Auction Fix, Once and For All?

[HumanJHawkins]

It seems like every time the auction is revised, the revision doesn't work and adds bugs... This recent update is no exception (In case you haven't noticed, using the level filter gives unpredictable and incorrect results).

As a SQL programmer, I am guessing that the querying in the auction is not done in SQL... Just because it would be really hard to make mistakes in SQL that would return bad results like the auction does. (And maybe you are not using SQL in misguided hope of reducing server load?)

Anyway, clearly you are trying to refresh the data so we can know when an auction closes or changes. I don't see how this can be done more efficiently than just requerying with a very efficient query as the UI indicates a need. Countless other sites support thousands of users doing far more data intensive work using pure SQL.

And it seems migrating to SQL would bring along all sorts of free benefits... You could automatically fix the annoying thing where "sorting" doesn't sort the whole data set, but just sorts each page individually...

And, it would be easy to add a filter for user chosen key words like "Bane" or "Flaming"

And you could stop requiring users to pick a category... I.e. It would be easy to support the user just searching for "Icy Burst" to get a list of all Icy Burst weapons of any type, instead of having to repeat this search and scoll through pages on each weapon to gather this info.

I don't want to seem ungrateful for having an auction, but it could be sooo much better... I feel like a chef being given a free but under-cooked steak. What is the best way to say "thank you", but also ask for it to be cooked a little more...

[DKerrigan]

Duration sorting is also horribly broken...I don't know what Turbine's using but it can't be good...

In additon to the actual auctions there are a bunch of other bid/post status update issues that need to be recitified, such as the update mechanic that currently only updates when you log on and when you are outbid, the system generated bid being too small (maybe the conversion from cp to pp, gp, sp and cp breaks the number?), and the bid page not updating when two people other than yourself bid on an item that you have been outbid on while logged on.

Using an SQL keyword search would be great, especially if you were able to search the entire AH and group by type. :drool:

{EDIT: Another "nice to have" for the auction house would be an initial price section on the post tab so that users could see if there's any movement on their items...3 days is a long time to remember what your starting price was for the item that you posted while you were 1/2 asleep at 4 in the morning }