Recent tech issues have been plaguing the Auction House in World of Warcraft, and it’s now been discovered what those issues are.
As it turns out, this was actually caused by a database table change that exponentially increased the number of items. As a result, certain items weren’t showing up as available in the game, and although fans on the game’s subreddit theorized (via PCGamer) that this was caused by people using add-ons to purchase items, World of Warcraft senior game producer Tom Ellis clarified the situation on X.
“So what’s going on with the Auction House is an interesting tech problem, a well meaning and simple design change caused a DB table that used to hold 20-60k rows to now contain tens of millions. Not a problem by itself, but we’ve got some code changes to make to support this new world we live in. We’re going to throw more hardware at the problem with maintenance while people far more clever than me work on actual solutions,” he wrote.
So what’s going on with the Auction House is an interesting tech problem, a well meaning and simple design change caused a DB table that used to hold 20-60k rows to now contain tens of millions. Not a problem by itself but we’ve got some code changes to make to support this new…
— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) August 31, 2024
Two days after that post, Ellis posted an update suggesting the problem may be entirely over.
Ok, got some holiday weekend engineering done by some heroes, AH performance should be significantly improved for now.
— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) September 2, 2024
CPU is still looking so much better (down from 150-200% CPU on each AH service to 4-50%), we should be good! Throttles etc. have been removed and will keep an eye on things.
— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) September 2, 2024
“Ok, got some holiday weekend engineering done by some heroes, AH performance should be significantly improved for now. CPU is still looking so much better (down from 150-200% CPU on each AH service to 40%-50%), we should be good! Throttles etc. have been removed and will keep an eye on things,” Ellis wrote on X yesterday.
The problem appears to have been fixed as of now, though players should certainly check themselves.
Meanwhile, we're hard at work on our review of World of Warcraft: The War Within, and should have a review in progress here soon while we wait for Mythic+ to open up here soon. Stay tuned for our thoughts on the latest expansion.
