Oh my. This week we saw some patch notes that got the whole goblin community talking. It didn’t come as a complete surprise, what with the changes to the auction house (region wide commodity) but I’m not sure if anyone was expecting exactly this.
A few things I think it’s important to note. This specifically calls out trading and NOT mailing items. People immediately thought they’d be able to mail items and gold cross realm, but I don’t think that is the case, at least not yet. For now I believe this is limited to exactly the wording that was used – trades.
That means you’ll need a 2nd account, or a good friend, or someone you trust to help you with the transaction if you want to trade items / gold.
Overall, I think this change is a very good thing for players in general. That means if you can’t find what you need at a good price on your current server, you can go buy it some place else. On the downside, this does not exactly bode well for gold making goblins – or does it? Sure, you’ll technically have “more” competition because if you’re not the cheapest in the region someone will find a player who is – but how many casual gamers are actually going to take that sort of effort? Instead, you could be the goblin who is providing items on a server that is lacking. You could watch the region wide prices, and go buy the items you think will be in demand on your server. That could be transmog to low population servers, or even BOE gear.
Maybe you could even start up a business where you’re paid a finders fee for procuring rare / difficult to obtain items for players by browsing through the entire region. I think that creativity is key to the success of this change for gold making goblins, and I think in general the change is good for the average player. Simply playing the game rewards a LOT of gold these days between world quests, weekly quests, and a few AH sales in between. Throw in some alts, and I think it’s probably easier to make gold than it has been in a long time (since maybe the days of garrisons and gold printing machines, in fact).
In any case, no matter your thought, this is a change that is coming, and it’s much better to be aware and prepared than caught off guard. I personally feel that a region wide auction house is the next logical move, but perhaps the servers wouldn’t be able to handle such a huge change, so they decided on this smaller one instead. Thoughts? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.