The barriers for trading in World of Warcraft have been torn down. Basically, all players are now on a “mega-server” – as trading is now possible across regions.
It was planned as one of the larger features for Patch 10.1.5, but had to be postponed again. After the maintenance on Thursday, the feature is now activated and seems to be functioning. This allows World of Warcraft, after nearly 20 years, to enable trading between different realms.
Why was the feature previously disabled? After Patch 10.1.5 started rifts in time, there were immediately massive server issues. In many realms, all areas of Kalimdor were simply no longer accessible, and the message “World server not found” appeared. Blizzard had to implement a lengthy emergency maintenance and ultimately limit trading between realms.
What is now possible? You can now trade any items that are not bound to your character or account with other players from different realms. Thus, items that are “bound on equip” can switch realms without a cumbersome server transfer being necessary.
What does not work? Currently, it is still not possible to send mail to other realms, and trading with the other faction in the open world is also not yet possible. However, it is not entirely clear whether that should even be possible.
What are the consequences of this? Until now, each realm was, in a broad sense, self-contained and had a separate economy. This had already been softened in a previous patch when all major resources were available in the auction house region-wide.
In the future, the prices for equipment across different realms are likely to align. Until then, you can still benefit from the fact that items are sold cheaper on some realms and more expensive on others. Through friends on other realms, you can trade popular items back and forth and thereby make a decent profit – at least until the markets have all aligned.
Will you use this new feature? Or do you think it’s bad that cross-realm trading is now possible?
