Thoughts On The Remote Auction House

Posted by on Jul 6, 2010 in Commentary |

I tried the Remote Auction House app on my iPod Touch back when it was in beta and I’m happy to say that it works really well. The interface is intuitive and well-designed, making it easy to navigate. With a little patience, you can find what you’re looking for and get to where you want to go without consulting a manual. Getting into the actual AH action is a breeze as well. Buying, selling and re-selling are all easy to do.

For me, the simplest way to judge it was to ask this question: was I able to make money from it? The answer is yes, I was. By playing around with the app I made about 200 gold in two days. It’s not much, but for someone who hardly makes any money from the AH, it was a lot. Is it worth paying the extra money for? It depends.

Let me try to answer that by telling you what I like about it. First of all, let me mention that I don’t spend a lot of time with the in-game AH. On Sin, I buy flasks and whatever gems are needed for the JC daily from it. That’s it. Second, the things I should be selling are scattered on different toons. My mage usually has some leftover enchanting materials that can be sold, my bank alt has extra stuff that fits that bill too, etc. The point here is that I’m usually too lazy to swap back and forth to find what I need. The Remote Auction House makes that part easy. Just select a toon and his or her inventory will open just like that. You can then select whatever you want to sell, make competitive price adjustments and post away. Plus, there’s the added benefit of being able to do so at any time of the day, as long as you have an Internet connection. It’s one hell of a way to waste time. Instead of playing that game on your iPhone, load up the RAH and make your posts. I like to think of it as a very productive way to waste your time.

On another hand, I can’t imagine anyone who spends serious time in the AH needing the app. They’ve already got the in-game one working for them so having a mobile version of it is likely unnecessary.