In a little surprise move Cataclysm classic will be getting the revamped Auction House UI from retail. This has some major changes to how listings work and it will have an impact on your goldmaking strategies!
Stackables are changing
THe only items that will see a change are stackable items. Now that is an absolutely massive amount of items. It includes all materials, all gems, all enchants, all consumables and all glyphs. FOr all of these items you will now simply post a quantity at a price and players will be able to pick a quantity to purchase and pay the corresponding unit prices.
An example
So how does this work? If I post 2 potions for 2 gold each and someone else posts 4 potions for 3 gold each and you want to buy 3 potions you will pay 4 gold total for my two potions and three gold for the last potion posted by someone else. You can do it in one operation and it will adjust the total price correctly. There are no bids for stackables at all, buyouts only.
Better performance
The reason for the change is to increase the performance. The AH get’s slowed down very significantly by the number of auctions. This actually eventually led to server wide lag in retail which prompted the redesign. In retail they eventually made the commodity market region wide, but I doubt we see that in classic. It is also easier to do normal auctioning for players as it is a lot faster to both buy and sell the right quantity of items with the new UI.
Prices stabilizing
Prices will also slightly more easily stabilize. There’s more items at the same price and with stack sizing gone you can’t use the trick of overcutting at more convenient stack sizes to get some sales. Some of my favorit methods like material flipping will essentially be gone with this change, or at least so significantly changed that my settings won’t work.
Changing TSM operations
TradeSkillMaster will probably support only post quantities in operations like they do on retail. Essentially you will be choosing how many to post. In general you will probably want to post slighltly less items and repost more often if possible as you can’t really sell unless you are the cheapest.
Profit margins?
Profit margins will likely be fairly low for most crafted stackable items. With the AH price easy to tell for both materials and finished items there will be less opportunities to take advantage of special conditions to boost your profits.