iPhone Planned as Portal to WoW‘s Auction House

Every World of Warcraft-playing Apple lover’s dream has come true: Blizzard plans to integrate Auction House access into the Armory iPhone app.

In a post by Blizzard blue Bornakk on the official World of Warcraft forums, it’s been officially announced that Auction House access is planned through the existing iPhone/iPod Touch Armory app. Bornakk posts: “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 … we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game.”

Unfortunately, you probably shouldn’t expect this feature anytime soon. Bornakk continues by saying that there are “still plenty of details to be worked out.” As is always the case with Blizzard, the feature will likely be released “when it’s done.” “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.” There will possibly be hints to Blizzard’s progress in the development of this functionality as “bits and pieces of the Auction House service [may] pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing,” Bornakk revealed.

This announcement is not without a downside, as Bornakk also made it known that “certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized.” My guess is that Blizzard could add another few dollars a month to any World of Warcraft subscriber’s monthly fee, or charge per auction (though that just doesn’t seem right). Bornakk could also be alluding to something else entirely.

The WoW Armory app is a neat feature, but in my eyes is more of a viewing portal into WoW rather than giving actual access to the game. Auction House functionality through the iPhone would be the first hint of actually stepping into World of Warcraft through a mobile device, in a form anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if some hardcore World of Warcraft players purchase an Apple device just to use this app. Now anyone will be able to look like they’re taking care of important business on their iPhone when they’re really just trying to unload that horde of snowballs they collected last winter.