The economy of WoW is something that has never really interested me. I am a raider and pretty much only have time for that. I go and buy enchants or gems on the AH. Maybe put a vanity pet on the neutral AH from the Argent Tourney once I get the needed Champion Seals. I have only bought one epic (Thank you to whoever put The Bracers of Swift Death for my tank set on the AH for the cheap price of 2k.) from the AH.
Now that my mage is level 80 and is doing professions that can have a lot more interaction with the AH (Enchanting and Tailoring), I have started looking a little closer at those things. What day is the best day to put up enchants? (I'm hoping Tuesday with raiders.) Should I put up extra mats on the AH or put them on vellum for enchants? However, I'm also very lazy when it comes to these things. I use Auctioneer to run my AH processes in game. I like a lot of the features including looking at not just your server prices, but looking at across all servers as well as scanning other auctions to help you price your items.
This brings me to the new remote AH app beta for the IPhone. I personally don't have an IPhone, but I do have an IPad and I can run it on that. My initial impression was kind of lackluster. The graphical interface was not overly great. (Albeit, on my IPad, it is blown up to 2x the size to fit on the IPad, so I think it is more of the IPad's fault.) Yes, I could see my auctions and could even get my auction mail and send it to my character. However, the more I played with it, the more I saw the awesomeness of this app. This has a lot of the features of the Auctioneer add on built right in. Want to see what your item is going for currently on the AH to determine your price, it is right on the screen where you set your price. Want to browse all the auctions for an item at a good price, you can do that as well. While it won't tell you prices between servers, even seeing that information in an out of game format is incredible.
However, I do have some general complaints about this app as well. First, it is not easy to switch between characters. With two level 80s and 3 others above level 60, I would like to easily switch between characters to see all their auctions. I actually have not even found a good way to do that yet. Second, the limit is really low for a beta. 25 transactions is enough to pull your AH mail and maybe put 10 more things back on the AH. In the live version, this will be a non-issue, but it is still annoying. Third complaint is the format. Blizzard, please come out with an IPad version for all of your apps, including this one, please. The final and biggest complaint is the price. If it was a flat fee of five to ten dollars, I would go for that. However, charging $3 per MONTH for these actions make it a little questionable. Does it really take me that long to do my AH stuff in game to warrant paying an additional $3 per month to Blizzard for access out of the game? I don't carry my IPad everywhere and my work doesn't allow me to get on to the armory website. My instinct says no. However, it would be incredibly convenient to have this especially if I get an IPhone sooner rather than later.
So overall, it is not a bad app, but I don't know how many people would buy in to it, especially at a monthly price. Of course, who thought that Blizzard would make over two million dollars selling mounts. Once people start having to pay for it, we will see what the demand is for this app.
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