World of Warcraft's trade chat should have less spam after today's update
Prepare for region-wide auction house commodities too.
World of Warcraft's 9.2.7 patch is due to land with the weekly reset later today—or tomorrow for EU servers—and Blizzard has posted a warning to boosters to keep to their own (new) chat channel or "proper actions will be taken".
"With the separation of trade services into its own chat channel, a new policy will take place," states Blizzard's blue post. "Any boosting, carrying, or other similar services offered for gold that’s advertised outside of the Trade (Services) chat channel will be considered spam and the proper actions will be taken, so be sure to switch your service advertisements to the new chat channel when it becomes available after this week’s regional maintenance."
Boosts (or carries) are services offered by groups of players to help you get through a dungeon or raid in return for gold. You might opt for something like this if you're after a specific achievement or if you don't have the time—or skill—to get it the usual way.
The new Trade (Services) channel was announced back in July. The original trade chat has traditionally been a place for random chatter and guild recruitment, rather than its intended purpose of buying and selling items and profession services. But in recent years it's become clogged with groups selling boosts for dungeons or raids for in-game gold, to the point where it's almost impossible to see anything else that might be posted, especially if you're on a busy server.
Trade chat isn't for everyone, but at the very least it's a reminder that you're in Azeroth with other people. So here's hoping this will put an end to the non-stop macros for boosts.
Along with the new chat channel, changes are heading to the auction house in the 9.2.7 update. After this weekly reset, commodity listings on the auction house will become region-wide, rather than server-specific, so you should expect the cost of items like flasks and potions to fluctuate over the next few weeks.
In the long run, though, this should mean low-population servers shouldn't suffer so much with inflated prices. So once prices settle down, maybe you'll get the chance to save some gold ready for Dragonflight, later this year.