BMAH blues

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 6:00 PM

Seeker of Pancakes here:

I woke up this morning and received and email asking me what I thought about the Black Market Auction House.

If you haven't heard about it,  it's a new feature in Mists of Pandaria that puts hard to find and discontinued items on an auction house style sales board.   These can range from mounts,  to pets to weapons that are no longer available to the regular player.

The biggest question,  which is the question that my mailer sparked in my mind was how would this
effect players holding on to large ticket mounts.  Mounts that you can obtain via trade ins of the 
World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.    Rare mounts drops and pets that are going only available from old epic raids such as the Ashes of Al'ar (From Tempest Keep).   Speculation runs high on just what can be placed in this type of the Auction House.

The question is how will these sales affect items that are currently available but are very rare.  Everyone dreams of having a Spectral Tiger mount to run around half naked on.  But very few have the actual money to pay top price for the item.   It's the nature of a have/have not economy that those who have the gold,  get the finer things for their collection.   The Black Market Auction House is no different.  There is no expectation to find deals for players to buy.  It will be expensive and it will be difficult to win what you want (especially on high population servers).

There will be an effect on items depending on how much actual bidding occurs.   When an Item right now goes for 1,000,000g because of it's rarity gets purchased from the Black Market Auction house for 500,000g,  it's going to lower the value in the general market.   But if that same item that has a value of 100,000 goes for 300,000.  The value ends up rising as expectation is built on how much will be paid for it.

The other thing to consider is that this only becomes available once players unlock the Valley of the Winds at 87.   So there won't be low level players at first camping out the Auction House to purchase items.   When Dalaran was opened up during Wrath of the Lich King,  players were paying large amounts of money to portal their low level characters there.   With the phasing that was introduced in Cataclysm it isn't an option.  The area has to be unphased/unlocked for players before they have access to these areas (including the Black Market Auction House).

Any new feature that involves the trading of money can affect a server economy.  It's possible that these items will be BOE,  so flipping them between the Black Market Auction House and the regular Auction House might become a side business of their own.  There are a lot of possible ideas that can be used once the final BMAH becomes active.  Or this idea might go the same way as the Dance Studio did during Wrath of the Lich King.

Any expansion brings excitement and a sense of the unknown.   Until it's all rolled out,   the wise investment strategy is to build your foundation on what is known,  and then be able to afford to take chances.  Huge gains come with the chances of huge losses.  There is no free lunch even in Warcraft.

Good Luck and Good Hunting



Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

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