I'd just like to post a quick heads-up for anyone that relies on moving items cross-faction to make money on both sides of a given server. With the imminent release of the mobile auction house interface (web and iPhone), people are able to view, buy, and sell items on not only their own faction's auction house, but also the neutral auction house. It will probably be a little while before this happens, but rest assured that somebody can and will be writing scripts to search out and snag low priced goods--especially things people are moving cross-faction at 1c buyouts. I urge anyone that's currently doing this to find another alternative to making money because I believe this option is about to be killed off for good.

I doubt the armory app is faster than having your second account online, at the auction house, search text in place and ready to go before you even post the auction. In order for the mobile auction house app to beat that it would have to be querying faster than every 10 seconds, constantly, on many different markets, and without Blizzard locking them and everyone else doing something similar out for practically DDoSing the service.

It does not have to be faster. Lets say it takes you 5 seconds to execute a trade and doing it online takes 20 seconds. A bot would now have a 1 in 4 shot at EVERY AH transaction over a 24 hour period.

That's still pretty good odds for making lots of gold. Definitely not bad enough odds to have someone think "meh, this is not worth writing a bot for".

In order for a bot to be an issue there are a number of things which must be true:

• There must be no lag between auctions being posted to the AH in-game and auctions being query-able through the app/website.
• The bot must be able to query the AH, receive the results, parse the results, identify any crazy undervalued goods and buyout the auction in question faster than the amount of time it takes a player to post the auction, alt-tab, search, and buyout.
• The bot must be able to run its query often enough to have a significant chance of catching auctions.

I don't believe the third bullet is an issue, but without testing the other two bullets are up in the air. Only one of the first two bullets needs to fail for such a bot to be ineffectual. Cross-faction auctioneers might need to be more wary than before, but unless the armory app is amazingly efficient compared to the other armory functions there shouldn't be need for concern.

I don't see any of those bullets causing any kind of problem for a bot. In fact, all those probability concerns are completely neutralized by the high likelihood that you won't just be racing one bot, but many. Even if one bot may or may not catch you, you can sure bet that one of 20 or 30 will, not that it would really be worth risking your item in a race against the one. With enough bots, even the first bullet becomes sketchy since you'd have to execute your entire trade within the window of armory lag to stand a chance. Although it's anecdotal at this point, my experience with the iphone app so far is that it seems to be faster and more responsive that accessing the AH in game, so it's kind of a moot point.

I don't actually expect that to be an issue anyway though because I expect making money from price differences cross faction to pretty much go away. The reason it works at all is mostly because it is so much trouble to access a neutral auction house. If you take away or significantly dimish the barrier to access for the neutral AH then all it would take is about a 10% price difference between factions and you'd be an idiot not to list your items there, no matter what they are. Granted, not everyone will pay for this service and not everyone has an iphone or goofs around on the computer at work, but a lot of people do and $3 is not very much money. I can actually see myself logging out so that I can get on my phone or browser to check the neutral AH while I'm playing.

I don't think this addition will let bots do anything dramatically different from what they do now in game. In fact, the in game bots will still have the edge on those really high volume markets like JC or inscription with that daily trade limit. It will just lower the risk of getting caught so there will be more bots and their influence will be more apparent.

With this service, what is the disincentive to run an AH bot of some sort?

You're mistaken regarding the first bullet. A lag of that sort would defeat an infinite number of bots so long as the lag time is sufficient for the normal user to post, alt-tab, and buyout before the update. The number of bots is effectively irrelevant if the information available on the server hasn't updated. This is important, as I've done some cursory testing which shows such a lagtime exists.

From my tests I've observed a 3-15 second delay between the posting/buyout/canceling of an auction in-game and the mobile AH updating. I assume the large variance is due to a periodic, rather than event driven, update. This delay means that the time a bot has from query execution to buyout completion is 2 seconds at most. At least 80% of all auctions, if executed in a timely fashion, will be perfectly safe. It remains to be proven whether a bot can query, receive results, parse them, process, and respond in such a short timeframe.

If a user wants 100% certainty, all that should be required is better testing of the rate of updates, finding a solid number for the period, and syncing their auction posts with the refresh such that nearly the full period of delay is available to shroud their auction from bots.

I tested the delay by having WoW in windowed mode and the mobile AH in a browser with a relevant query set to go. I started spam querying for it the moment it posted. Each query took approximately one second, and it took a minimum of three before the item appeared on the mobile page, while I could consistently get the auction to appear instantly in-game.

The information is obviously not precise, but it's safe to say a delay exists. Whether the delay is random or whether there's a period to it, which could be exploited to avoid being sniped, will require much more precise testing.

There have already been reports of successful sniping though the mobile app via bots. I imagine people who aren't keeping tabs on the beta or simply aren't paying attention are posting these types of auctions in bulk before swapping over to buy them. That kind of risky behavior will no longer be remotely safe. I would definitely caution people against using the neutral auction house for these types of transfers until the exact nature of any delays and the effectiveness of bots are known.

I found the Remote AH really useful for buying materials at sub-prices through-out the day while at work. Not a day has passed without completely using up my 25-transaction quota. I check every 10 minutes manually about 10-15 items. I'd say that if the quota is sufficiently small, it's almost not justified to post anything using the Remote AH. Buying stuff at low prices at it appears on the AH is where I make my killing. When the quota will be 200 I might use it for posting as well, although there are days when I buy >200 items off the AH easily. BTW, with a quota system, you got to really hate people who list anything in a size of 1 !!!

I worked a bit on scripting the whole process, although I'm not prepared to continue working until Blizzard finalizes the service and makes it mainstream. I'm fearful they might decide to scrap the service because of interference with the economy. It would be really easy for me to write a script that executes every 5 minutes, checks the prices on 20 items and buys them up. I can't see Blizzard condoning anything like this.

So I recently have begun using the Mobile Auction House. I use it through the armory at work; their network doesn't allow my iPod touch access. It really helps me during the constant boredom at this summer job.

In terms of using it to make money, I've set up a bank alt and have been using it to buy up Titanium Bars/Ore. When I get home from work, I hop on my DK and head to Winterspring and farm Eternal Fire/Shadow/Earths until I have enough to craft as many Titansteel bar's as I can with the stuff I purchased. Occasionally I will be able to craft extras because of various Titanium nodes I find in the zone. The farming doesn't really take all that long, especially if you kill the Revenants who drop usually around 3 Crystallized pieces.

I did some math today, I purchased enough Titanium Bars to make 20 Titansteel Bars. I averaged about 54-56g per 3 Bars. If I farm the Eternals and sell the Titansteel bars for 85g I'm making about 30g profit. Multiply that by the 20 bars and thats about 600g profit, less 5% AH Fee.

I've always been one not to have much money (only have 1 toon with epic flying and that's because it was my brother's toon before he quit and sold it to me). With this new scheme, it's coming in nicely. As well, I can sell Saronite Ore and various gems I pickup.

Just my new money making system that I thought I'd share with you all. Enjoy!

P.S. Don't be trying this on Deathwing, Horde side, or I'll hunt you down....
P.P.S. Usually I swing over to the Southwestern corner to farm the Mature Lashers too. Eternal Life's sell around 20-30 on my server.

The problem with that is your opportunity cost. This is the rub of crafting - components, even if you farm them yourself, are not free. You have to ask the question, "Why don't you just buy all the components you need?" If the answer is "The eternals go for a combined sum of 50g for the three, so I'll just farm them myself." This is where you have gone wrong. You could just sell the eternals you farm and not bother buying the titanium and get 50g profit per "bar" that you didn't sell. Granted, price will vary based on your given server economy, but you need to realize that you could not only be wasting your time, but your money if you don't take the opportunity cost of the raw mats into account.

You're not making any money at all by buying the Titanium Bars. In fact, I'd bet that you're probably losing money. If the three eternals sell for collectively more than 30g, you're losing money by turning them into titanium. You'd be better off just selling the eternals individually after you farm them.

Let's say I buy saronite ore for 15g/stack, smelt it and then transmute it into titanium bars I need 48 saronite ore for 3 bars. Since I'd use a transmute spec alchemist it would only take 40 saronite ore on average if you do larger numbers. That's 30g. Then buy an eternal shadow and eternal earth for about 5g each. Oh, and a frozen orb for say 15g, which I'll exchange at Frozo for an eternal fire.. That's 30+5+5+15 = 55g for a titansteel bar. Same profit, no farming.

There are very easy ways of avoiding this issue. Let's imagine you have an item that is worth, approximately 3g on Horde Side, and 10g on Alliance Side. So there's an arbitrage opportunity if you have the item on Horde side. What to do?

Post the item for sale on the Neutral AH at, say, 9g. This minimizes your loss should someone snipe your auction. (of course, one should consider the deposit costs, but those are based on the Sell Value and not the auction pricing.) In a sense, this is what manufacturers do with middle men. The manufacturer (your Horde character) realizes a profit margin immediately. The middleman (your Alliance character) fronts the cost of the goods, and then resells them for an additional profit.

Now, as for the issue of having sufficient gold to move items in this way, it is trivial to sell a worthless item to yourself for a large amount of gold. There is no risk for you in doing so, as if someone else buys it, you profit. This is analogous to your manufacturer extending you a line of credit to purchase their merchandise, which you then repay as you clear inventory. In this instance, the trivial item could be considered a letter of credit, or similar collateral device.

You may have forgotten the neutral auction house's higher fees. You're going to take a significant cut, both on your initial money transfer, and on each item you transfer.

edit: let's look at your example. Presume you're Horde, buying the item at 3g, moving it via a 9g intermediate sale, and then selling it for 10g on Alliance. You start out with 20g on Horde, 0g on Alliance. Buy the item - now you're at 17, 0. You need to list a grey for 10.58g to get your 9g on Alliance, so you do that - now you're at 6.42, 9. Now you post the item in question for 9g from Horde, and buy it on Alliance - after taking the AH fee again, you're at 14.07, 0. You post the item on the Alliance AH and sell it for 10g, taking home 9.5g of that, leaving you with 14.07g on Horde and 9.5g on Alliance. Your final gold amount is 23.57, a profit of just 3.5g over your starting point - barely half of the 7g profit you naively expected.

In short: AH fees matter, don't forget about them!

The alliance side of that transaction using those numbers just doesn't make good sense is the main problem there. You just don't buy an item and then attempt to relist it for an additional 11%, unless perhaps the item is very very expensive, and even then you're taking a serious risk given the volatility of rarer items. In that example, with all the money transferring involved, listing the item on the AH side was actually a loss compared to just letting it get picked up off the neutral AH for 9g, which would have meant a profit of 9*.9-3=5.1g Also, while the neutral AH fee would apply the first time to transfer the money for the purchase, after that you would have money alliance side and never pay that portion again, so it shouldn't be considered.

As I mentioned before, I would expect there to be enough people using the armory app on each side that all you would have to do is buy the item on the horde AH and relist it on the neutral AH. Then another person with access to the armory app who had a need for it either personally or the ability to add some value to it on the alliance side would pick it up for 9g.

What's the math on making sure we have a few WotLK mats on hand at Cataclysm launch time to get a bit of a leg up on skill-ups? Usually you can get 5-10 points off prior expansion mats and let you conserve the new materials for other stuff.

It seems like Fish Feasts would be a good candidate here, since they're cheap to make, whereas something like Titansteel or epic gems probably isn't worth it (since you can't sell the results once Cataclysm hits), and obviously wasting your transmute on a Northrend thing is suboptimal. But maybe making a few quick flasks to hit 455 or 460?

If prices crash when 4.0 hits and you can pick up mats for pennies on the dollar, this could be a good exercise, since the new materials will go for a huge premium. Also, Cataclysm is introducing a system where crafting rare items results in extra skill points. If this applies at the Grandmaster level, and to epics, that could make it even more worthwhile.

It's probably to combat spam (posting 20 stacks of 1 as opposed to 2 stacks of 10 or 1 stack of 20).

It looks like they have made 1 silver the minimum deposit across the board. If you posted something prior to the patch like a fish that would have a x copper deposit, it now rolls up to 1 silver. I'm not sure if it's a display error or actually charging the 1 silver and whether or not it's working as intended.

Indeed, looks like 1 silver is the minimum deposit now. I just did my daily glyph postings and each had a 1 silver deposit which I got charged for.

A question about the Remote AH. Do the script searches check everything at once or is it like the ingame one where it can only check 1 thing at a time? I get the feeling it is the latter since I'm still actively using the neutral AH with 1c-1s buyout and have yet to see someone else snatch anything, despite the warnings here.

You have the same search options through the remote AH API that you do in the web interface: you can search by item name, by category, etc. However, the neutral auction house is small enough that you can do an unfiltered search sorted by unit buyout and see anything worth sniping. There are a few reasons you might not see any sniping:
1) Nobody on your realm has bothered to write one. It's not hard at all, but if your realm is small, perhaps no one is interested.
2) There are snipers on your realm, but the goods you are moving aren't what they're looking for. Or, there are snipers, but they're poorly written. The 15 second refresh mentioned earlier does exist, and each API query takes a half second or so. There are different ways to write a sniper, with varying speed and comprehensiveness; here are a couple of possible designs off the top of my head.
-Buy anything epic under X gold
-Check each item on the neutral AH against the faction AH to see if it's worth buying. Each extra search takes time, increasing your window to recover your goods.
-Maintain a price database to determine what to buy. This is harder than the first two.
3) The scripters on your realm have moved on to better opportunities on the faction AH...