More on the auction house. (1up.com)
-Like you'd expect, it features both an auto-bidding and an instant buyout price. Players are kept anonymous during the process, and there will be one regional auction house per currency type.
-Nearly everything can be sold. Items, gold, and later on, even characters, can be sold through this auction house. Only quest-related or very specific items will be soulbound to players; everything else that drops on the ground can be auctioned.
-The auction house interface can be pulled up anywhere, and items can be sold from either your current character's inventory or from the shared stash. Transactions happen pretty much instantly (and securely), and if you successfully bid on an item, it then shows up in your shared stash.
-There will be a smart-search mode that can automatically loot for suitable items based on your current equipment and what would work best upgrade-wise. You can also specify certain parameters for your build, or search for items by class (since everything works in and out of your shared stash).
-Blizzard will charge a listing fee and a sale fee. The former you pay no matter what, while the latter only comes up if you make a sale. No specific figures have been given, but Pardo describes these fees as "nominal. He also believes that since there is a listing fee, this will help the auction house self-correct into only listing noteworthy items, as people would be discouraged to pay a listing fee to sell trash or vendor loot.
-On the flipside, to help seed the auction house and to let players get a feel for the auction house without investing too much money, Blizzard plans to let players have a number of free listings per week.
-The auction house is designed to facilitate player trading; Blizzard has no plans to officially post items for sale through the auction house themselves. Nor will the company put up gameplay enhancing additions in the auction house.
-Players have two choices for proceeds from their sales: The default option puts the funds into their Battle.net e-balance. That e-balance can be used for goods/services offered by Blizzard, ranging from purchasing items from the auction house to World of Warcraft subscription time or other paid services (such as character transfers). The other option is to "cash-out" the sale to a third-party payment provider (Pardo comments that the contract hasn't been finalized, so he couldn't name the service just yet we're assuming PayPal or somesuch). Though, the cash-out option could be subject to transaction fees from both Blizzard and the third-party provider.
-The currency-based auction house is completely optional. Player-to-player trading still exists, and there will be an auction house that uses in-game gold as well. Also note that the auction house is the only method of using real-world currency (i.e. no using cash for player-to-player trades).
-Hardcore characters (a special difficulty mode that features permadeath for characters) cannot used the currency-based auction house, only the in-game gold one. "We're protecting players from themselves -- we don't want a situation where someone spent a lot of money and then that character --along with the items -- gets deleted due to combat or PVP soon afterwards," notes Pardo.
-Interestingly, Blizzard's official position is that if an item gets altered in a patch down the line, Blizzard will not provide a refund or any other accommodations if this happens. So buyer beware: your new loot could get nerfed.
-Finally, the gold-based auction house will be featured in the D3 beta. The currency-based auction house won't be live until launch. "It'd be mean to have that running since we wipe all the beta characters at the end," quips Pardo.
