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World of Warcraft: Blizzard to Offer Remote Auction House Service
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Currently in beta testing, the World of Warcraft Remote Auction House will allow players to buy and sell items on the Auction House through a designated Remote Auction House website and/or the World of Warcraft Armory mobile phone application that is currently available. This feature will be offered as a subscription service for $2.99/month.
Given the fact the service is currently undergoing beta testing, all World of Warcraft players can give the Remote Auction House a spin free of charge for the duration of the test.
For additional information on the Remote Auction House and its limitations, consult the official Remote Auction House FAQ.
[Thanks Chris and Piasek for the tips!]
Comments
Blizzard and the WoW-itch:
Produce less actual game, and more cash-grabs, linear with time.
/thread.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
uh-huh.
I enjoy playing WoW and all but this is epic fail. I'm for keeping your players in the loop, but turning WoW into a stock market simulator is where I draw the line....didn't work for me in Eve and it won't work for me here....
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Next trend to be seen after virtual item sales on top of a monthly fee - additional services with additional monthly fees.
Someone once wrote here "The only WoW-killer will be WoW itself." Ok, I am exaggerating.
I planned to buy Diablo 3, but when you constantly read about Blizzards innovations, like Starcraft 2 in three buyable parts, few classes in D3 at the beginning and these WoW-stories...
Not sure now.
I don;t know why you guys are making this into some kind of big blown out of proportion drama. So you can access Ah from you rphone, big deal.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
Unadulterated greed, trying to squeeze every last drop out of their cash cow before it keels over from exhaustion.
I'm glad I've moved on from this game, Blizzard is just sucking it's customers dry.
soo.... dry... blizzard... darn you....
I am boycotting all Blizzard products now.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
You're late guys
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/278866/Say-Hi-to-the-remote-auction-house.html
As much as you and the other forum zombie WoW haters boycott Blizzard they will still be extremely successful. So, good luck on the boycott.
i love how people will cry as if they're forced to use this. Your gameplay experience is not affected in anyway if you don't use this service.
They're a company that's in this for the money. I applaud them for coming up with ways to make money that DOES NOT hinder those who don't choose to use these optional services, while at the same time, hitting what the player really desire for. A lot of people - and I do mean A LOT - will get this. It's the same with eBay. People want control over their auctions while on-the-go.
The steed was a nice idea, and so is this. Do you rather them come out with things that increased your exp gain rate/stats?
The problem is this really hurts new-player experiences. Very few on each server may end up having this, but they will be able to manipulate the Auction House all day every day now. Experienced players who have alts and have gold and access to professions are not hurt by this at all. It's new players who want to get something useful/needed off the AH who will suffer most.
So now you're going to have a few sick people with lots of gold spending their commutes, bathroom breaks, even time at their desks buying stuff on the AH and relisting at prices that new players can't afford.
The only people in-game that this benefits are AH manipulators. They're adding this "feature" so a few people obsessed with accumulating pixellated gold coins and get more of them, largely at the expense of other players who use the AH simply as a means of buying needed goods and/or selling unneeded ones.
This goes sooo against the idea of immersion that it makes me queasy. How does it enhance gameplay of people who actually, you know, just play the game as a game? The idea of "playing the AH" to me is pathetic to begin with. Now Blizzard is telling it's player-base: we want to encourage you to see our game as a way to accumulate pixellated wealth. It encourages mercantilist behavior at the expense of others.
To me, this is a sign that Blizzard knows it is having a hard time on retaining new players who are years behind others already in terms of experience and content. I guess they figure that their future is getting more and more money from hardcore pixel-obsessed veterans. Catering to them, even at the expense of new players, is now Blizzard's strategy.
Beginning of the end, which I must confess I'm not too sad to see.
EDIT: I have no problem with Blizzard finding additional revenue streams that their customers are willing to pay for, and that don't unbalance the game. Another 2.99 / month for instant Flight Point to Flight Point transit? Sure, I'd be for that. But stuff like this is just sad.
I was looking for a reason to try out AoC again...this is it. Blizzard is going too far with this moeny hungry stuff...it's a shame too.
I have to agree, blizzard is going a little too far in money grabbing thesedays.
After 5yrs of playing when your account ran out of time, you had an hour to finish up what you were doing (or if in a raid finish there) you also recieved account time expirary warnings. Now you just get instantly disconnected the second your account time ends with no warnings at all of account time expires. Have blizzard become soo greedy they had to implement this meaning if you was in a raid or an instance your fuxored.
Yes i have been playing since release with only 2 breaks (9mths and 6mths) i must confess i have had play when my account has run out for 10-40 mins before renewing (or logging out) to renew when i next came to play.
To me that and all these other means they seem to be bringing out rather quickly is startign to show greediness in milking their playerbase for as much as they can (are they all x-SoE staff there?).
When it comes to selling stuff, many people's gameplay is already affected by chinafarmers who ruin the prices, folks with addons who undercut them by 1s within a split second after firing up an auction.
Playing the AH, one is already forced to get back on addons and it's already tough to sell some this and that -but ok, at least this is still happening within the possibilities the gameclient offers.
If this remote auction house takes a big hit, soon the market will be dominated by people sitting with their iphone in the subway amd casual Joe won't sell sh*t anymore.
While I'm not against optional additional charged services for things within games I'm finding myself a little sick that a company as big as blizzard is doing this. I'm not surprised by it, now that they charge people for pets and mounts, but I'm a bit surprised that they would make an additional monthly charge for services like that.
On the other hand though, I'm sure there must really be some die hard wow fanboy auction house junkies out there for them to think that people would pay for something like that. But you know there are and some will pay. I've got disposable cash but I don't care enough about that game right now and even when I do, I still won't care enough to throw money away on something like that.
Blizzard had previously stated that they would never offer services that actually affected in-game play. By facilitating remote AH access, I can't imagine this won't have a similar effect on the in-game economy that gold farming potentially had. You're allowing those who can spare the extra 3 bucks a month to gain an edge making money through the AH without actually having to be in the game. It just strikes me that this feels like a Blizzard approved form of gold farming. I wonder if it's a step toward Blizzard just selling gold outright.
It's a logical step, isn't it? They've polished the product so much by now that they're running out of game mechanics to simplify. So now they're adding outside stuff with the added benefit that the tech can be reused in future products: facebook integration, realID, iPhone gadgets, item mall, and who knows what's next.
I only have one question, though, and that is: WHERE'S THE DAMN DANCING STUDIO? $150m a month, and you can't even cough up the dough to outsource the project if you don't want to do it yourself? Cheapskates.
This would bother me more if wheren't for the fact that in over 5 years since launch WoW has -NEVER- had a functional player run economy. Or did we all just forget that that's the main point about WoW that many MMORPG players -ALWAYS- hated? I've been playing since launch (off and on) and to this day I use the auction house when I've got extra gold and I'm too lazy farm mats.
That's it. It has no other purpose, it NEVER had another purpose. WoW's player run economy sucks ass. It always sucked ass. That's not why you play WoW. If it is, your stupid. The auction house sucks, crafting sucks. It all sucks. I've been playing for 5 years and the only profession I've maxed out is fricken' cooking. And I wouldn't even have bothered with that but for the holiday achievements. And yeah, I'm a hardcore player, I've been at server first kills since BWL... I'm just lazy and somehow I've managed to avoid anyone noticing that I don't bother with crafting, which is kind of sad if you think about it. You know how much I hate crafting in WoW? Let me put it to you this way: I LOVE crafting in Darkfall. DARKFALL. The most tedious PvE game ever devised and I just LOVE it. But yet I find crafting in WoW tedious and not worth my time.
Incidentally, this is not Darkfall love/WoW hate thread. I've probably played 20+ hours of WoW this week and none of Darkfall (I skip around between games month to month) I love WoW... for what it is... and what it' not is a good crafting and economy game.
So. Bottum line. Please explain to me why I should care when they make a change that affect part of the game I didn't like to begin with? As far as I'm concerned they can't make it any worse.
Oh and speaking of all that "money grubbing" Blizz has been doing I've seen a total of 3 of those pay-for-mounts everyone is so bent out of shape about. And they looking totally stupid. Also I got the Stable Keeper Achievement this week. 6 of my 10 mounts are Epic Flyers. I didn't buy any of them. I also have "Plenty of Pets" which I didn't buy... and don't even really give a crap about.
Just sayin'
Active: WoW
Semi-retired: STO
Fully retired: UO, EQ, AC, SWG, FFXI, DDO:EU, PoTBS, AoC, EvE
Tried: EQ2, Tabula Rasa, Auto-Assault, Isteria, LotRO, Wizard 101
Looking forward to: Star Citizen
Just the beginning, less and less stuff and more and more fluff for $$$?
please no
Like most threads about Blizzard and RMTs I've read, I don't see this as a problem. Those who don't use it won't see much of a difference unless they want to play the AH too. So what?
For those saying it makes it difficlut to buy anything needed or wanted...true, but it also means you can sell for higher, making up the money needed to buy those things you DO need. Really, mine copper and sell for decent gold to then buy whatever you want. No biggie. QQ about things that ACTUALLY changes ingame experience.
In addition, to the soapbox crusaders touting about the evils of making money. Quit your jobs, sell all your stuff and join a commune because you are one of the cogs in this machinery called society. If they can make money of it, you can bet your bottom dollar they will. It won't be so that they can appease the gods of greed and sodomy, forever writhing in unholy orgies of self-deprecating bliss but because there is a DEMAND.
I know, hard to believe, but would they put it out if there wasn't?!
Lastly, if it really puts your panties in such a twist that you can no longer bear seeing those pixelated avatars making fake money off pixelated ingame crap, then simply cancel your account and know that you have in idealistic faith, dealt a holy blow to world evil and can forevermore live with that joy-joy feeling.
/sarcasm off
I have to be honest here....
I am thrilled I stopped paying my subscription when I did. I stopped after the pet store sold that mount because of the fear that the game was going more and more towards RMT. This isn't necessarily RMT but it is just another slice of the game that I won't have access to unless I dish out more cash.
If I'm paying a subscription, I want to have access to everything that is being developed with my money for that game.
I really like WoW but I hope they fall flat on their face and ruin their game because of their greed. Maybe if they ruin the game and enough people leave they won't mess up their next MMO with this kind of crap.
With your money, you do have access to the same game? The auction house app does the exact same thing you can do in wow only on the go. It would be the exact same concept of taking your laptop with you and checking the ah, but with a smaller device aka the iphone. The app doesn't contain anything else that isn't already in game.
As far as the mount goes, it again doesn't provide an advantage since the real cost of the mount is in the training which you still need to buy.
Info from blizzard devs themselves: Source mmo-champion
Is Remote AH an ingame advantage?
First off, no correlation can be made here between the idea of releasing a Remote Auction House feature and that of releasing epic equipment for sale. The ground is still quite firm on that slope.
Second, a player who has more time in a week to play the game than you has an advantage over you by this same standard. Someone that has an hour or more a day to use the Auction House than you do has an advantage, and they're not even charged extra for it. The Remote Auction House provides no in-game functionality that isn't already available to every single player as often as they can or want to use it. The only difference now is that, for an additional monthly fee, players can use the Auction House in a remote fashion without having to log into the game client.
I'm not sure how many time Blizzard has to say they won't sell gear before people will believe them.
It's a legitimate concern. I'd share it if I weren't confident about our commitment to our players and our ultimate goal of creating epic games with incredible support and bonus features. Some players fear this happening so much though, that they almost wait for it to happen. With nearly any announcement we make about additional features or flavor items which have a cost associated, this is then seen as a sign of the slippery slope, no matter how large the leap to an adequate assertion may be.
Our core philosophy has not changed and we feel we're being very reasonable about the products and premium services we're offering. They allow us to maintain a strong company, afford and maintain state-of-the-art tools and hardware, keep some of the most talented staff in the gaming industry around, and continue making great games.
Unless you are that addicted to the game why would anyone need this ? MMOs are not a way of life, they are a hobby at best.
1.If I am on lunch break at the job the last thing I'll be wanting to do is use my mobile to see if my herbs sold on the WoW auction house.
2. If I'm in school learning the last thing the teacher wants me to do is use my mobile so I can check to see the stuff I tailored sold.
3. If I am with my girlfriend in the heat of the moment the last thing I am going to ask her to do is stop just so I can use my mobile to see if the weapons I made sold.
4. If I am at a movie the last thing I will be wanting to do is use my mobile to check to see if my clothes I made sold on the WoW auction house.
5. I f I am on vacation basking in the sun, the last thing I will want to do is check the WoW auction house to see what the going rate for frost lotus is.
The point is that there is never a legitimate reason to use this application unless maybe you are a goldseller or maybe you are one of those ceo's of a large business and do nothing all day but sit in the office and check the WoW auction house.