Upcoming Auction House Deposit Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
To address some issues related to the Auction House, we’re reconsidering how deposits—the refundable fees you pay to list your auctions—are calculated. This fee is based on the item’s vendor price, and for profession materials in particular, vendors offer very low prices, so these mats have a low deposit cost. Deposits are substantial on items such as BoE uncommon gear, gems, and so forth, but not trade skill materials (trade goods such as cloth, ore, leather, etc.).

One thing we’ve identified as particularly troublesome is a large volume of trade skill materials being auctioned off in stacks of 1. Some addons make posting quantities of this size trivial to do, resulting in dozens, if not hundreds, of pages of auctions for a single item. As we looked at ways to change this behavior and improve the overall Auction House experience, we found that we prefer to avoid inflexible solutions such as caps on the number of listings a player can make, or increased minimum stack counts, which might interfere with many players' common gameplay habits.

Our current plan is to increase the deposit cost of some profession materials on a per-stack basis, which should provide incentive for players to post items in larger stacks.

Here's an example:

  • Let’s say that a player is trying to sell 200 Tidespray Linen for 10g (gold) each. Today, each item has the normal deposit cost of 1c (copper), with a 1s (silver) minimum deposit, so 1 auction of 200 linen requires a deposit of 1s, and 200 auctions of 1 linen each adds up to a total deposit of 2g.
  • Now imagine an additional 20% deposit added to the listing fee per auction. With an asking price of 10g each, that raises the deposit by 2g per stack. In the case of 1 stack of 200 linen, the total buyout price is 2000g, and the new deposit is 2g1s. In the case of 200 individual stacks, the new deposit of an additional 2g per stack brings the total deposit up to 402g.

In either case, the deposit is returned to the seller if the item sells. Successful auctions aren’t affected by this change.

Our goal is to give players some forewarning on this change, and to gather feedback. We’re putting together a list of the items that would be affected by this deposit change, which we expect to be limited to high-quantity trade goods. Furthermore, we’re deploying the change to the PTR first, so that addon authors can work through the change while we test it thoroughly.

This change will likely be a temporary measure, as we’re also working to broadly improve the default Auction House in the future. It’s clear to us that many players use addons because they find the default Auction House interface inadequate. A temporary change to deposit fees will help with this in the short term, and we’ll continue to work on overall improvements to the Auction House for a future patch.

World Quest Exploit Actions
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
It seems that the frenzy of this WQ exploit is propagating a ton of misinformation, like 3 day bans going out and whatnot.

Here's a real rundown:

A WQ exploit was discovered (since hotfixed) that allowed one to get the rewards for completing a WQ, yet flag it has having not been completed, creating a cycle where one could gain the rewards over and over again, be it raw gold, gear, resources or most commonly, reputation.

As far as I can tell, no official action has been taken yet against anyone, and that is likely due to the scale of damage done.

This exploit undermined gearing (repeating gear quests for titanforges), economy (Raw gold, materials/expulsom from scrapping gear), and reputation gates (jumping to exalted on every rep in a day versus the intended few weeks). It's a massive amount of damage. Thousands of gold and reputation, tons of ilvls, resources, etc.

Action will be taken. Unlike the cooking spices exploit that simply allowed people to powerlevel cooking, or the early Legion AP exploit that saw people get their AP reset that were fairly contained in scale, this exploit was effectively an item and gold dupe with far reaching impact.

It's my personal opinion that anyone who abused this should be given a permenant ban, as it's clear this exploit circumvented and undermined multiple game systems for unfair benefit.

Please stop spreading rumors that this was only a reputation exploit and that people are only getting 3 day temp bans for it. It's false information and the issue is much more serious than that.

We are indeed aware of this exploit and have been working on a fix. We are also taking action against those who are abusing it.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Outdoor Mob Scaling Issues
I understand the concern about wanting to feel yourself get stronger but you still actually do have the ability to feel stronger, the world just feels a little relevant for a little longer while you're doing it and I think it achieves that. On my main I've already far outpaced it and at 341 I feel like a god again. I can pull a large number of mobs and easily handle them all and churn through WQs pretty quickly.

I even leveled an alt up and geared it this weekend up to almost 320 ilvl and it felt just as fine as it did the first time. When I hit 120 I noticed the mobs were a little stronger and I was having to be a little more careful but not by much and that didn't last long at all.

If you're finding mobs that do individually feel strange you should bug report them so the team can look into it but the system as a whole is working fine at least from my experience.

He isn't on the dev/design team. He is providing his feedback as a player.
Exactly. I'm just sharing what exactly my experience was when going through it both times and they both felt the same. I'm leveling a Warlock next so I'm interested to see the difference it makes as a clothie. I'll probably share my thoughts on that experience too but from my guildies they didn't even notice the scaling hardly at all even as a caster.

Casters do have it worse than melee.
Yeah this is what I'm interested in testing out myself and seeing how different it feels.

I'm curious, have you ever played an elemental shaman? If so, how was your questing experience compared to other classes/specs?
Elemental is usually always my second alt that I use for alt night raiding. I haven't quested with him yet but I plan on doing that one after Warlock. Historically for me it's always been fine, little slower obviously but still fine.

this was never an issue in older expansions.

people leveled to max level, and had fun when they got gear and stomped everything in the older content. that's what an mmo is, you get strong and go back and have fun lording over all the stupid crap you had to fight before.

The point is it was an issue that always was there but you didn't pay much attention to it as a player nor really care too much about it to be honest. I didn't notice it either until the dev team had pointed it out. It seemed like something they always wanted to try to fix it or change it but never had the chance until now with the scaling tech they have now.

It feels good to get stronger, to see your avatar in this world crush your foes, and it feels very good to get gear and get upgrades, that's a core feature of an MMO, there is no debating that or changing that. What's great though is being in a place where the content can be as relevant as possible and the rewards still match your time investment. One of the things Ion talked about with this system is that the health pool of open world mobs does get a little higher with your ilvl, but you get stronger in a faster pace. It's not making them infinitely stronger than you or making them comparative to you forever, its just a little bump at the beginning. By the time you're hitting 320 you are already far outpacing them at least from my experience.

I think its a good topic to be aware of and concerned about and I 100% get the concern and agree that going overboard does counter a core feeling of the game, but if the beginning, middle, and end of the system still end with you being able to have that character progression and feel yourself progress then I think the system can work. When it doesn't is where you have the problems and of course the team doesn't want that. Which is why they ask for specifics on any issues you're finding so they can address them and fix it if needed. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Upcoming Auction House Deposit Changes, World Quest Exploit Actions, Blue Posts started by chaud View original post
Comments 79 Comments
  1. Terminatrix's Avatar
    i love it. was annoying to go trough a bunch of pages to find what u were looking for when idiots put stack of 1 item 200 time
  1. Queen of Hamsters's Avatar
    Praise be, there is hope!

    Hopefully the more permanent changes and improvements to the Auction House will be sophisticated enough to make addons completely redundant!
  1. Esper's Avatar
    I just hope they only implement that for trade skill items. Anything that you would want to buy in single stacks (like gear, enchants, gems, etc) should not be adjusted in this way.
  1. Stormenson's Avatar
    About time to stop that 1000 stacks of 1 .

    Thanks
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Esper View Post
    I just hope they only implement that for trade skill items. Anything that you would want to buy in single stacks (like gear, enchants, gems, etc) should not be adjusted in this way.
    Yea, they specifically said "high value trade goods". It's only going to apply to things like herbs and cloth and ore.
  1. pyroadi's Avatar
    95% of people posting on AH never look at deposit costs or indeed vendor values of an item. What "genius" thought this would be a good temporary fix?

    - - - Updated - - -

    AND BTW - "Troublesome?" Seroiusly, should say "Unusable!"
  1. Codah's Avatar
    Gold is so inflated I sadly don't see this making much of an impact but I'm glad they're doing something. Hopefully the new AH comes out sooner than later.
  1. Swarzey's Avatar
    Or or or just add a filter (quantity range) for players to remove seeing those walls.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  1. pyroadi's Avatar
    And still no mentions of Guild Banks, guess that facility is dead now.
  1. Rustedsaint's Avatar
    They should make it impossible to deposit common trade goods in amounts less then 10
  1. Raelyn's Avatar
    I applaud the effort to change the listings on AH. I detest having to scroll through countless stacks of one item...

    What is the exploit I have seen mentioned? I've never seen a WQ be completed by remain on my map!
  1. Binaris's Avatar
    This wont fix a dam thing as the deposit is refunded upon sale, and the stuff very rarely doesn't sell unless a huge price drop occurs. The single stacks will stay, blizzard will claim they tried.

    The whole interface needs a huge revamp. These issues occur because we are running off a system designed for a fraction of the size the servers are now. It was designed for vanilla servers with less items, one faction, and one city. Sadly We will get this around the time we get a goblin vs gnome expansion when the horde have a fat goblin warchief.
  1. callipygoustp's Avatar
    Sounds like a few of you need to become familiar with Auctionator.
  1. Marrilaife's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by callipygoustp View Post
    Sounds like a few of you need to become familiar with Auctionator.
    Also known as "scanning... scanning... auction house timed out". Bet you play on low pop. Otherwise you'd know how long it takes to crawl through 48 pages of star moss or monelite ore. Worst part is the rescanning second time once you get to the list and try to actually buy from it.
  1. Chickat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Queen of Hamsters View Post
    Praise be, there is hope!

    Hopefully the more permanent changes and improvements to the Auction House will be sophisticated enough to make addons completely redundant!
    At blizzcon they talked about changing it to you put in what you have, and people buy what they want. So people will put stacks of 200 and people buy however much they want from the stack. Also talked about work orders I believe. A player puts a work order in for 400 ore for 18k gold and anyone can fill it. I imagine work orders will be the way to go if you want to sell something quickly, or if you are a crafter and want cheaper ore. Put a work order in for 10% below market value, and eventually someone will fill it.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Also known as "scanning... scanning... auction house timed out". Bet you play on low pop. Otherwise you'd know how long it takes to crawl through 48 pages of star moss or monelite ore. Worst part is the rescanning second time once you get to the list and try to actually buy from it.
    My server has anywhere from 6-20 pages for a given mat depending on day/time. Prob on the lower end of server populations. I think it is a medium pop server atm, but in late Legion it fell to low.
  1. Paperfox's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rustedsaint View Post
    They should make it impossible to deposit common trade goods in amounts less then 10
    When I used to sell mats I normally sell them in stacks of 5. As I thought that this is a good quantity to buy if you wanted to make one item.

    Nowadays I generally keep them.
  1. Marrilaife's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Chickat View Post
    My server has anywhere from 6-20 pages for a given mat depending on day/time. Prob on the lower end of server populations. I think it is a medium pop server atm, but in late Legion it fell to low.
    Addons or not the AH on my server is slower than the turtle reaching to the water. Using AH to level professions is a pure torture atm. Stacks of 1 were a problem for years, the AH revamp is long overdue. They should have made it like in original Diablo 3.
  1. endersblade's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Swarzey View Post
    Or or or just add a filter (quantity range) for players to remove seeing those walls.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    This. Instead of doing anything actually useful, they went the typical Blizzard route. Go figure. Blizzard's typical response is never to buff something, but to just nerf everything else. For the people that actually spam the AH with stacks of 1, this isn't going to affect them at all. It'll hardly put a dent into their bottom line. All it's going to do is cause more casual players to think twice about posting anything at all to the AH.

    The AH itself is in dire need of an overhaul to begin with. This is just one more clunky, useless change to it that it doesn't need.
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by pyroadi View Post
    95% of people posting on AH never look at deposit costs or indeed vendor values of an item. What "genius" thought this would be a good temporary fix?
    People who farm thousands of mats to make scores and scores of gold probably care; they're likely the people flooding the markets the most as well.

    They guy who is trying to sell five spare ore wont care (and would probably list it in a stack of five.)

    The guy that plays the auction house and is trying to sell 2,000 cloth is going to care if it cuts into his profits if he lists them all one by one instead of in stacks of 200.

    Quote Originally Posted by Swarzey View Post
    Or or or just add a filter (quantity range) for players to remove seeing those walls.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    that doesn't solve the actual impact issue that the hundreds and hundreds of listings are having on the auction house.
  1. callipygoustp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Also known as "scanning... scanning... auction house timed out". Bet you play on low pop. Otherwise you'd know how long it takes to crawl through 48 pages of star moss or monelite ore. Worst part is the rescanning second time once you get to the list and try to actually buy from it.
    I'm on Blackrock which is usually listed as medium. I'll jump on a full server and check it out on a baby alt.

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