AH region merge is awful

[JSoup]

Just watching it happen in real time, I'm reminded of the WoD days. Even at the rate a few garrisons produce mats, it wasn't enough for crafters. Ore was still being bought and used in piles even in the last few weeks of the expansion. It was amazing to watch, piles of crap goes in, gold comes out, repeat. What I'm seeing reminds me of that, I'll list some mats picked up during casual play and it's sold in minutes. Dragonflight seems like it's going to be crafting heavy, so maybe we'll have another WoD situation where mats pour out of every cupboard and there's never enough.

I did notice a slight drop in situation specific stuff. Like old mats for vanilla legendaries went up a bit, unused AQ40 scarabs/idols went down a bit.

[Sialina]

How are they making more profits if the price of stuff is low everywhere because the supply is now considerably higher than it used to be, while the demand didn't increase at all?

Prices are the same on all bigger realms, where the bots would prefer to sell because of the bigger market. It doesn't make sense to sell one herb for 40g when you can sell 20 for 5g each.

You do know cross realm in open worlds is a thing?

How do you propose a bot using that?

[delus]

This makes literally no sense. If the mats are too cheap for people to want to farm them then standard supply and demand kicks in because less people will then farm it. Why do you act like you are the messiah of the AH when you dont even understand such basic concepts?

Really, there is such an easy fix to make farming mats worth it: adjust vendor prices of those items.

[Schizoide]

Assuming you mean by increasing vendor prices, that would be inflationary and thus dangerous to the economy as a whole. Due to current real-world events, people understand how dangerous inflation can be.

The region-wide commodities market is great unless you make your money gathering. Some people just enjoy doing it in a mindless kind of way, and they used to be pretty well rewarded on smaller servers. That's no longer the case. For everybody else, though, it's awesome.

Me, I'm strongly in favor. Like most players, I primarily interact with the AH to sell crap I accumulated from playing the game and mission table bags. Before the patch a straddling sage agate was 9k on my server, afterwards it's like 1.5k. Now I've got over 20 million gold sitting around so it makes no difference to me one way or the other, but I still like it.

Edit: You probably also hate it if you're a serious auction goblin and used to control markets on small servers. Of course you'll still be able to control non-commodities markets, and the crafting changes in Dragonflight will open up a whole new class of tradable gear.

[Dristereau]

It's hard to see how much gatherers will be able to profit compared to previously, I feel like the money will end up in the realm specific things such as Legendary Baseplate items and Crafted Gear. Maybe early on Gathering will be insane, it depends on the rarity of Mats (prices could end up skyrocketing come RTWF if Echo previously bought out the entire AH of Tarren-Mill EU).

I'm still not a massive fan, I dislike how three different economies with different prices existed in the same game are now just one very cheap one. I think an aggressive merging/connecting over smaller servers would be a much healthier way to consolidate realms and provide a better experience for the players on those realms. You could quite easily connect Ravencrest, Connected Sylvanas and Outland (3 of the top 5 Alliance realms population wise (12k, 5k and 4k) and they would only just be the same size of Silvermoon (22k) so imagine how many already connected realms could be merged together to build a few massive servers. I would imagine if they did besides the five massive servers (Draenor, Kazzak, Connected Tarren-Mill, Twisting Nether and Silvermoon) the remaining EU English servers of around 32 connected groups could be connected down to around 10 or less.

I've never controlled markets but of course I've profited from the AH. I'm just not convinced that at this point a full region wide AH is the play.

[Stickiler]

the crafting changes in Dragonflight will open up a whole new class of tradable gear.

It's not tradable gear, it's work orders. You can't buy and sell work orders like you can other items, so there's no way to control that market.

[Kazlofski]

The idea is making buying as a player much cheaper, while as a seller you make much less gold so you are more inclined to buy gold and thus pay more $ to Blizz.

[Coldkil]

Less gold needed to do the usual stuff (consumables and such)?

I don't see any issue. Sorry but not sorry for the players who found fun playing the AH, losing a fun activity is crap but in the end it's the best for the playerbase.

I don't farm gold. I just do callings and table missions on one char (a couple if i want) and i sit comfy above 200k which is all i need to sustain my gameplay. The excess gold is sent to my bank char.

Majority of people actually run around with less than 50k in bags. Mostly because they keep spamming m+ and nothing else and they drain themselves buying consumables and repairing their gear.

Honestly i wouldn't care at all if not be happy about having all consumable effect persist on death.

EDIT: a lot of players believe they need absurd amount of gold to play. The only fact is that they're clueless about both how to get the gold they need and spending it wisely (max level legendaries were a borderline scam, meaning that the base one would be enough to play until you had the money to buy the upgraded one when the market crashed).

[Flarelaine]

That’s a fair point, is that not a good thing though? Don’t we have too much gold in circulation as it is? With no table, created gold is surely going to dwindle

I think it is a good thing.

[loras]

Crafting other BOEs?

Doing callings? Farming old content? Farming raid BOEs?





If you dont know something- then you remain silent and dont pretend that you know what other person thought or knew (not).

What great advice to never learn anything, i can see you've taken it to heart.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

An acceptable sacrifice for getting rid of market manipulators.

Also it's hardly beyond solutions; minor overbidding, trade chat or just not being too slow would all work.
But if that's all not acceptable to you you can always just ask Blizzard to smooth out the kinks in the system, if it is indeed one.
Basically: Better to complain to the ones that can actually change the situation if that is what you want.

It wont get rid of market manipulators. It will cut out the smaller speculators and only create much more monstrous ones. Just give it time.

[Goatfish]

Assuming you mean by increasing vendor prices, that would be inflationary and thus dangerous to the economy as a whole. Due to current real-world events, people understand how dangerous inflation can be.

You know what is way fucking worse than inflation? Prices going off a fucking cliffside into the abyss. I hope people understand this means never actually being able to make real gold in WoW again unless you want to buy tokens. Prices have fallen, and profit margins are in the gutter already. I'm just glad I have a nice little nest egg to coast through for a while, because we've very quickly gone back to an economy where if you want to actively raid you are also going to have to actively farm your own mats instead of keep a small side business going.

I mean to put it in perspective, for one player on one single night of prog at current profit margins on my server. I would need to sell 200 flasks to cover just the repair costs alone. Being a "middle class merchant" where you buy mats to resell crafted items has been completely gutted unless you are in a rare goods market. It's like trying to run a cheap mom and pop burger joint and you are surrounded by mcdonalds, burger kings, and wendy's.

The TLDR: People are quickly going to learn why small town people raise hell when Walmart comes to town. This is effectively the same. Blizzard has destroyed local economies where people could actually make money by forcibly increasing supply. Essentially globalism with limited to no transport and logistics cost.

[Hyphie]

The main issue with the AH right now, is you physically can't buy anything. Everything is stuck at low prices, and the only way I've been lucky to buy was to buy more than the number stuck at the posted amount. The legendary essentia is stuck at 1s with almost 1200 of them posted and getting "Internal Auction error". Whole thread on the wow forums with my experience on it as well.

Everyone knew prices would tank, but getting stuck and unable to buy anything, that's the main issue.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...-ah/1309254/28

[vilememory]

The main issue with the AH right now, is you physically can't buy anything. Everything is stuck at low prices, and the only way I've been lucky to buy was to buy more than the number stuck at the posted amount. The legendary essentia is stuck at 1s with almost 1200 of them posted and getting "Internal Auction error". Whole thread on the wow forums with my experience on it as well.

Everyone knew prices would tank, but getting stuck and unable to buy anything, that's the main issue.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...-ah/1309254/28

I got that as well, shit ton of mats are stuck like this as the bots keep trying to undercut each other. Now you can't buy shit because even if you do try to click something higher up the AH selects everything below it. I'm like no, let me buy this more expensive shit! NOPE SELECTING IT ALL AND NOT AVAILABLE!

[mauserr]

level a bunch of alts to 60

lessentially zero effort.

That alone is tremendous effort for somebody who absolutely despites leveling and the dogshit mission table minigame.

[Rocksteady 87]

Better suggestion: Maybe gather your own materials?

Whoa, hold up. I know. It's a revolutionary thought, but requires a bit of effort and just... it's crazy, right?

[Hyphie]

Better suggestion: Maybe gather your own materials?

Whoa, hold up. I know. It's a revolutionary thought, but requires a bit of effort and just... it's crazy, right?

You're not wrong, and I farm for myself, but sometimes you get busy with work, log in right before raid go to make some pots/flasks and realize "crap I'm short 3 widowbloom" and your out in Zereth Mortis. Pop on AH mount go to buy the 3 widowbloom you're short and you can't because it's bugged at the listed value, now what? You tell your raid "Sorry guys I have to fly to Revendreth to pick 3 widowbloom"

It's not that people are lazy/can't farm your mats in time for raid.

[Schizoide]

That alone is tremendous effort for somebody who absolutely despites leveling and the dogshit mission table minigame.

That's fair, I meant it's zero effort after you level up your alt army.

I hate mission tables too, but it's just too much money for me to skip them. Also the minigame is gone with the tldrmissions addon.

With prices super low now, why would you advise anyone to gather their own mats? I don't even get that reasoning. Just buy off the AH (assuming it's functional) and go about your life.

[loras]

It wont get rid of market manipulators. It will cut out the smaller speculators and only create much more monstrous ones. Just give it time.

Seems like something easily prevented by maintaining a ceiling on the amount of accumulable gold.

[rrayy]

I make my money with mission tables which work like before. People that gather ressources and try to make money by making flasks or other commodities are the ones losing out here. But thanks for your "edgy" comment. You are indeed cool.

You can make money without gouging people. They aren't losing out. They are just greedy.