Black Market Auction House - All you need to know

The Black Market Auction House (BMAH) is a new feature in the Mists of Pandaria expansion. We already wrote a little bit about this auction house, but I reckon it would be a good idea to gather all the informations in one place.

What is the Black Market Auction House?

At the moment, World of Warcraft players have access to two types of action houses: the faction auction houses and the neutral auction houses. The difference between the old two types and the Black Market Auction House is that instead of players, various NPCs will sell their rare goods.
The BMAH is located within the Veiled Stair area, a northern subregion of the Valley of the Four Winds. A bit to the south-east of the Tavern the Mists you will be able to find Madam Goya, who is the leader of the BMAH.

Who can use the new Auction House?

Basically everyone can bid on the items sold here, but there are a few things you ought to consider:

You'll need the MoP expansion.
The Veiled Stair is a level 87 area.
You need a lot of gold, as the lowest bids start at 10k.
The area is not a safe zone, so you can expect a lot of ganking on PvP realms.

How does the BMAH work?

There are about 10 items in the auction house at all times. This is how it currently works on the Beta realms at least.
There is no buyout option. This means that if you really want an item you will have to win it by bidding on it.
The bids start at 10k and can go up to 999k.
- Mounts bids start at 20k.
- Companions bids start at 10k.
- Ggear items start from 10k
- vanity/misc items start between 10k and 15k
The bidding works similar to the other auction houses bids.
All auctions last for more than 12 hours.
After an items is bought by someone another item is not added to the auction house immediately.
The items you might find in BMAH are realm-based.

What can you find in BMAH?

You'll be able to find expensive and rare items in here. Here are a few examples of the bids:

Mounts: Ashes of Al'ar, Reins of the Onyxian Drake, Smoldering Egg of Millagazor
Companions: Captured Firefly, Giant Sewer Rat, Shimmering Wyrmlin
TCG Items: Dragon Kite, X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME, Tabard of Flame
Gear: The old Tier 3 pieces, Season 12 items and even heroic PvE gear
Recipes: Pattern: Royal Satchel, Plans: Living Steel Breastplate, Plans: Gauntlets of Ancient Steel

Keep in mind that a lot of these items will sell pretty high because they are rare and because is never guaranteed that you'll find them in the BMAH.

Personal conclusion

Considering the prices, this AH is going to be a big gold sink, and I'm pretty sure this is the real intention behind it also. The inflation is pretty high currently and having more means to stop it is always great.

I'm sure that players with a lot of gold in their bags are pretty happy with this new addition, because after a point you can simply had nothing else to do with your gold.

Considering the location of this auction house, it will be pretty interesting to see how the place will look like on a PvP server...

There were some players who were afraid that everyone with gold will be able to gear up quickly from now on, only from buying their items from BMAH. That's not going to be a problem in my opinion, and even Blizzard reassured us in this case.

What do you think about the Black Market Auction House? Will you be spending any of your hard earned gold there? What do you expect to buy from BMAH?

12 Comments

Phat Lewts

Jul 28 2012 03:17 PM

I really love this write up on the BMAH. I'm really looking forward to getting some sort of mount with the system, not sure which one, but I'm on a PvP server, and I can't wait for the first few days of chaos around the BMAH. No doubt in my mind that it's gonna be covered in skeletons from day 1. Will definitely be interesting to see how the PvP aspect evolves as the game moves on and less people make it out there, or people want to win an item, and maybe get a few friends as insurance out there.

Goht

Jul 29 2012 09:46 AM

hounestly i think this ah comes way to late. the players who rule the auction house on the servers got more money as they could ever spend on the black auction house in my opinion. even if there is a real expensive item in the bmah(i actually doubt that there will be anyone beside some really rare mounts like the old classic epic mounts or all that cant be obtained more etc.), the money they spent on that item(if they actually see a different in their goldcount) will be genereted in a week or 2 back in the normal ah for them...

mariosatr

Jul 29 2012 11:18 PM

hounestly i think this ah comes way to late. the players who rule the auction house on the servers got more money as they could ever spend on the black auction house in my opinion. even if there is a real expensive item in the bmah(i actually doubt that there will be anyone beside some really rare mounts like the old classic epic mounts or all that cant be obtained more etc.), the money they spent on that item(if they actually see a different in their goldcount) will be genereted in a week or 2 back in the normal ah for them...

In one of the pics, there's a Riding Turtle that costs 999,999 gold, 1 gold under the gold cap. I don't think they can generate 999,999 gold back in a week or two with only one gold to compensate

Goht

Jul 30 2012 05:04 PM

In one of the pics, there's a Riding Turtle that costs 999,999 gold, 1 gold under the gold cap. I don't think they can generate 999,999 gold back in a week or two with only one gold to compensate

a person that obtains 999,999 gold will not stop earning gold^^ the cap is just for one character and im sure such persons do generate gold on another chars aswell and actually no smart ah player would buy such expensive items^^ at least not for such a stupid riding turtle^^ maybe for some items that are not obtainable anymore like the wotlk raiding drakes or the spectral tiger but like i said they will make enough money anyway to get back to goldcap asap^^

Devon Reynolds

Jul 31 2012 03:26 PM

i personaly think that the BMAH is a good idea but the way they are doing it makes casual players that want to experiance the thrill of winning the mount or pet, but they possably donth ave enough gold b/c they dont have enough time to spend farming or playng the AH to make all this gold that just sits in the bag i personaly thing that blizzard should rethink BMAH, and what about players that play everyday and that want to compete aswell

joetheagent

Jul 31 2012 04:36 PM

The BMAH is a nice idea. I agree with a previous post about it being way too late in the game. I think this concept could have been added in WotLK easily. I'm a bit concerned about the BMAH being controlled only by an elite few for 2 reasons. 1st, there are some very rich individuals and guilds on almost any given server, if you arent one of them, you could be out of luck. and 2nd because of controlling the zone/area around the BMAH itself, if you dont belong to the right guild/faction on a given server (especially for horde heavy servers of which there are plenty) you may never even get a chance to get to the auctioneer much less participate in an active bidding war unless you play at 3am and even then, your bids are toast the minute the reigning guild/faction shows up again in the morning and good luck re-bidding. All of these things may fix themselves over time of course...but for the first few months anyway...its going to be rough for anyone who isn't an elite player, especially in the gold department.

On that note, I do like the idea that it will be a significant gold sink for the ultra wealthy. Those type of players who already rack up gold on their faction AH well will never struggle with making a massive income, but at least this might eventually tip the playing field back toward the less wealthy players and maybe counter some of the inflation that exsists so many servers.

Daniel E Sargood

Jul 31 2012 10:41 PM

This sounds fun BUT i know heaps of ppl who will never use due to the prices. wha every happened to the prices we knew back in early BC ? BMAH good idea, way over prices blizz.

Lanne

Jul 31 2012 10:52 PM

In one of the pics, there's a Riding Turtle that costs 999,999 gold, 1 gold under the gold cap. I don't think they can generate 999,999 gold back in a week or two with only one gold to compensate

you are forgetting that if they make a guild on an alt they can have unlimited ammount of gold as a guild have no Gold limit in the bank

Collector

Aug 01 2012 11:58 PM

I think the BMAH is a nice idea, but its unfair to the casual players who dont have heaps of gold at their disposal. Players pay enough real money to get their fair share out of this game, and the BMAH prices exclude them from enjoying everything wow has to offer, and will further frustrate players who simply dont have the time to farm the exorbitant amounts required to place a bid. I mean i realize that these are rare mounts and pets and epic/rare pattens and gear, and shouldnt go cheaply, but this market will cater to only those players sitting at gold cap, which in my opinon and the opinon of my guild is unfair and somewhat cruel to casual players who dont have time to farm but would also really like the oportunity to have access to these items as well.

waflob

Aug 02 2012 08:25 AM

While I kinda get the "it's not fair on casuals" bit, it's also kinda whiny. It's like saying "I'm no good at PvP, so it's not fair that I can't get a gladiator title - it's unfair for those who suck at PvP". (just for clarity, I suck at PvP !).

There are so many aspects to this game, whatever gets added won't be immediately relevant to everyone. If they only added stuff that benefitted all players, it would be a very tedious game indeed.

Before LFR was added, only a small number of players (I think about 5-10%) got to see end-game content. When LFR was added, all the "non-casuals" started moaning that they no longer felt special, as even casuals got to see end-game content.

The only alarm going off in my head right now with this, is that Diablo3 has a real-money auction house. This BMAH is really only 1 step away from WoW being pay-to-win. If that ever happened, the game would just die.

rubine

Aug 02 2012 04:23 PM

you are forgetting that if they make a guild on an alt they can have unlimited ammount of gold as a guild have no Gold limit in the bank

False. Guild banks have the same gold cap that players do.

Serilda

Aug 28 2012 01:55 PM

What people fail to remember is the gold intake inflation from expansion to expansion. What an average player made in Cataclysm, a player back in time playing Vanilla would only dream about making. I don't think that some of these prices will be out of reach for average players w/ no limit to how many dailies they can complete. I think it will come down to two things. If you are playing on a PvP server, will your faction be the dominant faction, and how you choose to spend your time in game. With the daily quest cap removed, there is nothing holding you back from spending your time completing quest to gain the gold to purchase an item. If you choose to spend your time sitting in a major city talking in trade chat, then the faults will be your own.

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