There’s been a lot of talk going on about Bornakk’s revelation that Blizzard are looking at integrating the Armory and the Auction House.
Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.
I spy with my little eye, a problem. Auction House functionality is strongly tied to characters. You can only auction the items in that character’s bank, using that character’s gold.
I don’t know about you guys, but my bank alt and auction mule, Kassiara, is a level 1 Human Rogue. I’d link you to her Armory profile… except that I can’t, because characters don’t show up on the Armory until level 10.
Does this mean that our Level 1 Bank Alts will be unusable under the new Armory/Auction House application?
The possible solutions to this conundrum that I see off the top of my head right now:
- Blizzard delinks auctions from being character specific. I’d say this is unlikely, as it’s not only a lot of work, but a total paradigm shift for how auctions and characters work.
- Blizzard removes the level 10 Armory restriction. This is more likely – it’s less work. The only issue is – why was it level 10 restricted in the first place? If there was a reason, and that reason is still valid, it may take this solution out of contention.
- Level 10 Bank Alts become the new Level 1 Bank Alt. I’d say this is the most likely of them all – our workaround to the problem of not being able to use the new Armory/Auction House application on on our iPhones or PCs.
So… anyone up for a Bank Alt Levelling party?
the only way i can see this currently happening is that it will only show your auctions that you have on the auction house and let you search it. you will still need to go in and buy stuff on a actual toon.
put it this way, armory shows your your toon and there gear and spec, but you can’t change anything about it. can’t move something from your bag to be equipped, can change your spec, that still has to all be done in game. the auction house add on will just be a reference tool.
That is the only way i see it happening at this point. would create way to many problems making it more (unless they want to turn the auction house into the game equivalent of the stock market where anyone can buy and see what they want from their webpage)
Nasi posted a little while ago on Developer Chat, where a blue mentioned something that sounded like an account based storage/bank (similar to the guild bank, but for all your toons). I think this would pave the way for an online auction system, where you log on with your account details and auction away!
I believe the level 10 restriction was to prevent the spam of level 1 mules, gold-sellers, and placeholder names that would show up when trying to search for a certain character.
Has this been confirmed? If the above speculation is just that, it’s based on bad logic (of the “A will now be able to be done on B” and everyone freaks out about “B being required for A”). I see nothing in that statement that says the reverse, that is, “the Armory will now be required for AH access.” Sigh.