The World of Warcraft 8.3 update is on the way, and with it, a shiny new Auction House. Blizzard has released an 18-minute video in which the game’s director, Ion Hazziokostas, reveals what WoW’s incoming major update will completely replace the feature with a new Auction House system – and it looks like it’ll help make player item trading easier.
In the video (via PCGamer, which you can check out below) the game director says that the Auction House change “isn’t just a UI reskin. We actually redesigned and rebuilt the guts of the system to make it faster, more performant, and to get rid of those annoying single stacks that literally no-one likes” – ‘stacks’ being bundles of some of the most common trade items that have to be sold all in one go, or not at all, and a feature of the current WoW Auction House.
“We recognise that there are hundreds of thousands of transactions happening across our auction houses on a regular basis, and we want to create a modern system that is smooth and easy to use.”
It appears that with the new Auction House players will be able to purchase partial stacks of goodies from others rather than having to take everything in one go. A post on the Blizzard forums from community manager Kaivax expands on this: “Commodities (stackable items) cannot be bid on, and are no longer bought or sold in stacks. Now, you’ll enter in the number of a commodity that you’d like to buy and the AH will automatically select the cheapest available and give you a total price.”
Plus, there are other exciting features for players to try out that should enhance and smooth the whole WoW trading experience, like a ‘shopping list’ for your favourite items. You can make a checklist of your go-to items, and more “quickly search for and buy [them] on the go.”
Blizzard’s put the all-new Auction House on the PTR for players to try and give feedback on. If you’re a World of Warcraft Classic player, you can check out our WoW Classic Auction House guide for new players, which you might find handy.