Forge & Finance#

Welcome to Forge and Finance, a personal project exploring the World of Warcraft Auction House through data.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since its release in 2004, although I’ve been playing less and less over the years. Still, whenever I did log in, I almost always spent some time working the Auction House. This really took off during the Warlords of Draenor expansion. which was the era of the garrison. Some might remember it for the gold-making opportunities it offered. I leaned hard into optimising that system with flipping materials, mission tables, crafting, and maximisingthe value of each follower. Eventually, that became a pretty effective gold-printing machine.

It was around that time that I started leveraging the WoW Token, which is a game item that allowed players to spend in-game gold to pay for their subscription. Because I was making so much gold through the Auction House, I could cover my monthly subscription with just a bit of upkeep.

I never really got back into that level of Auction House gameplay when I started World of Warcraft Classic. When that launched, I was more focused on the levelling and raid experience than on the auction house. That said, I’ve always had a deep love of the stories of the Classic era, as it’s just filled to the brim with fantasy.

The Devilsaur Mafia, Mystical Tomes of Dire Maul, Crusader Orbs, Arcane Crystals, Thorium Nodes hidden in the hives of Silithus, Mage AoE Grinding, Mooncloth cooldowns, The Black Lotus Bot Farms. There are just so many strange and story-rich things going on in the game, that show up in the Auction House.

Unfortunately, most of the Auction House data from that period isn’t readily available, largely due to limitations in Blizzard’s API. But those stories are what inspired me to start working on Forge and Finance. For me, it is a chance to start diving into those stories, and a bit of an excuse to get back into some of the technical tools I’ve used in the past (e.g. Jupyter Notebooks).

What is World of Warcraft?#

For those less familiar, World of Warcraft is a long‑running massively multiplayer online role‑playing game (MMORPG). Its main draw is adventuring: tackling quests, storming dungeons with a party or just exploring the world. It also incorporates a robust, player-driven economy where adventurers can buy, sell, and trade everything from crafting materials, commodities, armour, weapons, equipment, or various rare items. Players use the in-game Auction House, which is a marketplace where they can list items for sale and purchase items that others have listed. Transactions are carried out using the in-game currency of gold 🟡, silver ⚪, and copper 🟠.

Because every listing originates from a player, the Auction House often ends up behaving much like a real economy. While not a perfect mirror, you still end up with things like hoarding, speculative strategies, get rich quick schemes, syndicates and just general shenanigans.

What I really love are the stories that form around the Auction House. The stories of cartels, materials tied to legendary quests, relics of unknown origin, curiosities of rarity, and artefacts whose purpose remains a mystery. It all feels like folklore. Feeling like a world lived in, with stories shaped by the players.

What to expect#

These pages and posts will include:

  • Exploratory data analyses of in-game markets

  • Thematic deep-dives into behavioural phenomena

  • Oddities and curiosities uncovered in passing

  • Occasional side quests into player-driven market antics

Anyway, thanks for stopping by.