The auction house (AH) is the backbone and driving force of how people make money in this game. If you aren’t questing, crafting, or servicing other players, you’re selling stuff either in trade chat or 9 times out of 10, on the AH.

It’s a pretty straight forward interface, though I do recommend getting acquainted with an AH addon like Auctioneer of Auctionator if you’re serious about this stuff as they will provide more information, scanning capabilities, and suggested price points for buying and selling.

The ability to put your goods on the AH quickly, easily, and competitively is paramount. Yes, you can focus on all the numbers but at the end of the day, you’re not going to want to do research on every one of the 50+ items you have to put up.

There are 3 different auction houses in the game; a factional AH, neutral AH, and an engineering AH.

Factional AH: These exist in each of the capital cities for each faction. If you’re Alliance, go to Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus, or the Exodar. If you’re Horde, go to Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, or Silvermoon. These houses are the most active, have the best selection, and will be what you probably use the most as you play. Odds are you’ll have your banking alt stashed at one of these locations (we’ll go over banking alts soon).

Neutral AH: Available in the goblin run towns, the neutral AH allows for each faction to trade with each other. To that end, you’ll see quite a few items available from one side or the other going for ridiculously high prices. The neutral AH doesn’t get as much traffic as the factional ones, so expect prices to be high and selling can be tricky. Useful for selling specific items like pets and recipes though. The neutral AH is located in Booty Bay, Everlook, Ratchet, and Gadgetzan.

Engineering AH: Located in Dalaran, the engineering AH connects grand master engineers to the factional auction house. Requires 350 engineering to use. Very handy for your main if you happen to have engineering, but not a huge thing if you happen to have a banking alt taking care of business elsewhere.

As with everything we’ll discuss in this blog, play around with these various auction houses, especially if you’re brand new to the game, if you’ve already used these you can skip playing with them, but I do strongly urge you to consider some of the AH addons available out there. Try them out, see which ones fits the best. We’ll be reviewing a few of them on here down the road, but even with reviews, it all comes down to how well you like working with it.