Remote Auction House closing ...

[Poisonenvy]

 

As many of you may be aware (hopefully, especially, any who actually use it) the Remote Auction House is being withdrawn from service.  This is part of The Armory mobile app.  There had been some rumours that perhaps it was being replaced with something else, but that doesn't appear to be the case:

Originally posted by Blizzard (View Original)

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The WoW Remote Auction House will be deactivated on April 18, 2018. On that date, you will no longer be able to view Auction House listings or make Auction House transactions through the official WoW website or the WoW Armory app, and all links will be removed from our website. After April 18, you’ll still be able to use the WoW Armory app for all other purposes, including accessing your character profiles, talent calculators, event calendars, and more.

API & Community Sites Unaffected
Some World of Warcraft community sites make use of Blizzard’s API to access Auction House–related data, and we will continue to support for that. If you regularly visit a site that accesses data from the Auction House to keep an eye on the price of fish, you (and they) can continue to do so after April 18. Carry on fish-watching to your heart’s content.

Azeroth Auctioneers Need You
In the meantime, eager auctioneers all over Azeroth are still available and conducting business as usual, so seek them out for all of your Auction House needs. Time is money, friend!

Apparently this will NOT impact community sites and addons like TradeSkillMaster or The Undermine Journal. Both of these sites utilise different Auction House APIs that Blizzard will continue to support. You will still be able to receive pricing updates for items within the game, using both of these addons.

 

Blizzard went on to explain why:

 

Originally posted by Blizzard (View Original)

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The most logical explanation is that costs to keep it updated are not worth the relatively small number who use it.

Basically this. The Web/Mobile Auction had a lot more issues with keeping it up than it was really worth for the small amount of players that actually used it. Trying to tackle and fix those issues (for transparency the majority were just exploits) just takes dev time away from working on new content. While it may change in the future, we currently at this time aren't planning to bring this back.

Because they need to show investors that people are still logging into the game.

If you really, truly believe us deprecating the mobile Auction House, which was used by the tiniest fraction of a single percent of the community, has anything to do with the health of the game, then I don't think we're ever going to be able to see eye to eye on much.