Today’s developer content update gave us some news about 8.3. This includes information about the AH revamp that has been in the works for a while. This will have some major ramifications for goldmaking, so let’s take a look at the changes.
What’s new?
You can check out Ion present the changes and show off the new UI in this video. The major change is that anything that can stack can be bought in any quantity you want. If someone posted 50 of an item at a certain price, you can just buy 30 of them. Then the rest will be on sale. If multiple players post at the same price item that was most recently posted will sell first.
In addition the default result page will now show an ordered list, similar to what TSM and Auctionator have been doing for years.
You can also make a shopping list with items by simply favoriting them and clicking a single button to return. It also looks like AH scans are now almost instantaneous which is going to be very nice.
Overall thoughts
ion says in the video that the changes are aimed at the average player. I think that overall the changes will heavily favor them. It makes it much easier to find the right price, to buy the amount you need at a reasonable price and all the other good stuff. I don’t think though that the incentive to undercut is removed. Assuming deposit costs are still a thing there are always advantages to driving the price down for faster overall sales rates.
Honestly some of these changes should have been done a long time ago, as they make it much easier to interact with the AH, and other players. On the flip side the changes do make the AH minigame less interesting. Stack sizing is a HUGE part of the AH game for any market where items stacks. Without stack size based pricing I would never have made a profit off of alchemy in Legion for instance.
The death of convenient stacks
One of the most reliable flipping and price increasing tricks in the game will die with 8.3. Selling in convenient stack sizes at a 5-20% markup has been a staple in the gold making repertoire forever. So we will have to find new ways to extract value. I fear that material flipping will be much harder, at least my general approach will probably have to be scrapped. Consumable flipping is perhaps even harder hit as the various small stack sizes have always dominated here.
The death of undercutting?
The new functionality for determining who sells if both are at the same price is interesting. Undercutting is still a useful tool, but the behaviour of 1c undercuts will of course no longer have any incentives. It can be an interesting strategic tool in the new AH though, so it will be fun to poke around with it.
Potential winners
Crafting should be the winner, as material purchasing will be much faster. That being said we may see profit margins dry up as more players turn to crafting to make their gold. BoE flipping and other high-end single item markets should still work well though.
Overall impressions
Overall i like the changes. ease of use will bring more players into the AH. Ultimately I want as many players trading as many items as possible. that being said one of the most reliable entry level goldmaking techniques will most likely be a thing of the past. I think material flipping will be MUCH harder to pull off, but it’s hard to predict so it will be interesting to see how the players and the AH responds. We might see different price behaviour, so it may still be possible to identify opportunities.