Official word from Blizzard today finally confirms the development of a system that has been among the improvements most-requested by players for years: access to the AH from outside the game itself. Bornakk posted:
Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.
While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting — and we’ve been hoping to implement — a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.
This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.
We’re very excited about this. You can join in the discussion on The Instance forums here.
Fantastic! Then I can “grind” gold at work
I guess this means it’s only a question of time before Blizzard releases mini-games that let you complete some sort of daily quest on your cell phone.
Hope they build in support for toons on other realms. That would be awesome!
k so obviously the mechanic won’t require you to click on the auctioneer so it will magically remove stuff from your bag and lets add bank.
people will be flying over Icecrown or in an instance, see that they need to auction stuff, logout, do their auctions, and log back in, without having to physically go there.
I don’t see any other purpose to this feature.
Prices will plummet.
the website better require an authenticator
WOW – i mean Wow –
great news – as a busy professional who can only play a couple of hours a night this is great news. ill be able to play around with this feature during the few idle moments i get…..
i will undoubtly consider the premium service
this is terrible news – I am appauled that Blizzard are making this premium feature – ie screw more money from the same folks…
This really annoys me – with the one hand they publicly state that they make sure that there is a level playing field – ie people should not be allowed to buy gold from gold farmers. Then on the other they are now saying “but hey if you are one of those people prepared to pay us some more $$$ each month, then we will make sure you get advantage over the normal players”
well i can assure you Blizz – if you implement this feature and charge for it, then I will be cancelling my subscription & moving to a game which isnt looking to screw you for every dime they possibly can.
not listened to your podcast yet guys, but i really hope you think about what “Premium” content actually means – they are effectively offering advantages to people who pay them more and that goes against everything this game is about for me.
“this is terrible news – I am appauled that Blizzard are making this premium feature – ie screw more money from the same folks…”
Well, since they haven’t defined what “premium” means, getting annoyed about this is really silly!” PREMIUM could mean that anyone who has an Authenticator associated with their account! Count to 10 and chill out!
wether or not this is a paid program this will screw over the action house, all prices will go down and you will no longer be able to make money by “banging Mum’s” (quote from the instance)
Scott and Randy talked about this idea before right? i wonder if blizz took it off of this show….