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

[Khatovar]

A solo player can't buy his own stuff off the AH with an alt.

A solo player can make friends. A solo player can hire people crossfaction via server boards. A solo player can suck it up and just buy what is on their home auction house. A solo player can earn it by grouping/raiding/farming. I've done all these things as a solo player and it didn't kill me. This is sort of like arguing that non-raiders should just be able to buy top tier raid items out of the Blizzard store just because they can't be arsed to join a raid.

[DLoweinc]

I can honestly say I'd never thought of this. of course i'm alliance on a high population server with a well established economy.

I'm conflicted with this because I understand the lore reasons for splitting them as well as the obvious benefit of a high population (or faction) server versus another, but this just goes to show how perfectly mimic'd the wow economies are compared to real life. My economics teachers always loved talking about wow even though they never played it.

[jinkobi]

A solo player can make friends. A solo player can hire people crossfaction via server boards. A solo player can suck it up and just buy what is on their home auction house. A solo player can earn it by grouping/raiding/farming. I've done all these things as a solo player and it didn't kill me. This is sort of like arguing that non-raiders should just be able to buy top tier raid items out of the Blizzard store just because they can't be arsed to join a raid.

You can also be ripped off trying to find someone to help. It's a pain in the ass to ask a friend to run to a neutral AH- especially the amount of times you'd need to ask them to make a difference. My servers horde economy is totalled... It is impossible to buy what you need to level profs much less get any gear. The methods you describe doing it solo are too big a pain and would cost way way too much.

[Fat Tire]

Seriously lots of QQ in this thread.

[Tonuss]

Blizzard is willing to make changes if it seems enough people want it, so there is always a chance that they would unify the AHs on each server. But there's a pretty clear lore/roleplay/rules reason for having them separate, seeing as you are talking about two sides that are at war. The goblin AHs show how the goblins profiteer from the war and the separation. I'm not sure that there's enough support for the idea, especially since Blizzard would probably rather deal with faction imbalance by promoting ways to bring the population levels closer to each other.

[Tin]

I´m on a server with a rating of 5 to 1

- and the stuff I put on Alliance auction house, is been undercut all the time and 245 items almost don´t sell. Every time I put a item up, 1-3 is doing the same, resultat is that the price go down and down.

So I make my money the other way around - sending it to horde Ah. Crusader Orb sell for 60-80G on alliance and 160-190 on horde side.

[lans83]

I've played on Earthen Ring-US since I started and have created all Alliance on there. Hard for me to jump servers to play Horde, even tho I'd like to for the lore. Sometimes it gets boring and tedious for me to do. But aside that, I'd be happy if Blizzard would offer us a chance to add a new player slot to the character selection screen, or better yet, give us an option to 'hire out' a Goblin to act as a dedicated bank alt. It could be in it's own zone and have access to what ever factions you 'hire' them out to use. One way they could do this is allow us either through the Blizzard store or use an 80 with enough gold to purchase this. Reason why is cause nowadays more and more people are doing this than in the past, and they have only 10 slots to fill with 10 classes to chose from. I'd like to be able to play each class without running back and forth to a major city to sale everything every 48 hrs out of my mailbox. Just like the Traveler's Borean Tundra Mount, this would make a damn good investment for those that suffer from Alt-itus, and/or Pack-rat-ism. I'd love it if they'd make that mount BoA also, even if it's price were to go up do to it, or a higher riding skill requirement.

[kadaan]

Can you imagine searching a global (or even battlegroup) AH? 194790845723094759348 pages of infinite dust, 9471097238971923 pages of saronite ore...

Not to mention there would be so many people that by the time you clicked 'buyout', the item you wanted would already have been bought out anyway.

A more 'elegant' solution would be to just get rid of the neutral AH. Instead, make the neutral AH's show your opposing faction's AH. They'd show up in the listings as normal, but with a "+15% fee" next to them (the goblins' cut.) It would penalize the buyer and not the seller, as the current neutral AH does.

[valkry]

You can clear some/most/all of ICC in full toc gear and gear gotten from random heroics (badges). It's not hard to pug those things.

Those with resources and inititive will always make a profit in life, if you make a universal AH, that negates that possibility to make a profit taking alliance auctions and putting them over on to the horde one.

The world would be less real is blizz kept fixing every little imbalance. It's what makes each realm unique and "yours."

[zenga]

I know I know, massive necro but:

Yes, in 6.0 auction houses are unified between factions on a given server. The benefit you cite is a major reason behind the change.