WoW Forever: Black Market Auction House starts small

The Black Market Auction House in WoW Forever starts conservatively, with only a few mounts and a few pets on offer at launch. Kris Zierhut and Josh Greenfield explained the thinking in a new interview: players are walking printing presses of money in an MMO, and without places for gold to go, inflation builds up over time. The idea is to put items there that people are happy to spend gold on.

Most of what it sells is meant for the player who has killed the same boss many times without the drop, such as a hat from Gandling. Dungeon set pieces can be bought there too, which helps with Lord Valthalak's questline. The team has also toned some offerings down, and Rivendare's Deathcharger is no longer on the Black Market Auction House.

A separate vendor sells rare resources such as Black Lotus. It was added because one particular reagent kept running out of control, and it lets the team set a price ceiling instead of spawning more of it. The vendors are a nod to Madam Goya, the future owner of the Black Market Auction House.

Flying mounts will never come to WoW Forever, the developers said, and they sit on a short list of things the team will not add, next to Rated Arenas and shared mob tagging. The world is still being built as if you could fly over it, with no empty voids. Quest help in the game is meant to be enough that players do not need an addon such as Questie, while staying lighter than it.

On raids, the developers aim for difficulty around a typical Naxxramas encounter, harder than Molten Core but short of Four Horsemen, with longer fights than Classic players are used to. Loot data stays hidden from the client until someone finds an item, and that will continue with every new dungeon and raid. The first raids open on 9 December.