Many goblin auctioneers have been aware of The Undermine Journal for a few months now. The site scans and compiles auction house data from the remote auction house on many different servers. Users then can search the data for current and historical values of items, and even determine the AH activity of their competitors. This has been useful to determine market trends, ideal times to post and ideal times to buy.
Now, the Undermine Journal has released a new tool that will alert users via e-mail or RSS feed when an item is available on the AH at a certain price. Wow. This system, combined with the ability to buy items from nearly anywhere through using the remote auction house, will make cheap materials or rare items last for an even shorter period of time.
Without having to constantly look at many different markets of interest and simply waiting for an alert, gold for those hardcore auction house junkies will be even easier to come by. I still haven’t subscribed to a single month of the remote auction house service, but this automated out-of-game alert system could make me take the plunge. Anyone else see the huge potential of this service?
Initially, this truly raised my eyebrows. Then I realized that I make more gold than I know what to do with while investing far less effort than this would probably require – I just scan the AH with Auctioneer while in the shower, buy low, sell high. In fact, if I did use this tool, I think I’d end up taking it too far and having an endless amount of gold that I still had no use for.
That being said, I see its merit. I just think it is more applicable to people like Heartbourne, someone who loves breaking down the WoW markets if only to see if he can. If I wanted to get that far into economics in a game I’d play a real economic simulator like EVE.