Posts with tag black-market-auction-house

There may not be any flying on Draenor, but if you have alts that you haven't boosted to 90 and still need to take through Pandaria, you might be wondering how they can learn flying early. Bind-on-account flying manuals have been in place since Wrath of the Lich King, and although it appeared at first that there were no manuals present for Mists of Pandaria -- or at least the flight vendor out at each faction's respective shrines didn't seem to be selling anything along those lines. However, there is in fact a Grimoire of the Four Winds available -- it just requires a little hike and a possible bidding war to acquire.

The Grimoire of the Four Winds is only sold at the Black Market Auction House, which has been relocated from its old home in the Veiled Stair to the Ring of Blood in Nagrand. The approach to the Ring of Blood, located at roughly 53,14 if you have coordinates available in your game, is crawling with level 100 mobs. However, once you get to the Ring of Blood itself, all guards are neutral. Madame Goya is in a small building at the back of the Ring, and offers much the same items as usual -- raiding gear, transmog gear, and of course, the Grimoire of the Four Winds. While bidding starts at 1,000 gold, be aware that this is of course an auction house, and you might find yourself outbid.

Reports on Wowhead suggest that either the tooltip or the manual itself is bugged for the moment -- players that have successfully bought the tome and tried to use it receive a message that the item cannot be used until level 90. It's likely we'll see this hotfixed or addressed in the future -- after all, if you're level 90, you're going to be on Draenor and not really caring about flight at all anyway! But if you've been looking for the Grimoire, just head to Nagrand and see if you can pick one up.

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Ion Hazzikostas aka WatcherDev on Twitter has confirmed that the Black Market Auction House will be making its appearance in Warlords of Draenor, just in a new spot.

@GurkTV @Celestalon Yes, just moving from Pandaria to a new location for 6.0.

- Watcher (@WatcherDev) June 12, 2014

It's no big surprise that it will be moving. It's current location isn't particularly convenient for players who aren't hanging around in Pandaria, which, once the new expansion drops, will be most of us. Interestingly enough, though, it's moving in 6.0 -- before the actual expansion release -- which implies to me that it won't actually be on Draenor. I could be wrong of course, but this makes sense to me, because, if the BMAH is truly an Azeroth thing, why would you find it on a new, alternate-timeline planet? Still, I'll be interested to see where it ends up.

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

It's Monday. Have an antique porcelain candy bar advertisement. You deserve it.

@hstein3 asked:

What does the Shaohao reputation do in 5.4?

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

It's Monday morning, I've had two hours of sleep, and I'm guzzling a Lo-Carb Monster. Let's do this thing.

blomblom asked:

Just wondering, but would you consider the BMAH a success? And, would you consider the Unclaimed Black Market Container a good or a bad thing? Personally i quite like the BMAH, but after twice getting wrist gear for a different class in Unclaimed Black Market Containers, i dislike them and stopped buying them.

The Black Market Auction House is a special AH that allows you to buy items that are rare and sometimes unobtainable with gold otherwise. It's an extremely effective gold sink, but it's tucked away in the middle of nowhere, and you can't see what's for sale on your realm from the remote AH. Unfortunately, since Blizzard doesn't make the BMAH accessible through the same API as the regular Auction Houses, you are expected to log in and travel to the Veiled Stair in order to see whether there was anything there for you.

The Undermine Journal is a website that collects, organizes, and displays information about the Auction House of every realm: Horde, Alliance, and Neutral. Additionally, starting in January, they launched a (still beta) feature that shows us the contents of the BMAH. Assuming you're not on a PvP realm, you can avoid the flight to the Veiled Stair to check whether there's something worth buying by simply checking the Undermine Journal.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

One day, I'd like to write a post-apocalyptic short story wherein the only thing that has appeared on broadcast television for 100 years is The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

Is it a terrible idea? Yes. But that's the point.

john14 asked:

Is there a list somewhere of the items seen on the BMAH? I'm very curious to see what all is going to be listed on it.

If, like many people, you're looking forward to the Black Market Auction House in Mists of Pandaria, Zarhym has a post for you. Zarhym points out that the BMAH is not intended to be a reliable means to gear up a character.

Zarhym - Black Market is starting to go too far

No one should count on this even being close to a viable option for gearing up a character. If you can raise that kind of gold in the game, you're going to have much better success paying your way into raids for gear than hoping the right items appear for you in the black market AH (which doesn't include set pieces), hoping you can afford to outbid everyone else on your realm, and hoping you're the last one to bid before the auction ends.

Sure, it'll have some of the best rewards for sale. But that doesn't mean it'll be remotely reliable for one person to gear up quickly. It's the black market, after all. :)

Ultimately the system is going to benefit the extremely wealthy and the extremely lucky. But in all likelihood the benefits won't at all be consistent, even for those who can pony up the gold.

source

This is a gold sink, plain and simple. It's a way to bleed off the vast amount of gold some people are acquiring, because when you buy an item from the BMAH, your gold doesn't go to anyone. It's a fancier, more random vendor, and if you're trying to use it to gear up your character, you'd probably get better results with the actual AH. Blizzard seems fine with this not being something designed to benefit most players, and I think that's the best way to approach it.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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The Black Market Auction House seems to be a controversial topic. Some players love the idea, while some players utterly detest the idea with every ounce of their being. Regardless, the theory behind the Black Market Auction House is a solid one. Removing gold from the WoW economy is something that is desperately needed in the days of Auction House kings, in order to balance everything out. If the Black Market Auction House works, it'll even out player gold to a reasonable level, keeping items on the regular Auction House at reasonable prices.

And for those who spent the tremendous amount of time it takes to amass their fortunes, it means that they finally have something to spend their reward on, something tangible and -- let's face it -- something pretty cool. In expansions past, we've only had one or two really major gold sinks to speak of, whether crafted mounts, or really useful mounts purchased from a vendor. Once those mounts were purchased or crafted, there was a vast sea of nothing for people to spend that gold on.

But the potential for abuse runs pretty high with this thing. And as I pondered the potential side effects of the Black Market Auction House, I realized there are certain things that really need to be in place to make it work effectively.

Ever since the Black Market Auction House was mentioned, people wondered what the heck would be in it. We were told it would sell rare items, but what we weren't told was the extent of those rare items. It's not just level 90 recipes and things along those lines; it's also rare mounts and items that have been removed from game. This includes the elusive tier 3 that was lost presumably for all time when Naxxramas was changed from a 40-man raid to a 10- and 25-man raid and moved from the Eastern Plaguelands up to Northrend.

As shown in the screenshot above, this also includes the Ashes of Al'ar, a rare mount drop from Kael'thas Sunstrider in Tempest Keep. And that seems to be a hot topic for a lot of players right now, particularly players who already have the mount and obtained it the old-fashioned way. It's an even bigger topic among those who don't necessarily have gigantic piles of gold stashed away, because it's obvious the prices on these items are going to be incredibly high. Some have said that Blizzard is catering to the 1% of players who have stockpiled mass amounts of gold.

Well, that's not it at all, really. And the Black Market Auction House is something that we've needed for a very, very long time here.