What is the use of having 3 AH's in the game?

Currently we have a Horde, a Neutral and an Alliance auction house in the game, each having their own specific items listed.

Back in November when I created my first game accounts, I picked the realm that was suggested for new players. Which actually means that it's a low population server. However the Horde/Alliance balance was not mentioned. As I only want to play horde, I ended up on a low to medium populated server where the alliance has a 3 to 1 ratio to horde (actually way more when you count the active lvl 80 players and the sub top guilds).
This means that the AH on my faction is totally dead. Reality is that many of the items are not available or do not sell on horde, whereas it's sold within a day on alliance and where the availability of items is much much higher than the 3:1 faction ratio. One could say switch faction or server, but that would only create more imbalance on the current realm.

As a multiboxer this opens huge opportunities for me to ship mats back & forth over booty bay. And I have a stockpile of gold on alliance that i'll prolly never have to farm 1 single gold in the game for the rest of my days (that i can transfer over if needed, even with the 15% cut off). I just enjoy the trade skill & economy in general to just stop.

But as a player it doesn't feel right that some items are easy accessible to alliance players and not to horde, just because their is no faction balance in the game. This also means that many crafted items, BoE drops are later available to the average player on horde than it is on alliance, which more or less limits the progress of the average horde player and the quality in general (that's the theory, reality might be slightly different).

So bottom line: I don't see any reason why 3 different AH's should exist from a player perspective. Maybe I've missed something in my reasoning, and maybe someone can point that out; but why not having 1 general AH house, available to both factions? And if some items are restricted to a certain faction (ilvl 245 gear, quest items, ...), they would not be listed for the opposing faction.

Long story short: thoughts on replacing the 3 AH's for 1 general AH accessible for everyone.

World of WARcraft. It's not World of EveryoneTradeTogethercraft. The separate Auction houses are there to distinguish the hatred between the two factions and the third, is the various goblins that remain neutral to the horde and alliance.

Cross server auction houses might be cool. Even a united economy might be alright... One of the main reasons I don't play horde on my server is because their economy is ruined. Low pop on horde side so wool is 40g a stack, hardly any selection in the first place. Go on Alliance side get whatever you want no problem.

I think it would lead to more balance. It might be World of WARcraft but even the USA trades with hostile nations daily. Anything to balance the horde/alliance sides would be great- not saying this would but it could not hurt.

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Originally Posted by Svpernova09

World of WARcraft.

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PVE servers?

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

PVE servers?

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Even on PvE servers the lore of the factions at war with each other is the same.

I agree with Svper, we have factions for a reason and being buddy-buddy isn't one of them. I'm quiet content with the fact that we even have a neutral auction house. Anything you could want is still available if you're willing to pay the price for it, it doesn't matter what side you're on.

If lore is so important (I don't feel it yet that way, but can imagine many do) then I'm pretty sure the bright story writers can fix that. But the way I see it is that lore shouldn't prevent what is an ingame issue for many players to be fixed.

A solution could be for example that every item listed on a faction's AH is also listed on the neutral AH, but with a 15% increased cost for the buyer, so the seller isn't affected. Even more, the seller could have the choice to list it there or not (nothing changes for him, he would take the same cut, he just increases his possible buyers). This is just a random idea, I'm pretty sure that a better solution can be worked out. Lore workaround could be that the goblins made a deal with both factions (my imagination & lore knowledge is crap).

Not claiming that I've checked each realms AH, but the ones I did look more or less the same to what I described in the OP. Now the situation is such that if a horde player wants to level alchemy besides JC, he often can't buy the mats off the AH to proceed, whereas an alliance can easily do it. So he has to level herbalism and gather the stuff himself, then delete it and go JC. I don't think that this is a good thing in times where everything gets easier/more accessible to the player. Determined by the faction you chose upon creating an account, and no info that helps you decide.

Create an alliance toon (DK because of the flight paths), buy what you need from the alliance ah, trade to yourself via the neutral ah, and profit. Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by Kang

Create an alliance toon (DK because of the flight paths), buy what you need from the alliance ah, trade to yourself via the neutral ah, and profit. Problem solved.

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A solo player can't buy his own stuff off the AH with an alt. I think that you have missed the part where I described that I do very good business with my lvl 1 toon on the opposite faction, and that thus it's not a problem for me as a boxer.

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Originally Posted by zenga

If lore is so important (I don't feel it yet that way, but can imagine many do) then I'm pretty sure the bright story writers can fix that. But the way I see it is that lore shouldn't prevent what is an ingame issue for many players to be fixed.

A solution could be for example that every item listed on a faction's AH is also listed on the neutral AH, but with a 15% increased cost for the buyer, so the seller isn't affected. Even more, the seller could have the choice to list it there or not (nothing changes for him, he would take the same cut, he just increases his possible buyers). This is just a random idea, I'm pretty sure that a better solution can be worked out. Lore workaround could be that the goblins made a deal with both factions (my imagination & lore knowledge is crap).

Not claiming that I've checked each realms AH, but the ones I did look more or less the same to what I described in the OP. Now the situation is such that if a horde player wants to level alchemy besides JC, he often can't buy the mats off the AH to proceed, whereas an alliance can easily do it. So he has to level herbalism and gather the stuff himself, then delete it and go JC. I don't think that this is a good thing in times where everything gets easier/more accessible to the player. Determined by the faction you chose upon creating an account, and no info that helps you decide.

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I play the AH on both factions on two different servers every week or so. don't see a need to bring everything together but rather a reduction in the AH cost to auction and a flat rate to use both faction and neutral AH's would be nice. However, most of your original issue was with the availability of higher tier items to factions that are under geared cuase they don't have good raiding guilds, number etc. I was supprise that you didn't make a remark about faction neutral high end craftable gear but that you went back to the universal AH idea. As a boxer / AH player, gold is usually never a problem for me. Gear, acceptance with a nonboxer guild, and pvp options are though. universal ah doesn't get you any of this. I had never heard of the idea of purchasing a raid drop loot from the raid until I came to KilJaeden pronounced in tradechat cause the old server just sucked at that

to the cross realm ah ppl, you really want the gold farmers to be able to bring down your prices on all realm servers instead of the one they actually farmed to gold on? though prices on high end items will most likely skyrocket since there is a much larger pool of purchasers....

I see your point though about supplies not being available to level professions. This is a point that I love taking advantage of on the AH and overchange GREATLY to max my income on those items. golden pearl anyone??? Turtle meat??? lobster meat???? etc etc. I am not at the character limit for my accounts or for the Kiljaeden realm either so I always use it as an excuse to lvl a team in that area that drops the item, though it takes longer to lvl a profession this way.

remember, bliz isn't in business to have you spend less time ingame but is always looking for ways to bring you back in. if it doesn't increase your time needed to game play, they probably aren't interested in implementing the change...