Gold Capped: Mobile Auction House functionality updated
by Basil Berntsen 
Oct 31st 2011 at 3:00PM
The WoW Remote, or Mobile Auction House, has been upgraded. Here are the new features that have been announced:
-Automatic price undercutting: Set the default buyout price of your auctions to match or undercut the current lowest buyout price for an item
-Aggregated buyout search results: Multiple auctions posted at the same buyout price can now be viewed as a single group
-Support for the following Guild features: Level, Perks, Rewards, Achievements, News, Events, and MotD
-Realm Status
-Search now suggests terms based on previous searches and matching items
-Talent Calculator
-Various bug fixes
-Aggregated buyout search results: Multiple auctions posted at the same buyout price can now be viewed as a single group
-Support for the following Guild features: Level, Perks, Rewards, Achievements, News, Events, and MotD
-Realm Status
-Search now suggests terms based on previous searches and matching items
-Talent Calculator
-Various bug fixes
While some of the features are available to everyone, whether they pay the $36 a year mobility fee or not, most of this concerns auctioneers. There are a bunch of welcome and much-needed changes and bug fixes in this patch -- so many, in fact, that it's left the vanilla (unmodified) Auction House so far behind that it's actually eating the in-game Auction House's dust as it laps it.
The change Blizzard is clearly most excited about is the automatic undercutting. Now when you post an item, it shows you the competition and allows you to define a default undercut value by percent or gold. It also lets you remember and reuse the last price you posted it at or match the current cheapest price. This is almost as good as an addon, and if it stopped treating the bid price separately from the buyout price, it'd be perfect. It's a zillion times better than the old system (or the in-game AH), which pre-populate your price columns with some sort of dangerous nonsense based on vendor price.
The other basic functionality change is that search results when you're buying group similar auctions together into a convenient group that can be bought together. You can buy an entire posted batch of items with one command; however, each one will count toward your daily limit of actions. Also, while saved searches are not yet supported, the search will try to suggest things you've searched for before. This saves a lot of time, especially when using a fiddly little touchscreen keyboard. This puts the mobile AH on par with the likes of Auctionator, which has been essentially required to make the in-game AH a usable vending maching.
#OccupyTheAH?
The in-game AH users are stuck with an interface that's been fundamentally unchanged since the launch of patch 3.3.3, and even those changes were minor quality-of-life issues that didn't touch the major usability issues that persist to this day:
- Difficult-to-use search results and search interface
- Difficult-to-use posting interface that doesn't show competitive auctions
I define an Auction House as working properly if it meets the needs of the majority of its users. This is clearly still not the case of the in-game version -- however, it's just become true of the mobile (paid) version. Right now, if you want the AH to simply work the way it feels like it should, you need to either install an addon or buy the WoW Remote.
WoW Remote addons
Right now, the only way you can legally use the mobile Auction House is as it's downloaded. You can't automate anything, and you can't attach more information than what's being presented. In game, however, if you care enough about the efficiency of your Auction House experience, you can install addons. The main purpose of the most popular addons are:
- Showing you additional information
- Simplifying repetitive tasks
When I visit the mobile Auction House, it's certainly better than a raw in-game AH, but it's nowhere near as good as what I've customized my UI to be. That said, I think that it would make sense to allow people to develop addons for the remote AH the way they currently can for the in-game one. It's not possible to restrict the actions of other programs running on an Android or iPhone like can be done on a real computer. All they'd need to do to level the playing field would be create a simple API or write a blue post indicating that they don't mind if people build addons to the remote.
Splurge or not?
If you don't already have a subscription to the remote, these changes are hardly a reason to get one. It was a fascinating toy when it came out, but the combination of some really dangerous and long-lived bugs in the price entry interface and the fact that you couldn't do more than a few hundred actions a day made it not worth the money to anyone who could reliably log in from a real computer. Now that these bugs have been quashed, the only persistent negatives are that:
- While it's infinitely better than an un-modded UI in-game, it doesn't support addons.
- It's surprisingly easy to hit the limits on daily activity simply by reposting unsold inventory.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped. Do you have questions about selling, reselling, and building your financial empire on the auction house? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Phantom Oct 31st 2011 3:10PM
The batch purchasing is the biggest thing for me. When some knucklehead decides to flood the market with 200 single stacks of cheap volatiles, I can just jump on my phone and Hoover them up for easy relisting. I love the automation there, even if I hate the transaction limit.
slim1256 Oct 31st 2011 3:24PM
It would be nice if they would group buying those single item stacks (like volatiles) from the same seller as a single transaction. Hitting that transaction limit cause someone posted volatile life or fire dirt cheap in stacks of one is annoying as hell.
Of course - I assume those are AH PVPers that are trying to get folks like me to hit my transaction limit so they don't have to worry about me babysitting my auctions mobile-ly. So - I've just started picking up enough that I know I'll make money on them, but not so many that I transaction cap.
Hard Dominator Oct 31st 2011 3:53PM
@slim1256 usually the auctioneer general search function does the work for you. Get your settings right and it's ctrl+shift+alt and then purchase all comes up on the button.
then it's just a matter of clicking like crazy. Saves you some transactions of the mobile AH
slim1256 Oct 31st 2011 4:05PM
@ HD -
I assume you mean in the In-Game AH interface. If I see things like that, I'll do exactly as you say - I'm not above clicking a bunch to save some Gs.
The Mobile AH has a transaction limit (200? I think). When I see that during the day, and I'm not at home in front of my computer, I have to pace my purchases to prevent hitting the mobile transaction cap.
Not sure if that came through properly in my first post...
K.B. Oct 31st 2011 3:13PM
"Automatic price undercutting" Lovely more people undercutting each other by 1 copper. As if selling glyphs was not already a waste of time and material.
Wellsee Oct 31st 2011 3:20PM
Exactly. That and the infrequent sales got me out of that market. When I am buying things, I'll buy from the person who is a copper higher.
Hmm... Should Blizzard put in a minimum level of undercutting? Half a percent? A full percent? Competitor's prices is 50g and you are prevented from posting a buyout between 49g 50s and 49g 99s. Something to ponder, not sure what I think about it yet.
slim1256 Oct 31st 2011 3:27PM
Two things -
1 - The glyph market is so fubared it's not worth getting into. The money to be made in inscription is in learning your own glyphs, so you can glyph out your toons, and not have to go spend money in the AH on them. The problem is that glyphs are so cheap to post, the cost to cancel and repost is inconsequential, so you get undercutting on top of undercutting on top of re-undercutting, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. What Blizz needs to do, IMO, is make the cost to post glyphs similar to the cost to post gems. In that way - going in and cancelling auctions to repost them is a much weightier matter.
2 - Sometimes, I'll buy the item that is a few copper more, just to piss off the undercutters. I can spare the copper.
Phantom Oct 31st 2011 3:38PM
I went for the 1% undercut, since I feel like less of a jerk that way.
But usually I'm setting my prices manually and above the cheapest price, so it doesn't happen often.
marcuswauson Oct 31st 2011 3:48PM
Automatic price undercutting is just plain stupid, all you need is for two players to set their AH to the automatic undercutting setting on the same item, it will automatically undercut until the item is at 1 copper an basically free. Mathematically they have to put a limit on it or literally it will carry every item to basically free at one copper, either limiting how far before it will not respond or limiting when the undercut is applied like say having it only applied every hour or so.
slim1256 Oct 31st 2011 3:52PM
Uhh... by "automatic price undercutting", it doesn't mean automated.
It just means that, when you go to post an auction, it automatically sets the price (before you post) to that predefined undercut amount. You still have to manually cancel and relist, if you're going to undercut.
However - automated, instanteous price undercutting would be AWESOME - all of a sudden, bottom drops out of market *BANG*!
matt Oct 31st 2011 3:54PM
OK, I hate to ruin all the fun you guys are having but the person who is 2c less and not getting your sale probably doesn't even know that s/he lost a sale so probably isn't getting too "pissed" about it. Also the person you are buying from is only 2c more because s/he has not recently logged in to cancel and re-post his/her auctions. If you buy a glyph, you are buying it from one of those nasty "under-cutters" (whatever the hell that means to you).
That is the nature of the glyph business and it has been that way since wotlk launched. If you don't want to use some addons and frequently cancel/re-post, then you are not a part of the glyph market.
slim1256 Oct 31st 2011 4:10PM
@matt - your point is well taken. Everyone in the glyph market IS an undercutter, that's the only way to survive there. I still like giving a break to someone who maybe isn't sitting on top of the AH at all hours cancelling and reposting. I may or may not in actuality be helping someone who doesn't do that, but it makes me feel better that it might be the case.
I don't have anything specific against undercutters - it's part of the game. And - I really think Blizz has fostered that behavior with ridiculously low posting prices of some items.
Luke Oct 31st 2011 7:26PM
It's definitely possible to make gold, and lots of it with Glyphs you just have to be smart about it and it's not as easy as other markets.
For one, you need to know your competition. When do they post? When do they undercut and repost? By how much do they undercut? What are their minimums and can you go lower and make a profit? This means addons and utilizing Undermine Journal.
Two, you have to use an addon like Trade Skill Master. You use this to gather market data you can't via the Undermine Journal. You also use this for intelligent crafting. It's useless on most servers to craft some glyphs because so many players still have over-stock of those glyphs, (I'm looking at you Glyph Of Insect Swarm).
You're also using this addon to post smart. If your competition is just blindly undercutting but there is a considerable difference between your minimum and buyout, you can assure yourself a sale by posting at only 12 hours. This does two things. One, your competition may have a lower buyout but they will have to give up even more profit to be at the top of the list, (under your minimum). Two, you will make sales on the back end to players who want to pay the minimum and don't mind waiting. This tactic subverts most of your competition and means you don't have to camp the auction house for hours at a time.
cerinbank Nov 4th 2011 1:06PM
I find the 'big undercuts' (which I personally define as anything more than a handful of silver) only make sense when your auction house, and the people who use it, big players and small, have some concept of 'when to stop undercutting'. Where I'm from, there doesn't seem to be a point at which anybody will stop undercutting, happily selling enchants for hundreds less than they cost to make in some cases. With glyphs, ok, I understand they sell for many many many times what they cost to make, so there's more room to play, but in my main markets, everybody seems perfectly happy to race to the ground.
Wellsee Oct 31st 2011 3:21PM
I assume that using the mobile app would cause data gaps in counter addons like bean counter and money brokers. Can anyone confirm or refute that?
Revynn Oct 31st 2011 3:53PM
It does, since auctions bought/posted/collected/delisted through the Mobile AH are never seen in-game for your data addons to recognize and log.
This is a bigger deal for Bean Counter, but money broker addons will update when you next log into that character.
justin Oct 31st 2011 5:16PM
Bean Counter will still properly record purchase prices if you buy items remote, and collect the items in-game. But if you collect gold remotely, or post items remotely it will not record those.
jfofla Oct 31st 2011 3:22PM
I am certain somebody will rage against this. It will go like this: WTF??? How dare Blizzard enhance and expand Premium Services!!! This is an evil plot to give more value to pay services so more people will use them!
Noyou Oct 31st 2011 3:42PM
Not raging, but how isn't this an example of paying real money for a feature that gives you a competitive edge against someone who doesn't subscribe to it? It doesn't have anything directly related to progression but having more gold certainly does open up things that could lead to progression.
Sagretti Oct 31st 2011 3:47PM
While I don't think raging is in order, I do see where someone might be a little disgruntled that the payed service gives such a better interface than the in-game equivalent. I'm assuming that either Blizzard is planning on adding some of this functionality to the existing auction house, or they just assume people will use add-ons. Hopefully, it's the former.