (as least I believe that is the official line). In BfA, the age of the AH became undeniable and Blizzard has claimed to be working on a update, though it is still an extremely complicated process and we will likely not see any improvements until 8.3 or 9.0. In the meantime, there are plenty of add-ons to help overcome the shortcomings of the AH.

Also, there is no 5% mark-up over the sales price. The sell price is the price you pay when you buy the item from the AH. The seller then gets that price, minus a 5% AH cut, plus whatever the deposit fee for the item was (usually based on the vendor cost of the item, minimum 1s, plus the new bandaid deposit fee for raw items).

I’m not saying 5% about today’s AH. I’m saying if they add a commodity exchange there should be a 5% difference between the price the exchange will buy/sell a particular item. IE: If you sell peacebloom for 20c you would have to pay 21c to buy it back from the exchange.

Ah. Didn’t understand that, thank you for clarifying.

Yep, I’ve made this suggestion a few times and there’s never been any indication that it would be accepted. I think it’s a necessary idea but… shrug

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It was an interesting idea, and it’s on the PTR today! :star_struck:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-auction-house-revamp/324822

Software always takes 20 times as long as any reasonable non-software person thinks it should take. That’s my experience, from my career in software.

I’m glad that Blizzard is making this AH change in 8.3. I wish this change was made long ago. But it’s software.

As another IT software programmer… SOOOOO TRUE.

The WoW UI is extremely dated and I think the dev team has relied on Addon developers to fill the gaps in ways other addon-missing games do not and the result is that key areas, like the AH architecture, are not up to the job anymore and there’s no way an addon can get around it’s limitations.

I love how customizable the UI is, but at the same time the dev team needs to step up their game.