AH Costs Changes to Cover WoW Token Costs

AH Costs Changes to Cover WoW Token Costs in Patch 6.1.4

WoW Token
Item Level 1
Binds when picked up
“Use: Adds 30 days of game time to your World of Warcraft account.”

[blizzardquote author=”Blizzard Entertainment” source=”http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/18390557/”]INTRODUCING THE WOW TOKEN
Coming soon to an Azeroth near you: the WoW Token, a new in-game item that allows players to simply and securely exchange gold and game time between each other.
Players will be able to purchase a WoW Token through the in-game Shop for real money, and then sell it on the Auction House for gold at the current market price. When a player buys a WoW Token from the Auction House for gold, the Token becomes Soulbound, and the player can then redeem it for 30 days of game time.
The WoW Token feature will be enabled at a future date. Patch 6.1.2 adds in the framework needed for the WoW Token feature in the game client and is not active at this time. Check out WoW Token Coming Soon – Additional Details for more details on how the feature works.[/blizzardquote]

With 6.1.4.2015 introducing the new WoW Token, Blizzard have sneaked in a change to the Auction House which most gold makers have missed.

Because the Token exchange has to start somewhere, we will be setting the initial gold value of the WoW Token ourselves. The starting gold value in each region will be based on several factors, including regional in-game economies, but ultimately our goal is to select a fair and reasonable starting price. After that, the Token’s gold value will be determined dynamically based primarily on player supply and demand. Simply put, if more WoW Tokens are being listed than are being purchased, the price will automatically drift downward over time. If people are purchasing Tokens from the Auction House faster than they’re being put up for sale, then prices will go up accordingly. In order to cover the costs of the new WoW Token we will be increasing the Auction House cut from completed sales from 5% to 20%.  As a reminder, to help make sure players can trade WoW Tokens confidently, once a Token sells, the seller will receive the amount of gold they were quoted at the time they listed their Token. We know a lot of you are excited to exchange a WoW Token or two, and we’re looking forward to making the feature available in the near future. We’ll provide additional updates on the rollout of the WoW Token feature soon.

Nasty shocker.

When you successfully sell an item on the auction house, the house will take a percentage of the winning bid as its cut. From 6.1.4 this increases from 5% to a whopping 20%.

What should you do?

1. If you are posting a lot of auctions, consider giving them away to friends instead.
2. Another option is to post your auctions for longer, so they have more exposure in the AH.
3. Readjust your TSM to take into account the new costs.

   Cut = 0.05 * Winning Bid changes to

   Cut = 0.2 * Winning Bid

4. Alternately you could check your calendar.

About the Author

The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making