WoW Confidential

Blizzard has just announced the remote auction house is now available for beta testing on a few select servers and eventually on every server.

The remote auction house is a paid method for accessing the auction house via your iphone or internet browser to perform auction house activities on the go. The cost is $2.99/month.

The main page for the remote auction house can be found here and they provided some screen shots of what the interface looks like:

Iphone Remote Auction House Interface

Web Remote Auction House Interface

Features

Blizzard outlined what would be included in the free vs subscription package:

Free Browse the Auction House
Get real-time notifications when your auctions sell or expire
Get real-time notifications when you win auctions or when you are outbid
View your characters’ current gold
View the status of your auctions and search for similar auctions
View the items you can sell in your bags, bank, and mailbox
View the status of auctions you are bidding on
View the items you’ve sold in the Auction House
View your expired auctions
View the status of auctions you created
View your successful auctions Subscription Required
Bid on auctions
Buy out auctions
Create auctions from items in your bags, bank, and mailbox
Collect gold from successful auctions
Collect gold from unsuccessful bids
Collect all outstanding gold with a single click
Cancel your auctions
Relist items for sale from your expired auctions

Current Servers with Free Beta Access

Anub’arak
Blackwater Raiders
Bladefist
Cenarion Circle
Cenarius
Darrowmere
Echo Isles
Fenris
Hyjal
Korialstraaz
Lightbringer
Maiev
Misha
Ravenholdt
Shu’halo
Sisters of Elune
The Forgotten Coast
Uther
Vashj
Winterhoof

My Thoughts

My initial worry about the remote AH was the fear of it giving bots and other automated scripts the opportunity to further exploit the economy by making it easier to cancel/repost using advanced web based scripts, however it seems that you need to input your username/password + authenticator for every transaction, this will limit the usefulness of bots and make any mass transactions a hassle.

They have also implemented a limit of 200 transactions a day, anyone even mildly involved in the inscription market is already posting 150 glyphs/day.

I think the main use for this application is to buy up expensive/rare items or to win bidding wars (since you are notified whenever you’re outbid), also the ability to claim “all” gold in your mailbox will clear out some clutter and save time when you get home later and have to collect tons of mail using postal.

This service losses it’s value for me though since all my favorite AH addons are not compatible with the remote ah, and since the majority of addon coders are already strapped for time it doesn’t look like they’ll spend time making it compatible with the web AH, even auctioneer said they’re not going to develop any compatibility with the remote AH and they are the most used AH addon.

My other worry was the “slippery slope” effect of blizzard slowly charging these micro transactions for actual in-game advantages. I don’t care when they charge for things like pets since they aren’t combat pets but more for show, and the new mount is also just for show (since it doesn’t give you a speed advantage over someone who didn’t pay) but the remote AH does give those who pay the opportunity to make more sales, win more auctions and compete better on the AH over those who don’t pay. Blizzard has officially replied to this concern in this post basically stating that players who have more “time” are able to get this same advantage without paying but this just gives people without access to the game an ability to use the AH, this is still a very thin line for me.

Other Interesting Notes

- Can’t use Remote AH while logged into World of Warcraft

- Beancounter will not be able to record any of your sales/expired/successful auctions if they are collected from the remote AH, this sucks because I love using beancounter to see where my money is coming from, how much I paid for certain items to flip and many other uses.

- You can post/buy on the neutral AH from the Remote AH

- There is already some data collection being used by parsing the wowarmory web AH, check out some examples here: (thanks to frontloader for mentioning this)  (link removed at web owners request) - Sorry, I’ll get a screenshot or some more info for you later, but it seems some good data collection can be had from parsing the AH data that we can share later.

- You can relist all your expired auctions in one click, so if you had 700 expired glyphs in your mailbox you could pretty much do a 1 click repost all expired auctions, however this is limited by the 200 transaction limit and also how would it know to undercut the competitor? (would probably just put it up for the price it was at before which is most likely undercut by now)

Have you tried out the remote AH yet? are you planning on getting it? I will keep my eyes open for more websites that can parse AH data using the wowarmory data and any AH addons that are able to be used with the remote AH.