How long till we get Cross-realm AH?

[Gurbz]

CRAH would be great for buyers but relatively terrible for sellers. Primarily, it would give the buyers far more control over the markets than they have now. It wouldn't automatically crash the markets, as the supply vs demand ratio would stay roughly the same, like settling in around the level seen on a mid-pop realm, though I believe prices would drop for different reasons.

The more people involved in an AH system, the more stable it will be. It is more difficult for a single player, or consortium of players, to hold control of a market. Thus much more difficult for artificial manipulation of prices to occur. This would lead to lower prices for most anything, as the market would settle into a pricing structure that more accurately reflects what buyers think an item is worth, instead of what the sellers want to get for it. Both supply and demand would be evened out across all servers, leading to more consistent prices for goods.

I really think it is only a matter of time. Blizzard seems like they are moving more and more toward a model of one single "realm" instead of a many isolated servers. Over time I expect more and more walls to come down keeping the individual realms separate. The only thing that might stop this would be Blizzard deciding the revenue from character transfers is too profitable to diminish in any way. And even that I think would only delay it for a time.

[Caliph]

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.

Agreed 100%. basic economics.

plus people are already undercutting you now and you deal with it. I think adding buy and sell orders into the mix will help. also, setting minimums for things such as epics or bis items can help.

[Tyandor]

I'd say: bring it on already!
I have chars on a high pop server and on a low server. On the low server alliance is pretty much dead which means it barely has an economy. You'd expect too see high prices there, but that's hardly happening either as there is no one to buy expensive stuff because no one can earn money. The horde side the economy is not, but not extremely great either. On some stuff it's very possible to have a monopoly. Then we have the high pop realm... I want that economy on my server, because stuff actually sells. I barely have to re-list stuff because there is such a high turnover rate. Hell even crafted leveling stuff sells, which is great if you don't have a char on the server before. Maybe it's hell for some of the AH-players, but as far as I'm concerned they can go to hell
Just merge the AHs within their battlegroups or something. It could do something good for a lot of servers.
btw someone mentioned expensive greens: transmog market, plain and simple. Again great for a starting char to get some gold.

[Trafalgarlaw92]

They should test cross realm AH on the neutral AH or something first to see what difference it makes

[Immitis]

ghostcrawler said they were contemplating something like this for low pop servers but he said they would never do it for normal servers because of the negative effects it would have

[aztr0]

Don't look forward to that. Part of being in a certain realm is the economy of it among other things.

[BenBos]

My friend (Google) says you pulled that out of your nether regions.

Tx for the confidence. Next time I'll be even more brief...

I DID remember seeing an interview making the statements about the cross server AH. And I really thought it was Pardo stating things about it.

But here:

"Cross-Realm Auction houses aren't set up yet, and Blizzard feel that it could well destroy the Auction House market, as people get to know their own markets. Zones are merged dynamically, which would make it more difficult. However, for chronically low-population realms, this could well be an option."

That's the words of GC this time just a few days ago.

Source: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/19/wo...-fa/#continued

As you can see he confirmed what I already posted about Pardo: the technical issues they had are no longer mentioned (seperate DB's) (they simply say they aren't set up yet), but they are cautious for implementing them.

It appears the lower pop servers will get this treatment as it is an option as of now.

In 2010 (posters asking for trading within LFG dungeon play ...) several blue posts always were hiding behind the technical difficulties of such a merging of databases (economies are set up in different DB's in WOW).

But apparently these issues are no longer mentioned.

The "gratitude" by posters when you want to be informative in these threads is underwhelming really.

[Pann]

Tx for the confidence. Next time I'll be even more brief...

I DID remember seeing an interview making the statements about the cross server AH. And I really thought it was Pardo stating things about it.

But here:

"Cross-Realm Auction houses aren't set up yet, and Blizzard feel that it could well destroy the Auction House market, as people get to know their own markets. Zones are merged dynamically, which would make it more difficult. However, for chronically low-population realms, this could well be an option."

That's the words of GC this time just a few days ago.

Source: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/19/wo...-fa/#continued

As you can see he confirmed what I already posted about Pardo: the technical issues they had are no longer mentioned (seperate DB's) (they simply say they aren't set up yet), but they are cautious for implementing them.

It appears the lower pop servers will get this treatment as it is an option as of now.

In 2010 (posters asking for trading within LFG dungeon play ...) several blue posts always were hiding behind the technical difficulties of such a merging of databases (economies are set up in different DB's in WOW).

But apparently these issues are no longer mentioned.

The "gratitude" by posters when you want to be informative in these threads is underwhelming really.

Riiight, so no quotes from Pardo then?

You appear to reading a lot into Ghostcrawler's comment. It is a non-committal answer that neither confirms or denies their future plans, just because he does not mention technical problems no way implies that they do not exist or that they have been overcome. All this quote says it that it "could be an option" it does not say that it is something they are working on at the moment.

Given that historically Blizzard have done very little to address faction and population imbalances why would they spend time developing an incredibly complex system that could take years and millions of dollars to produce when there are far more cost effective, tried and tested ways to deal with them in the form of server mergers?

[Combooticus]

Im in favour of a CRAH as long as its for vanity items only

shit like ore and mats should be kept local imo but pets mounts and novelties should be CR so to give us on dead servers a chance to snap up some cool shit like they have on high pop servers

[saintminya]

I do not believe a cross-realm auction house will ever surface. For one the CRZs are already a divisive point, myself not in favor. More significantly, it would drive competition down. Each server has different average prices, a global AH would ruin established trends.

[chaostiger]

I don't think it will ever be done due to the gold selling motives that would be at play.

[BenBos]

Riiight, so no quotes from Pardo then?

You appear to reading a lot into Ghostcrawler's comment. It is a non-committal answer that neither confirms or denies their future plans, just because he does not mention technical problems no way implies that they do not exist or that they have been overcome. All this quote says it that it "could be an option" it does not say that it is something they are working on at the moment.

Given that historically Blizzard have done very little to address faction and population imbalances why would they spend time developing an incredibly complex system that could take years and millions of dollars to produce when there are far more cost effective, tried and tested ways to deal with them in the form of server mergers?

Your agressiveness against someone who followed this cross server policy for years doesn't deserve an answer frankly, but here it is:

Seamless cross server open world play without loading screens is 10 times MORE difficult, expensive and complex to program than any server merge which is rather standard procedure in MMO land.

Besides server merges don't solve anything: you only double or triple the HUGE top of capped players and your low leveled content stays with the same void of players.

But of course, the willingness of Blizzard to invest in NEW seamless open world technology across servers (without a loading screen in sight) just passed over your little head didn't it ?

Edit: Besides WHY are they even doing this cross server play?

Because ... IF WOW would loose 95% of its current player base ... the cross server (integrated) mechanics would still allow 200.000 players PER region to play AND trade together within ONE world to play and trade.

That 200K number (taking extremes here) is ... 20 TIMES MORE players regrouped than the BIGGEST single WOW server could ever hold.
Perhaps now you'll understand why they will do it in steps at a time...and why I am following these cross server mechanics statements since 2006.

And it shows Blizzard already is beyond that old mechanism of server merges which don't solve anything in the long run.

---

Cross server mechanics are simply the Holy Grail of eternal populated MMO worlds. Because EVERY single server (realm) based MMO died in populations. Tx to server cluster mechanics in both EVE and WOW (BG's since 2006) they managed to stay ahead of the difficulties.

Cross server open worlds is just the next step after BG's-dungeons-Raids. Of course AH will follow with a priority for lower populated servers.

They now have the cross server technology. CRZ proved it. GC (just like I read before) simply confirms - about AH's - what I read in the past. They'll introduce it in steps for lower pop realms first and limited (CRZ is only being used to populate certain world zones with certain servers...).

-----

We ARE talking here about TOP TECHNOLOGY. So your statement about why would they invest in such a technoloy was explained in my post.

In fact 2 observations make it top technology for me: The cross server play is seamless (incredible really) AND they could implement it all on an OLD Legacy system like the WOW servers/databases.

I knew it by 2009, they would come up with this server cluster technology for TITAN (Diablo 3 already uses this technology in a non MMO format). The fact they could introduce it in WOW was simply awesome.

I guess that's where a part of that 1.2 billion dollar revenue per year goes to...

[NSrm]

Odd I haven't seen thousands of threads asking for this. Most are content with what they have.

i dont know what rock you've been living under, but there has been loads of threads like this one. CRZ-AH should definitely have arrived already. I hope for it to come SOON, 5.1 wouldn't be soon enough. I play on a server with a dead AH, it isn't fun at all.

[Pann]

Your agressiveness against someone who followed this cross server policy for years doesn't deserve an answer frankly, but here it is:

Seamless cross server open world play without loading screens is 10 times MORE difficult, expensive and complex to program than any server merge which is rather standard procedure in MMO land.

Besides server merges don't solve anything: you only double or triple the HUGE top of capped players and your low leveled content stays with the same void of players.

But of course, the willingness of Blizzard to invest in NEW seamless open world technology across servers (without a loading screen in sight) just passed over your little head didn't it ?

Edit: Besides WHY are they even doing this cross server play?

Because ... IF WOW would loose 95% of its current player base ... the cross server (integrated) mechanics would still allow 200.000 players PER region to play AND trade together within ONE world to play and trade.

That 200K number (taking extremes here) is ... 20 TIMES MORE players regrouped than the BIGGEST single WOW server could ever hold.
Perhaps now you'll understand why they will do it in steps at a time...and why I am following these cross server mechanics statements since 2006.

And it shows Blizzard already is beyond that old mechanism of server merges which don't solve anything in the long run.

---

Cross server mechanics are simply the Holy Grail of eternal populated MMO worlds. Because EVERY single server (realm) based MMO died in populations. Tx to server cluster mechanics in both EVE and WOW (BG's since 2006) they managed to stay ahead of the difficulties.

Cross server open worlds is just the next step after BG's-dungeons-Raids. Of course AH will follow with a priority for lower populated servers.

They now have the cross server technology. CRZ proved it. GC (just like I read before) simply confirms - about AH's - what I read in the past. They'll introduce it in steps for lower pop realms first and limited (CRZ is only being used to populate certain world zones with certain servers...).

-----

We ARE talking here about TOP TECHNOLOGY. So your statement about why would they invest in such a technoloy was explained in my post.

In fact 2 observations make it top technology for me: The cross server play is seamless (incredible really) AND they could implement it all on an OLD Legacy system like the WOW servers/databases.

I knew it by 2009, they would come up with this server cluster technology for TITAN (Diablo 3 already uses this technology in a non MMO format). The fact they could introduce it in WOW was simply awesome.

I guess that's where a part of that 1.2 billion dollar revenue per year goes to...

I'm sorry that you feel I'm being aggressive towards you, slightly ironic that you moan about aggressiveness when I have not insulted you at any point and you go on to say "... passed over your little head didn't it ?.

However you claimed that there were quotes from Rob Pardo relating to the development of the cross realm auction house so far the only proof you have provided is a link to a recent Ghostcrawler interview which in no way backs up what you are saying in fact it seems to imply the direct opposite. As you have stated the technology is difficult and expensive to implement, it makes little sense from a business point of view for Blizzard to ignore, for years, cheaper alternatives such free/discounted transfers/faction changes from high to low pop realms, bonus exp on the lowest pop realms, server merges, etc and then spend resources on such a system at this stage in WOW's life.

This would be a huge change to undertake to an existing game and it seems odd to me that any information from Blizzard is very thin on the ground (almost non-existent in fact).

In regards to CRZ we appear to have a very different idea of seamless personally I find the 10-15 second delay when you enter a CRZ far from seamless. If WOW loses 95% of its player base CRZ is not going to do anything, it would be unlikely that Blizzard, as we currently know it, would remain in business. Whilst there are a number of MMO producers that happily survive on similar numbers none are of the size of Blizzard and they do not have anywhere the number expenses.

I realise that your usual style of posting is to repeat the same thing over and over again, until people get bored, regardless of what you are posting has any truth to it and I don't expect any difference here. But I would be grateful if you could provide any info from Blizzard regarding their plans to introduce cross realm auction houses as even though I am skeptical about it I am genuinely interested it.

[Esubane]

I hope it never does. I play on big server with kind of big AH, 80-100k auctions up at a time.
I make great deal of gold with embersilk cloth farming & cooking banquets and 275-300 foods. Around 100k per week, this involves selling hundreds of stacks, bags, bolts, foods.
Now I have maybe 2-3 big competitors in my market to worry about, not a big deal to be honest.
But now CR AH arrives and I have to worry about:
-All the farming bots, which are plentiful. Go to any decent spot, they're botted 24/7
-Many more dumb 30-50% undercutters driving the price to the ground, forcing me to buy out much more shit
-Many more big competitors with thousands of cloth / foods in their stocks per day, undercutting my 100 stacks by 1 cooper.
-And finally Auctionator / TSM scans taking forever because there is now 500 pages of cloth to burn through instead of 30

No thanks. Perhaps make battlegroup wide AH's with exclusion of High/Full servers so small realms will have balanced economies and decent mat supply too. But flat out merging everything will cause total chaos. There's 1,1 - 3 million embersilk cloth up at all times in global AHs, imagine how long would it take to scan through all that auctions and how low the price would be with such high supply.

[gcmandrake]

Battlegroup AHs could work, but how about cross-realm AH for items below a certain iLevel? In my server's AH, there's bazillions of lvl 85-90 items, but nothing lower. With everyone rolling Monk alts, there's no low-level profession materials. Nothing. Want iron buckles for leatherworking? No chance. Rare recipes? Nope. Greens for disenchanting? Only if you have access to a lvl 90's funds. Good luck if you're new to the game and don't have a max-level sugar daddy.

[JajaBongs]

Don't you think a global AH would destroy the WoW community?

and I did not like the Auction House in GW....way too messy

[derpherp]

Im in favour of a CRAH as long as its for vanity items only

shit like ore and mats should be kept local imo but pets mounts and novelties should be CR so to give us on dead servers a chance to snap up some cool shit like they have on high pop servers

This is a pretty good idea. +1

[Cheesus]

Not going to happen (I hope). But I would like to see gold being account wide though. At this point so many people have a realm full of characters and it'd be nice to get some gold to other realms as well if you choose to start up an alt somewhere else due to lack of space on your "mainrealm". Same goes for heirlooms but oh well!