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The Undermine Journal returns
Back in July, we reported on the sad news that The Undermine Journal, long a staple resource for WoW's Auction House enthusiasts, was closing down. In their corresponding blog post, they did mention that if they were working on an Undermine Journal 2.0, and hoped to have it up and running eventually. That eventuality became reality earlier this week, when The Undermine Journal reopened it's doors. The new site is still a work in progress--there's no EU support yet, for example--but they plan on having that ready to go by the time patch 6.0 arrives, so never fear. I'm sure that news of The Undermine Journal's rebirth will be happily received by many, and may all of your auctions always be profitable. Welcome back!
The Undermine Journal to close
There is sad news in the WoW community today. The longtime, invaluable auction house resource The Undermine Journal will be closing its doors at the end of July. The Journal cites ballooning server hosting costs as the culprit, and they just can't keep up. Since 2010, The Undermine Journal has been the place to go if you wanted to stay on top of auction house pricing--particularly for comparisons across different servers. The loss of this site is huge blow WoW players as a whole, but particularly for those who make a dedicated hobby out of playing the auction house. There does remain some hope for The Journal's future, however. If they can find a new server host, it's possible that a revamped Undermine Journal will make an appearance in time for Warlords of Draenor. However, in their news announcement, they caution that if the expansion's launch comes and goes without The Undermine Journal's reappearance, it will likely be gone for good. They will do their best to keep a webpage in place in order to deliver updates on the situation. From those of us at WoW Insider, we'd like to thank Erorus, the creator behind The Undermine Journal, for all his hard work and dedication to maintaining such a wonderful resource. We hope The Undermine Journal's absence is just a hiatus, but either way, we'll see you at Realm Pop.
How to check the Black Market Auction house without going there
The Black Market Auction House is a special AH that allows you to buy items that are rare and sometimes unobtainable with gold otherwise. It's an extremely effective gold sink, but it's tucked away in the middle of nowhere, and you can't see what's for sale on your realm from the remote AH. Unfortunately, since Blizzard doesn't make the BMAH accessible through the same API as the regular Auction Houses, you are expected to log in and travel to the Veiled Stair in order to see whether there was anything there for you. The Undermine Journal is a website that collects, organizes, and displays information about the Auction House of every realm: Horde, Alliance, and Neutral. Additionally, starting in January, they launched a (still beta) feature that shows us the contents of the BMAH. Assuming you're not on a PvP realm, you can avoid the flight to the Veiled Stair to check whether there's something worth buying by simply checking the Undermine Journal.
The Undermine Journal reboots with AH sales profiles
I reported when it went offline, and it looks like The Undermine Journal is back. It's added a bunch of realms, to boot. Additionally, the development blog post linked above has a few tidbits about some features coming down the pipes, including Twitter direct messages as a potential vehicle for market notifications. Also exciting is the possibility of a raw auction house feed being made available (for free), so other sites could make AH mashups of their own without having to redesign the armory crawler. This site is an amazing tool for stalking the auction house efficiently when you can't be directly in front of an AH. Combined with the Remote Auction House, this allows people to keep a semi-persistent presence on the market without needing to be in game all day. It's also invaluable for researching new markets and strategizing against your serious competitors. In fact, the only feature people have really voiced a lot of concern about is the seller activity page. The heat map can tell people when it's worth logging in to undercut, which can lead to people feeling like they're being unfairly targeted. The current items section tells interested players what other markets they could target someone in. The standard response to concerns is that this is all just data, and what people do with it is not the fault of site that makes the data accessible. There is no privacy in an open market, and just like you can hardly be upset if someone puts a photo of a sale sign in your storefront window on the internet, you can't get upset if a site like the UJ makes everything you have for sale available through a public interface. Personally, I like being able to stalk my competition more than I'm afraid of what they might do by stalking me. After all, there's only one of me and at least 50 of them. Additionally, I like to practice what I preach about market agility, and I like to think that every time a competitor closes a door on me, I can find a new door. Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped, plus the author's Call to Auction podcast. Do you have questions about selling, reselling and building your financial empire on the auction house? Basil is taking your questions at basil@wowinsider.com.
Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal may have to close down
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! The Undermine Journal is an invaluable site that a lot of auctioneers have been making great use of. I wrote about it when it was in alpha, as well as how to use its market alert to watch for cheap deals. Unfortunately, the days of having a convenient graph showing you the price history for your realm are numbered. There's a very real possibility that this service will be killed by Blizzard's new auction house interface, and we'd be back to each keeping our own spreadsheets.
Gold Capped: Out-of-game auction house access
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! A couple of months ago, Blizzard released the mobile auction house, which is a feature of the armory that lets you buy and sell without having to log into the game. It's available on mobile devices like the iPod touch and Android handhelds; however, it's easiest to use in a browser with a full-sized screen. This feature has sparked such innovative out-of-game tools like The Undermine Journal (see Gold Capped coverage), which crawls the armory auction house's listed auctions and provides some excellent aggregate data. Blizzard hasn't officially provided support for third-party applications yet, however they're close enough to in-game addons that I suspect it's only a matter of time. The armory auction house isn't perfect, and since the beta ended, the product seems to have been left pretty much alone, bugs and all. That said, it accomplishes its purpose: You can buy and sell on your auction house instead of working or studying. Join me after the break to explore methods of work avoidance!
