So there are a few people complaining that the price of items are too low and they blame this on the saturated market. I believe this is partly true. Another thing affecting the price of items is the fact that the auction house has a virtual quasi monopoly on all items. The problem with this is that the traditional factors that affect pricing, like distance, does not come into play.
To give you an example.
In South Africa (where I live) good red wine can be bought for R50-R60, whereas that same bottle can be bought in Europe for R200+. Why? Because of the distance involved, the effort to ship items abroad ect.
So my proposal:
Instead of having a general auction house that connects all the cities, disconnect them and have a Orgrimmar, Thunderbluff and Undercity auction house, that only shows items put into that respective auction house. The same applies for the alliance.
Why do this? Positives:
This will make prices more unstable as distance becomes involved. (A simple example, a person will be willing to buy a batch of silk cloth in Thunderbluff for 2g, instead of 1g in Undercity, because he cant be bothered to fly there.)
This will make items rarer, because it is not so easily to come by, thus hiking the prices up more
There will spawn a new market to buy things in one city, to sell them in another city (Trade)
Ultimately it is more realistic
I believe it is also a change in the spirit of classic. Of course this was not so back in the days, but this in no means take us towards retail, actually the complete opposite.
Negatives
Of course this will make many things harder. You will now have to search more to acquire items, but haven’t we now learned, with the example of BFA, that one cannot have happiness without some unhappiness?
Ultimately making things easier usually equals making things not worthwhile. The most addictive game there is, the game we have the highest played time and the one we keep returning to, is live, the real world we live in at the moment. Mostly, I believe, because it is so damn difficult, far more difficult than any computer game.
Ultimately I believe the positives far outweigh the negatives and this move will more emphasize the MEDIEVAL in this medieval fantasy game.
This won’t work. Players will react to this by doing all their buying and selling in Orgrimmar and Ironforge, just like they did in Vanilla.
It also would have negative side effects. The other cities would become ghost towns, and players who start characters in those areas would be at a disadvantage when it comes to having access to a very active auction house.
There is no significant influx of raw currency into the economy. The default price in people mind is private server prices. Which were set with the fact that Maraudon provided way more raw gold than it does on classic wow.
Maraudon runs are slower, and Princess does not always drop two rare items as she did on certain servers. You could farm the place for 45-50g raw gold per hour, added to the economy. Now you need mining + herbalism to total 35-40g per hour, maybe 30g of which is raw gold.
There are only a select few items of value right now. Best in slot items, enchanting materials and consumables (and their mats). All other currency is being tucked away for mount right now.
Originally, actually quite a long time in vanilla auction houses were not linked so this would not be a change at all.
Patch 1.9.0 Linked Auction Houses
Auction Houses in Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Thunder Bluff will now share the same pool of Horde player-created auctions, and Alliance players will find the same to be true when visiting Ironforge, Stormwind City, and Darnassus Auction Houses. This system has been expanded to support the neutral Auction Houses as well. Tanaris, Everlook, and Booty Bay will all be linked for players of both factions to access.
Yeap. So what I said about Orgrimmar and Ironforge becoming the only places where people would buy and sell, would just happen again if they became unlinked.
When WoW came out each city had its own auction house. So everyone just ended up using 1 auction house and the other 2 were empty as no one wanted to use them. Back in the day it was Ironforge for Alliance, and Orgrimmar for Horde.
This will end up centralising all auctions in Ironforge and Orgrimmar as it did in vanilla when the AHs weren’t connected. In my opinion it wouldn’t change much about the current economy.
I hear what you guys and girls are saying, but one can for example limit the amount of items you can put in one auction house, thus forcing people to put items in the other or for example add a weight system that exists in fallout, leading to the same outcome.
I am only thinking of probable solutions instead of the mindless whining or those who just repeatedly expose the #nochanges mantra.