How long till we get Cross-realm AH?

[Deleted]

I have never seen anything from Blizzard stating they are working on this system, could you link the blue posts?

By your own admission it is problematic to implement such a system so why would they go to the time, trouble and expense of doing so when ultimately it would impact on server transfers?

Considering CRZ I definitely don't think they try to make people pay for realm transfers as much as some people claim... Or is that also one of their evil deeds to make more money from people moving from PvP to PvE servers?

My server has created with the launch of TBC and it became clear pretty quickly that there was a major imbalance in the faction populations, yet in the, almost, six years that passed nothing has been done to alleviate this problem. By no means is my server in as bad a state as some of the other servers out there but if they have not done anything during this time it is unlikely they will address the problem anytime soon.

They haven't done much in such terms other than putting up free transfers sure, but you can't say CRZ didn't help out in regular zones to balance out the numbers.

[Kaleredar]

There is NO functional problem. The bigger the economy, the better. No one can control the NY stock Exchange either.

Say you want to buy some ghost iron ore. Dirt cheap, great.

Now say you want to sell some ghost iron ore. The second you toss it up, it's undercut. Again? Undercut by someone else. And again. And again. And again. This would hold true for practically all trade goods.

And the only way to keep up with all of this undercutting is to either cheat and use a bot to monitor it, or just give up.

That's not "NO functional problems"

Blizzard would have to be very, VERY careful with what servers they merged. Not all the servers that are under CRZ jurisdiction need cross realm auction houses (for example, the server I play on)... merging them all together would be disastrous to all involved. Blizzard would have to do this on a case-by-case basis with the weakest of servers to avoid sliding the economy into havoc.

[Ryme]

I hope never, the economy on my realm is already shot to shit since it's so high pop. Trying to sell things effectively on there is a nightmare since addons for the AH are so well developed.

Merging servers AHs would mean hell if you ever wanted to sell anything on the AH. It's simply not right for WoW.

[BenBos]

I have never seen anything from Blizzard stating they are working on this system, could you link the blue posts?

By your own admission it is problematic to implement such a system so why would they go to the time, trouble and expense of doing so when ultimately it would impact on server transfers?

Several statements were made concerning the technical problems of trading between players of different realms. The fact the trading used a seperate database for each realm was mentioned several times after the launch of the cross server LFG tools on the official sites. See 2009-2010 postings.

The last time cross realm trading was mentioned was by Rob Pardo himself just a few weeks ago. Interesting point here that he no longer mentioned the legacy problems, so apparently they solved it or are in the process of completing it.

He did say though they had to be careful of implementing it to not disturb all economies. Which is a clear indication they will introduce it in steps (probably by allowing avatar trading first and only on limited number of servers like they do with CRZ)

Google is your friend here to look it all up.

[Deleted]

I rather want Croos Realm Lvl items instead tbh. Not being able to lvl fast on other realms annoys me xD

[Deleted]

I hope never, the economy on my realm is already shot to shit since it's so high pop. Trying to sell things effectively on there is a nightmare since addons for the AH are so well developed.

Merging servers AHs would mean hell if you ever wanted to sell anything on the AH. It's simply not right for WoW.

Just as Cross Realm Zones they would put restrictions on how many Auction Houses were linked at the same time, of course it would never work out to link every single AH.

[SamR]

Say you want to buy some ghost iron ore. Dirt cheap, great.

Now say you want to sell some ghost iron ore. The second you toss it up, it's undercut. Again? Undercut by someone else. And again. And again. And again. This would hold true for practically all trade goods.

And the only way to keep up with all of this undercutting is to either cheat and use a bot to monitor it, or just give up.

That's not "NO functional problems"

You're ignoring the demand side of the equation. If the supply and demand of ghost iron ore is in equilibrium on a bunch of servers, then it will also reach equilibrium when you combine the markets of all those servers together. The price will settle somewhere that's more expensive than currently on some servers and cheaper than on some current servers. Commodities with such high turnover are the least likely to be effected.

Right now Ghost Iron Ore is 4g 46s on Chromaggus Alliance, one of the least populated server pops. It's 2g 8s on Illidan Horde, one of the largest pop servers. Where do you think the price will end up if you combine those 2 AH? It will probably rise a little from 2g 8s, but not much since the Chromaggus Alliance side demand is not that huge. Adding the AH from multiple servers doesn't in any way suggest that the price will drop lower than it is now on the most populated servers.

[loki504]

the reason crossed server ah is never going to be implanted is because this way you can easly send gold cross server. and that will be a gold mine for gold seller. and gold sellers are alrdy a pain in WoW. WoW is also one of the few mmo where gold matters end game. in rift and war you don't care about gold. and that is a shame.

[SamR]

the reason crossed server ah is never going to be implanted is because this way you can easly send gold cross server. and that will be a gold mine for gold seller. and gold sellers are alrdy a pain in WoW. WoW is also one of the few mmo where gold matters end game. in rift and war you don't care about gold. and that is a shame.

Gold matters very little in WoW except for people who indulge in vanity items. I've made a pretty nice chunk of gold in MoP and feel no need to spend it. Unless I'm buying bulk mats to level up a prof, there's really not much to spend it on. Maybe buy a few cards to complete a DMF deck for an alt or something.

Most people I know with a ton of gold just really enjoy making gold on the AH. It's like a mini-game. It's also nice to never have to worry about the price of something. If you really really need 2 stacks of a certain fish, you don't waste time fretting about them being 20% more expensive than they should be.

What is there to spend gold on? You can waste 15k on a ilvl 476 armor piece that's lower level than available in 3 out of 5 LFRs and Sha. You can blow 50k-100k(more gold than most players have ever had) on a single piece of gear on the BMAH that will be outdated in a few months. And vanity mounts/pets. That's about it.

[Deleted]

doubt it will happen.
Go look at the mess of the D3 Auction house.

[Kaleredar]

You're ignoring the demand side of the equation. If the supply and demand of ghost iron ore is in equilibrium on a bunch of servers, then it will also reach equilibrium when you combine the markets of all those servers together. The price will settle somewhere that's more expensive than currently on some servers and cheaper than on some current servers. Commodities with such high turnover are the least likely to be effected.

Right now Ghost Iron Ore is 4g 46s on Chromaggus Alliance, one of the least populated server pops. It's 2g 8s on Illidan Horde, one of the largest pop servers. Where do you think the price will end up if you combine those 2 AH? It will probably rise a little from 2g 8s, but not much since the Chromaggus Alliance side demand is not that huge. Adding the AH from multiple servers doesn't in any way suggest that the price will drop lower than it is now on the most populated servers.

I don't really feel the supply side of much of any trade good, save for maybe the "rarer" trade goods like living steel, effectively reflects the actual demand. Ghost iron is not even approachably rare (more common than even 2g would dictate.) Your example, where a smaller economy is combined with a larger one, is one that I said would potentially work earlier (either that or merging smaller servers with one another...) But I warn against mashing mid population servers together. The interesting thing with trade materials is that players seem to "hold on to them" in their bags. This creates a supply that is larger than the market demand... Likely because players are largely unwilling to shepherd 15 ghost iron ore up for AH, as it is both likely to be undercut repeatedly and likely to pay out a mere pittance even if it does sell. On smaller and modest population servers, you can still manage this way without undue AH misering. I don't imagine this would hold very true if the middle population server AHs were merged into becoming vast Auction houses.

And then you have to consider how bots play into it. I'd think a single bot would be as able to hinder one server's economy as it would two server economies... (its goal would effectively be the same in both, just impacting a larger number of honest people) And then what do additional bots do? Would it be a "linear" level of impacting? Or would they just continue to undercut one another? And this is a problem I feel would indeed get swept into servers that don't suffer from bot plagues, and exacerbate it in ones that already do.

And then it gets even more complicated with vast server population imbalances. If one server has an extremely weak alliance economy, but a healthy horde economy, do you mash the weak alliance AH with a strong alliance AH, but leave the horde AH a seperate, non-CRZed entity? How does the neutral AH play into this?

[Frizzlewits]

will never happen, not anytimes soon anyways.

[Ryme]

Just as Cross Realm Zones they would put restrictions on how many Auction Houses were linked at the same time, of course it would never work out to link every single AH.

I never suggested every AH.

[Saphyron]

should be shared with those from same battlegroup that we share crz with anyway.

[Pann]

Several statements were made concerning the technical problems of trading between players of different realms. The fact the trading used a seperate database for each realm was mentioned several times after the launch of the cross server LFG tools on the official sites. See 2009-2010 postings.

The last time cross realm trading was mentioned was by Rob Pardo himself just a few weeks ago. Interesting point here that he no longer mentioned the legacy problems, so apparently they solved it or are in the process of completing it.

He did say though they had to be careful of implementing it to not disturb all economies. Which is a clear indication they will introduce it in steps (probably by allowing avatar trading first and only on limited number of servers like they do with CRZ)

Google is your friend here to look it all up.

I did a search on Google as you suggested. Interestingly your post was the number one result so it would appear that you are talking more about Rob Pardo talking about cross realm auction houses than Rob Pardo himself. I did find a recent interview in which there was no mention of cross realm auction houses.

As I am unable to find the interviews and blue posts you refer to perhaps you could link them as I am genuinely interested to read Blizzard's take on the matter.

[Deleted]

its sad how much blizz earned from people having to server transfer out of desperation

[Deleted]

I sort of wish, the AH on my server is slim pickings at best Low-levels better be millionaires if they wish to by greens

Funny fact is that if you play normal you don't need to buy greens. Sell some mats for ridicilous amounts of gold on AH and you self are the millionaire, even if you are low level.

[SL1200]

If they did this merging of the auction houses i would be very unhappy. I am not going to dig it up, but the last blue post i saw on the subject suggested that it wasn't something they wanted to do. Allowing gold sellers to move currency around to manipulate the economy seems like a bad idea. Of course the economy is the only thing blizz hasn't ruined about wow yet, so perhaps they will merge the auctions.

[Deleted]

its sad how much blizz earned from people having to server transfer out of desperation

Thi$ i$ pretty much the main rea$on why thi$ will never happen

[GnomercyBeastmaster]

A cross Realm AH would be a gold sellers wet dream. They could jack accounts, strip em, and sell them over MULTIPLE servers through that style of AH to meet the gold needs on any server. Also, people would not pay to transfer realms to adjust to a new/better AH. Also, if Multiple realms shared the AH, the prices would go through the basement as everyone would be competing for price. People who make alot of money in the AH would hate to see the CRZAH competition.