Happy Misses The Mark

Happy Misses The Mark

The expected revival of the Auction House this weekend was, well, underwhelming. Primed with fifteen high end weapon enchants, Happy had to admit to a rather nasty miscalculation - he sold only two. It wasn't just the enchants, either. Sales were way off on just about everything. Right now Happy is sitting on a lot of expensive, unsold goods.

There is still activity on the AH, but it is almost all negative. There are a lot of sellers relentlessly driving down prices, but there aren't any buyers. Even Happy had to curtail buying up under-priced goods because those low prices just keep falling. It's a slow fall, though, meaning that the prices are falling in small increments. That hardly matters if no one is buying at any price.

It's still pretty early to declare the Dreanor expansion dead, but the announcement of the Legion expansion, due to go into beta in the fall (and we're already halfway through with August) must be affecting at least some percentage of the population. A certain amount of dumping materials that will be useless in Legion could be occuring. Dumping may well be a big factor as Legion gets closer because it's been so easy to amass large amounts without much effort.

Another portent popped up in trade chat - yes, trade chat every once in awhile has something interesting to say. Wow is more than ten years old. Silvermoon server is an original realm, so it, too, is over ten years old. I don't know what the numbers are (Blizzard doesn't like to talk about realm populations), but its likely that many, many players who started on Silvermoon are still here. Player ages come up in trade chat periodically. I recall hearing that most players would say they were no older than their thirties. Thirty-five was considered a crusty veteran. That conversation popped up in chat earlier this weekend, the poster proudly proclaiming he was 62 years old. That generated a small tsunami of posts from players in their 50s and 60s. Me among them. I'm 59. And yes, that means I was already at the "advanced" age of 49 when I STARTED playing WoW. I had to read that last sentence twice. Somehow I thought I was younger.

The game is old. The players are older, too, and I have to think that new, younger players are dwindling. Us oldies have already done and seen most everything there is to see and do in this world (of Warcraft). It's still fun, but there is no sense of urgency, no pushing the envelope. I wonder.