Why don't Zuldazar, Boralus, and Dalaran have AH?

When BC as released, the neutral city hub Shattrath had an AH for the aldor and scryers, when Wrath was released Dalaran didn’t have an AH, flashforward to MoP the two temple hubs didn’t have AHs. Now in BfA the main hubs for the Horde and alliance (Zuldazar and Boralus) don’t have auction houses, they have portals, bankers, and even barbershops but for some reason they still don’t have auction houses. Why is that so?

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They do for engineers. Same as every other expansion.

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Two words.
Long Boi!

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I think it was because BC was first (figuring no one would want to make the trek back), plus they put in that Aldor/Scryer “side choice” thing, so they wanted to put AH’s there as something “sided” too.

Later, they said “Enh, these guys can hoof it.” But did add the Engineer auctioneer, giving people one of the other only reasons for being an Engineer. I think my Hunter had Engineering in Wrath, I remember it being kind of fun and farming the dudes for Jeeves?

So BC was the odd one out, actually. Blizzard just decided people should have to walk, since they noticed that in BC the old cities were then empty (since no reason to go there, for the AH.) I think that was the reason Blizzard gave actually? That they wanted people to still have a reason to visit their “wonderful old cities”(more true of Stormwind, really, who wants to go back to those horrible Horde cities?)

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I think it’s because AH will have lots of players concentrated in the same place for long periods, so Blizzard prefers to not put it in newer contrnt due to lag concerns. But it’s just a guess.

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It’s an interesting thread for players, but all we can do is speculate. This is one of many thousands of design decisions that Blizzard made, and Blizzard does not discuss the reasons (the “why”) for its designs.

There are 2 good news items, which may explain why Blizzard doesn’t think players “need” auction houses is new zone cities:

  1. I can get to an auction house, on any high-level character that is anywhere, within 1 minute. Blizzard let us keep the Dalaran hearth stone, and there’s a portal in Dalaran to all the cities with AHs. If you also have a level 3 garrison, you can hearth there and take the portal to Ashram, which has an auction house. I like using that one.

  2. I very rarely visit an auction house on a high-level character. Any item that can be bought/sold can also be mailed (instantly, for coppers) to an alt. So in every realm and faction, I have a low level auction house character. All my real characters (that I level, dungeon, quest, whatever) just use mail boxes…

…and there are mail boxes everywhere.

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An AH for all players in all major faction hubs should just be a thing.

BC has Shattrath
Wrath has Dala
Cata … was old world go to Org/SW

MoP is where we lose AH access (barring engineers). Nice big gorgeous city, has a bank, trainers, vendors… but if you want to use the AH, take the portal to Org, use the AH, then come back. Because that’s not a nuisance at all or anything.

WoD did something right, in that the AH in the Ashran hubs are NOT locked behind engineering. Even better, you could have one in your garrison! {Now that I’ve said it, $10 says that next week we see “Fixed a bug that allowed non engineers to use the Ashran faction bug auction houses”.)

Then came Legion and it was another “Hey, we want you to play new content but no so badly that we’re willing to give you AH access unless you’re an engineer”.

This expac, they got creative. Engineers get their AH, but rich players could just buy an AH that they can take where ever they want. Don’t worry if you aren’t vomiting gold, as most players are so helpful and friendly that they’ll happily stop what they’re doing to summon their AH for you to mess with.

I don’t actually know what issue they have with just giving us an in-city AH, but they also made a lot of things that weren’t a problem into a problem. “No AH unless you leave new content so we can cry that you don’t stay in aforementioned new content” was probably just one of those things.

Actually, during WotLK, only engineers could access AH in Dalaran. AH access for everyone was only enabled during Cata.

I know, that’s why I said has. Has, present tense, currently it is available for everyone.

It takes about 30 seconds to portal to Org and fly to the AH… Probably less time than getting to a “local” AH in your expansion hub city.