Deposits and Undercutting Set Auction Prices
Most market writing on Forever is about what things are worth. This is about what it costs to offer them at all: the deposit charged before a lot is visible, the relist charged every time somebody posts under you, and the way those two charges decide which goods reach the shelf in the first place.
What the deposit actually buys
A lot does not go up for free. Before a stack is visible to anyone, the seller pays a deposit, and that payment is the real cost of access to the market. It comes back when the item sells and stays with the house when it does not, which turns every listing into a small bet on whether a buyer appears before the clock runs out. Gathered stacks and crafted goods are posted under the same rule, so the charge lands hardest on whoever posts most often.
The size of the deposit is not arbitrary. It tracks what the item is worth to a shop rather than what a player hopes to get for it, so what a vendor pays per item quietly sets the entry fee for the auction side as well. Duration matters too: a longer listing costs more to put up than a short one. A seller is therefore choosing two things at once, a price and a length of patience, and only the first of them is visible to buyers.
That is why bulk gathering feels cheap to sell and finished goods do not. A stack of herbs carries a small deposit because the shop value behind it is small. A crafted weapon carries a large one, and if it does not sell, the crafter has paid for shelf space twice over: once in materials and once in the deposit that never came back.
Undercutting is paid in relists, not in coin
Buyers do not read the whole column. They take the cheapest offer that covers the quantity they need, which means the lot sitting one copper under yours takes the sale and yours waits. That is the entire mechanism, and how the shelf orders offers is the only reason undercutting works at all. Nothing about it is clever. It is simply the fastest way for a seller with the same goods to move in front of you.
The cost shows up when you answer. Pulling a lot back to reprice it does not refund what you paid to post it, and the new listing is charged again from scratch. Two sellers trading places over an afternoon are both paying that fee repeatedly on goods neither of them has sold yet. The winner of a long undercut run is usually not the one with the sharper price but the one whose materials cost less, because only that seller can keep paying the entry fee without losing on the eventual sale.
Most people who post regularly settle into a rhythm instead: check once, reprice once, and let the rest of the duration run. It is a worse price on paper and a better one after the deposits are counted.
What this does to the prices on the shelf
At the bottom of the range the deposit acts as a filter. Any item whose auction price sits close to its shop price is not worth posting, because the fee eats what is left and an unsold lot turns the trade into a loss. Those goods go to a vendor instead, and selling straight to a shop keeps the floor under cheap stacks higher than a new seller expects. The shelf is not a complete picture of what the realm produces, only of what is worth the entry fee.
At the top of the range the effect reverses. Goods with steady demand absorb the charge easily, which is why the restock trades stay crowded and the prices there move in small steps all day. Flasks, potions and food orders are the clearest case: demand returns on a schedule, so a seller can afford to be undercut and simply post again on the next cycle rather than fight for a single sale.
Between those two ends sit the goods that get posted once, cancelled, repriced and posted again. That churn is where most sellers lose money without noticing, because the deposits are small individually and the count is never shown anywhere.
What we have not confirmed for Forever
We have not seen Blizzard publish the deposit formula used on Forever realms, the list of durations available when posting, or whether either differs from the Classic behaviour players are carrying over from previous realms. Beta reports we have read describe the posting flow in general terms and do not quote the charges. We are not going to invent numbers for them here, so treat everything above as the shape of the system rather than as a figure you can budget against.
Two further questions are open and both change the arithmetic. One is whether the two factions share a listing pool on any realm type, since that decides how many sellers you are actually standing in line behind. The other is availability: the market is a service like any other, and time the shelf is unavailable turns a short duration into a wasted deposit through no fault of the seller. When we see either confirmed in a patch note, this section gets rewritten rather than patched.
Questions
Do I get the deposit back?
If the lot sells, the deposit returns with the payment. If it expires unsold, it stays with the house and the goods come back to you by mail. Cancelling a lot early to reprice it does not refund the deposit either, which is the part most sellers forget when they start an undercut run.
Does undercutting by the smallest possible amount work?
Mechanically it works, because buyers take the cheapest offer that covers what they need and nothing else about your listing is visible to them. What it does not do is come free: every answering reprice means a cancelled lot and a fresh deposit, so the tactic rewards whoever has the lower material cost rather than whoever reacts fastest.
Is a long listing or a short one cheaper?
A short duration costs less to put up and a long one costs more, so the choice is between paying little often and paying more once. Sellers who are online and able to reprice tend to post short; sellers posting before logging out tend to post long and accept the higher entry fee for the coverage.
Are the Forever deposit figures published anywhere?
Not that we have seen. There is no official breakdown of the deposit rate, and the beta reports we have read describe posting without quoting the charge. We would rather say that plainly than print a number that turns out to be carried over from a different realm line.
Sources
- Community reference on auction house fees, deposits and listing durations in the Classic client — Warcraft Wiki: Auction House.
- Blizzard support article covering auction house use and returned items — Blizzard Support: Auction House.