Blizzard took a big step towards cutting down on the way that trading and transferring can work in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. In recent builds, it became apparent that there would be some changes to the Black Market Auction House.
The change isn’t a massive one on the surface, but once you look into how it will affect economies and availability, it ends up being a notable change. Simply put, Blizzard has limited who can use the Black Market Auction House.
From now on, Blizzard has made it so that the Black Market Auction House is only available for max-level toons. This seems unimportant on the surface, but considering the implication against functionality, it becomes a huge limitation.
For example, many players would keep a low-level toon with a huge sum of gold in their bags next to the Black Market Auction House so that they could check it on a whim and then snatch up whatever they might need to.
This made it so that players were able to take advantage of the mechanic without having to dedicate any time or effort towards it. In essence, it made it quite easy to control, given that the Black Market Auction House had fewer users than the general auction house.
Communities that like to move gold between servers to snag that one mount or item they've been looking for off the Black Market Auction House will have a bit more trouble in #Shadowlandshttps://t.co/Mc0rtwDF5a pic.twitter.com/IfceyPDGiv
— Wowhead💙 (@Wowhead) October 8, 2020
Still, this change serves as a strong hit against gold traders especially. Such individuals and organizations will no longer be able to create a character on a new realm and run to the Black Market Auction House right away.
This will have impacts on the in-game economy one way or another, and it’s difficult to say if it’s a wholly good thing. While it may help to remove the control such organizations have, it also could drive up the cost of items due to a smaller user base.
We saw the impact that such organizations can have not long ago after the trading organization Gallywix saw hard bans for a variety of reasons, with the entirety of the group more or less dissolved or removed.
As a result of Gallywix’s removal, several economies were reeling, from carry-selling to profession mats and everything in between. The impact that even a small change such as changing the level of which players can use the Black Market Auction House can have is much more massive than it appears on the surface.
Either way, the change is made, and it’ll be going live with prepatch on October 13th. It likely won’t be very long until players find a way to adjust, but this extra barrier will undoubtedly have a notable effect on the mechanic.