World of Warcraft Auction House service announced

Today, Blizzard poster Bornakk released the details on a new way for players to access the auction house out-of-game:

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting—and we’ve been hoping to implement—a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.

Browse your server’s auction house and make purchases through your Internet outlet of choice—managing your cashflow in World of Warcraft just became easier. This of course raises several questions regarding the functionality of said service: What will Blizzard be charging for the service? What will the premium service have that the standard one will not? Will you be able to post auctions as well as browse and purchase items? Let us know what you think by registering or posting below.