Hello
[TL;DR at the end in different paragraph]
I’ve seen only one short topic around it on reddit, and that was it. It’s total revamp of the AH for no given reason. I like playing AH. Some of my guildmates call me “AH overlord” (their words not mine).
Revamping AH via introduction of retail’s system is bad especially when you’ve broken youself (as company) working system. Then you try to “fix it” with turbo ideas. Some “bots’” retail’s & classic’s problems:
- “They’re happy with DF’s system” (Profs) - I havn’t meet a single person who’s “happy” about it.
- Everybody wants to need somebody to craft BoPs for them. Hail (forced) communism again.
- Bots have diffculties to farm anything. One of the biggest lies around. Even so not “seeing” them from server side is… Well somone could feel offended by my words about that.
- Token price vs time spent on it. I’ve seen recently so many comments “buy token it’s an hour in mcdonald”. Awesome but there were times where tokens were limited and you’ve earned more in game than “a single hour in mcdonald”. Even recently in classic there was period of time around ICC’s release where your “local mcdonald” would have to pay like 120ish euro / hour to match the income.
- In classic and SoMs vendoring was one of the methods of finding yourself at AH if you didn’t start within launch. I assume it was nuked from the orbit in retail due “bots”?
- Any old or new daily CD is at best worth few gold.
- Prospecting & milling is a joke. Even in shadowlands you could send 30k ores and make yourself a supper and come back for job done. Now in someone’s mind you need to restock every few mins.
- Giving long dead professions like skinning something new a quantity of 1 is joke.
- Raw mats farming (ores/skins/herbs) is pointless beyond few weeks around content landing. It was never the case. Look for instance in current wotlk’s classic. Saronite & Cobalt are still relevant (if you know their purpose). Less but they’re. Titanium is sucked up on daily basis.
- The “best joke” of regional AH is when you work / go to college (etc.) and something like last world 1st happens. You come back home and prices rises of some mats cause “new legendary” has been figured out. Go buy some tokens I guess?
- Over and over again I’ve seen posts saying “go do WQs for gold - it’s the best source atm”. It’s sad. AH was always the best source for everybody no matter if u’re small or big.
- AH’s posting fees are joke. For instance new loterry cards. First you craft them for several hours to find our the posting fee is @ 25% xD.
- AFK crafting to mass produce or vendor was another method of making gold. Guess what? It’s dead also.
- Regional AH’s “flawor”. We live in mass media world. Ask around how many people were screwed over cause some youtuber promised them mountains of gold :D.
- Whoever from devs tought that having 300/300 vanilla alchemy for it’s specialization - you my honeybear are “special”. It’s not a QoL - it’s give me your gold method.
- Nameless AH system in basic form. If you don’t use addons like TSM you don’t know from whom you’re buying. Guess who that system rewards :D?
- Requirement of addon to be able to profit from your professions in AH is a mistake at best? Who tought that would be awesome idea to make most difficult professions’ system ever should try play AH.
- “Internal Auction Error” (for simplicity let’s call it IAE). Oh my god this is like beating edited by moderator. Around Classic’s Naxx patch and same time in retail someone pushed changes into AH’s code to “fight bots”. Simply if you “spam” like scroll up/down TSM macro to post for instance 1k glyphs you’re screwed. IAE “guards” the AH only from spamming “in” and not “out”.
Real time example - try posting 1400 glyphs. You’ll in most cases have 50% damage return meaning you’ll be able to post 700/1400 at max in 1st wave of TSM scan. Then 350>175>80ish etc. From simple posting session a nightmare borns. From my observations it was inflamed even more. At least in classic. Awesome method to fight against bots - brute force against players xD. - Saying that you can make gold @ AH now is valid. Yet this validation won’t tell you that it’s about content patches and then graveyard. It was never the case and nor it should be.
- Revamping RNG in mass prospecting for the first time ever. Why? It was always about Gauss’ distribution with fixed (equal) percentages for green/blue/epic gems. Guess what will happen to single gem color when you manually “fix” it’s prospect ratio? It becomes worthless.
The beauty of old classic’s RNG is it’s predictability towards the outcome. With some “tinkering” you could have a fixed price for Greatness DMF trinkiets. Good luck achieving it without “craftism” and based only on spreadsheets. - If RNG is called to the board then you as players should poke Blizzard about how RNG works. It isn’t a chance of X happening Y times. If you want check it for instance in classic wotlk then go into something some people call “batches”. Prospect X amount of Y ore, note the results, stop, and repeat after some time. Results could surprise you.
- Recently in classic I’ve went through TSM Ledger (awesome tool btw). I’ve produced like 30+ names to check (botting). Based on amount of items which they were selling you couldn’t conclude another results. I’ve sent ticket about it to “pass the names” cause yeah like I’m in a mood of tracking down and “right click to report” especially when some of them log in late hours in exodar for instance… Even I’ve marked “it’s impossible to right click them” I’ve got turbo response “right click them” (XD) or send mail (!) to hacks@blizzard.com or some address like this. Which I did and prolly if any actions will take place it’ll take them in best case scenario just about “right time before cata” xD.
When someone does the job for you (yeah you Blizzard) at least help him a bit or read what we - people write. - Recent ban wave wasn’t so long time ago? Awesome but within a week or two bots in: leather, fishes, ores arose. I don’t mean new ones. The old ones. You simply cannot farm within 7-14 days as single player 20-30k or raw mats. The biggest amount from single guy which I saw was around 24-25k ores @ prices below than normal in classic wotlk week after banwave…
- The absolute record which I’ve seen in wotlk’s classic whole bot situation was the guy who sold approx. 500 000+ ores & herbs. If that is not a problem well then I don’t know what is.
[TL;DR]
Given things written above the introduction of “regional retail AH system” can be summed into:
- Accept that system, and have bots instead of “AH overlords”,
- Blizzard doesn’t poke inside AH,
- They poke before not after the fact unless you will point finger,
- “Cheap” classic token will be a memory like they once were in retail,
- If you have bots on your realms on daily basis imagine all of them molded into single pack, fun not detected,
- More (not wanted) QoL features incomming,
- As older you get the more “monetization” you want to bring your company or your household. It’s natural, but there is a line where you should ask yourself if that monetization allows you to look into mirror without disgust. Streamling the AH in long run helps increasing the inflation which brings the argument of “it’s only an hour in mcdonalds”…
- The sole purpose of this topic was good old saying: “Be careful what you wish”.
Best regards & Happy Christmas everyone
Ket
