With the 9.2.7 update of Shadowlands which will be deployed next week, the Auction House will be back in the WoW Companion app. Find the details of his reinstatement in the article published by Blizzard a few moments ago. Get ready to resume trading no matter where you are!
It has been a while since the Auction House was no longer accessible on mobile. It is making a comeback today with update 9.2.7 on the WoW Companion application.
A little history
The Nomadic Auction House was formerly integrated with the Mobile Armory app available from 2011 to 2018. Due to the way this app was designed, some people sometimes abused its architecture, which caused disruptions that could going as far as in-game latency. This was largely due to the number of requests being sent to the Auction House, causing servers to be strained. Although we managed to mitigate this problem, the negative impact of people who sought to exploit the application and its system overwhelmed the development of the latter.
We then decided to develop the WoW Companion application, which you all know by now and which allows you to have a secure experience consistent with the activities your character undertakes when you log into the game.
A more modern app
In our previous episode of The Engineer’s Workshop which discussed the development of the WoW Companion application, we showed the intricacies of creating a system intended to be used on both mobile and PC. The biggest challenge when implementing new features is undoubtedly the creation of software structures necessary to support these features. Most of these software structures have been designed over more than 17 years of World of Warcraft, at a time when mobile platforms were not considered. So we had to work on modernizing the systems to provide you with a supported experience on both mobile and PC.
Also, data delivery methods and restrictions are different on PC and mobile. While one system can deliver the same set of data to both platforms, extra care should be taken to minimize what is sent to mobile to limit what players will need to download.
For such an important feature as the Auction House, there were and still are many additional software frameworks that need to be carefully modernized to support these two distinct experiences.
Expand in present tense
When we decided to integrate the Auction House into the WoW Companion app, we had to assess what kind of structure we could currently put in place, and what that would mean in terms of the immediate operation of the Auction House. sales. To do this, we took the time to analyze who was using the auction house, and how. We identified different archetypes in order to establish what we could offer to each group of people in a reasonable time.
We finally decided to create something that would be useful for casual and intermediate players who regularly use the auction house for purchases related to the preparation of a raid or a dungeon, or who are looking for objects to add to their collection.
Originally, the mobile auction house was not designed as an “essential” tool reserved for players keen on bargains. Quite often, these people were already using other add-ons or external tools to optimize their transactions beyond what the application could offer them. In fact, the new app update will allow you to make purchases, view item lists, and more. Since we wanted you to discover the auction house as quickly as possible, we have ruled out the sale of objects.
What can you do ?
With the WoW Companion app update, you will be able to:
- Consult and display current auctions
- Bid and buy
- Search Auctions
- Add and remove objects from your favorites
- View and cancel your auctions
And after ?
Similar to the introduction of cross-faction development in Update 9.2.5, we want to take things step by step. This will allow us to analyze how you use the application, and to examine the risk vectors and their impact in order to properly continue the development of the application and its structure.
We hope this update to the WoW Companion app will make your stay in Azeroth enjoyable, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.