Cross Realm Auction Houses For WoW?
While reading through the recent WoW Developers Ask Me Anything (WoW AMA) on Reddit, I stumbled upon the mention of the possible merging of WoW auction houses across realms in the future. Tom Chilton, Game Director for World of Warcraft, posted (source):
Back in February, when I read Fox's notion of making the World of Warcraft auction house global for all servers, I thought he was off his nutter. I still disagree with every bit of his reasoning regarding merging the WoW auction houses. While we may never see a completely global auction house, the possibility of merged auction houses across multiple servers is now a legitimate possibility from the words of the game's director.
I've never been a chicken-little who thinks the sky is falling, but I just gotta say this:
Cross Realm Auction Houses Are Bad For Sellers
Why make auction houses merge across multiple realms? To "help out" those players stuck on low and medium pop servers who have less items to shop from on their auction house. Ugh! If you are on a lower pop server, then you can create your own market and control that markets prices much easier than on a higher pop server with more competition. Obviously, that statement is from the mind of a WoW gold making goblin. Overall though, the buyers would be the ones to benefit most from a cross realm auction house. And that leaves the gold making goblins the ones who will be hit the hardest by merging auction houses.
Merging multiple servers (possibly just limiting the merger to within your current Battlegroup) will prove to be nothing more than a nightmare for nearly anyone involved in making gold in WoW. Sure you can candy coat the idea of having more buyers for your goods and a bigger pool of resources to purchase from, but with more servers merged into a single auction house, you exponentially explode your amount of competition! And with more competition comes even more lowly Kobolds.
It's not as simple as comparing the benefits of a large population server to those of a low pop server. Of course things sell faster on a larger population server, but you also have more competition in your markets. Now when you merge multiple pre-established servers with pre-established WoW gold makers in multiple markets into a single cross realm auction house, things are bound to get ugly. Crazy dumb Kobolds are invading many markets already on individual servers, so when we merge more servers together, they will take over even more and more markets and drive the prices even lower.
Many of you have abandoned the Glyph market already because of the mindless undercutting bloodbaths that are oh so common in the Glyph market. Now merge 10 servers into one and you've got that same type of behavior in every market. Even your precious niche markets that you may be the only seller in are going to be invaded by multiple goblins from multiple servers that also have that same niche market or rare pattern. Every rare or obsolete pattern that you use to make gold off of due to minimal competition on your server is no longer going to belong to you alone or a handful of competitors. Do we really want every market to turn into the Glyph market? I sure don't.
Merger servers into a cross realm auction house will only cause us to have to work harder for even less profits, if we can still profit at all. You think undercutting is bad now? Try battling it with 10 times as many players in all of your markets. Please Blizzard, make these thoughts go away. Say it isn't so!
What Do You Think Of The Cross Realm Auction House Idea For WoW?
Check out some of my Squidoo lenses: Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money - Must Read For Auctioneers | Auction House Junkies | Flipping WoW CEs For Profit
Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets
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| Cross Realm Auction Houses Coming To A WoW Server Near You? |
While reading through the recent WoW Developers Ask Me Anything (WoW AMA) on Reddit, I stumbled upon the mention of the possible merging of WoW auction houses across realms in the future. Tom Chilton, Game Director for World of Warcraft, posted (source):
"...I can imagine a future where we might decide to make auction houses cross-server. It's not something to jump into lightly, but there may be ways to design a cross-realm auction house that ensures a viable economy without getting 'too big'."
Back in February, when I read Fox's notion of making the World of Warcraft auction house global for all servers, I thought he was off his nutter. I still disagree with every bit of his reasoning regarding merging the WoW auction houses. While we may never see a completely global auction house, the possibility of merged auction houses across multiple servers is now a legitimate possibility from the words of the game's director.
I've never been a chicken-little who thinks the sky is falling, but I just gotta say this:
THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
DON'T DO IT BLIZZARD!
Cross Realm Auction Houses Are Bad For Sellers
Why make auction houses merge across multiple realms? To "help out" those players stuck on low and medium pop servers who have less items to shop from on their auction house. Ugh! If you are on a lower pop server, then you can create your own market and control that markets prices much easier than on a higher pop server with more competition. Obviously, that statement is from the mind of a WoW gold making goblin. Overall though, the buyers would be the ones to benefit most from a cross realm auction house. And that leaves the gold making goblins the ones who will be hit the hardest by merging auction houses.
Merging multiple servers (possibly just limiting the merger to within your current Battlegroup) will prove to be nothing more than a nightmare for nearly anyone involved in making gold in WoW. Sure you can candy coat the idea of having more buyers for your goods and a bigger pool of resources to purchase from, but with more servers merged into a single auction house, you exponentially explode your amount of competition! And with more competition comes even more lowly Kobolds.
It's not as simple as comparing the benefits of a large population server to those of a low pop server. Of course things sell faster on a larger population server, but you also have more competition in your markets. Now when you merge multiple pre-established servers with pre-established WoW gold makers in multiple markets into a single cross realm auction house, things are bound to get ugly. Crazy dumb Kobolds are invading many markets already on individual servers, so when we merge more servers together, they will take over even more and more markets and drive the prices even lower.
Many of you have abandoned the Glyph market already because of the mindless undercutting bloodbaths that are oh so common in the Glyph market. Now merge 10 servers into one and you've got that same type of behavior in every market. Even your precious niche markets that you may be the only seller in are going to be invaded by multiple goblins from multiple servers that also have that same niche market or rare pattern. Every rare or obsolete pattern that you use to make gold off of due to minimal competition on your server is no longer going to belong to you alone or a handful of competitors. Do we really want every market to turn into the Glyph market? I sure don't.
Merger servers into a cross realm auction house will only cause us to have to work harder for even less profits, if we can still profit at all. You think undercutting is bad now? Try battling it with 10 times as many players in all of your markets. Please Blizzard, make these thoughts go away. Say it isn't so!
What Do You Think Of The Cross Realm Auction House Idea For WoW?
Check out some of my Squidoo lenses: Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money - Must Read For Auctioneers | Auction House Junkies | Flipping WoW CEs For Profit
Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets
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, among many others were easy to profit off of in real life. I've never sold gold in WoW or any other currency within a game, because those have always been clear cut violations. 
