WoW Forever: beta auction house takes more deposit than shown

Players on the WoW Forever beta have been finding they have less money than they expected, and a report published on 29 September says the auction house is to blame. When you put an item up for sale, the auction house takes a deposit, and according to the report it is taking more than the auction window shows. The authors of the report tested this themselves on several items. We found no statement from Blizzard about it: for now the figures come from this one report, and Blizzard has not confirmed the bug.

The deposit is a small fee the auction house charges when you list an item, and the auction window shows the amount before you confirm. It depends on the item's value, so cheap items should cost only a few copper to list. In the original game the deposit comes back to you when the item sells, and you lose it if the auction expires or you cancel it. The report does not say whether the extra money taken by the bug comes back when an item sells.

In the first test, the auction window showed a deposit of 4 copper for a Lesser Healing Potion, but the character's money fell by exactly 1 silver, from 34 silver 61 copper to 33 silver 61 copper. Other items with very small deposits gave the same result, and the report concludes that for now any deposit of 1 silver or less seems to be rounded up to 1 silver. Larger deposits came out much closer to the right amount, but still not exact: for a Blazing Wand the window showed 1 silver 32 copper, and the money fell from 33 silver 61 copper to 32 silver 27 copper, 2 copper more than shown.

Players have been describing the same problem on Blizzard's forums since 21 September, and Blizzard has not replied there. The bug hurts most where money is tight, at low levels, when players need every silver to train new skills. Until it is fixed, the report suggests it may be easier and safer to sell items to a vendor, depending on how much they would fetch, because listing them could cost more than it earns. The beta runs until 21 October, and WoW Forever launches at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.