Auction House Quality-of-Life and New Player Protection Suggestion

[Noadhja]

I would like to suggest adding an enhanced Auction House interface by default for all players, or integrating a lightweight addon similar to Aux into the base OctoWoW client.

### Purpose
Many new players are unfamiliar with the Auction House and often make costly mistakes when buying or selling items. A basic market-assistance system would help players learn the economy while reducing accidental listings and purchases.

### Examples
Recently, I have seen several valuable items accidentally listed for a fraction of their market value. For example, an Arcane Crystal was listed for 27 silver instead of 27 gold. These mistakes are easy to make, especially for newer players who may not understand typical market prices or who accidentally enter the wrong denomination.

### Suggested Features
- One-click Auction House scanning to collect current market data.
- Display of average market prices and recent listing ranges.
- Warning popups when an item is listed significantly below the market average (for example, 50% or more below the current market price).
- Warning popups when purchasing an item significantly above the normal market price.
- Color-coded pricing indicators (cheap, normal, expensive).
- Suggested buyout price based on current listings.
- Tooltips showing estimated market value when hovering over items.

### Benefits
- Protects new players from common Auction House mistakes.
- Reduces frustration caused by accidental underpricing or overpaying.
- Creates a healthier and more transparent server economy.
- Helps players learn market values naturally rather than relying on external addons.
- Maintains fairness, since all players would have access to the same information.

### Alternative
If a full Auction House overhaul is not desirable, a simpler solution would be to include a built-in version of Aux-style pricing scans and price-warning notifications. Even basic underpricing and overpricing alerts would prevent many accidental losses without significantly changing gameplay.

This is primarily a quality-of-life and new-player retention feature. It would not automate trading decisions, but it would help players avoid obvious mistakes and better understand the server economy.

[Osteon]

This isn't a bad idea, but given the work involved, it seems more plausible for there to be a guide titled something like "Is this your first time playing WoW? Or do you have little experience with the game?"

The guide could be linked somewhere it would be hard to miss. Ideally this guide wouldn't be too detailed. It would just give enough info about topics to new players can seek out additional info where needed. But one essential item would be getting AUX or a similar addon.

I appreciate your idea. I know for sure when I played vanilla wow back in the day I lost out on a lot of gold due to not understanding the economy. I didn't know white items were all things with some use. I thought many were like grey items, useless vendor trash. And I didn't have an addon to easily search through the auction house.

[Rocksmash]

This isn't a bad idea, but given the work involved, it seems more plausible for there to be a guide titled something like "Is this your first time playing WoW? Or do you have little experience with the game?"

The guide could be linked somewhere it would be hard to miss. Ideally this guide wouldn't be too detailed. It would just give enough info about topics to new players can seek out additional info where needed. But one essential item would be getting AUX or a similar addon.

I appreciate your idea. I know for sure when I played vanilla wow back in the day I lost out on a lot of gold due to not understanding the economy. I didn't know white items were all things with some use. I thought many were like grey items, useless vendor trash. And I didn't have an addon to easily search through the auction house.

yeah the idea is gold, but seems too advanced for the team right now considering they JUST got a fix for the ddos. chances are any changes like this would take atleast a year to create without bugs assuming the team is on a smaller side (2-10 people).

I do agree that a detailed guide would be better including price changes in different phases, as some items value changes when the phase shifts.