MMO News Weekly #1 — PoE Reset, WoW Restock, Albion Cools

Edition #1 · Covering June 19 – July 18, 2026

The markets in one line: Path of Exile's Mirage economy is in its final days before Curse of the Allflame, WoW's Midnight profession market is heating up ahead of Season 2, and Albion's fresh season is already cooling gear prices — three resets pulling in three different directions.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of AuricDB's weekly market report. This first edition maps where MMO player economies stand right now — what's moving, what's about to reset, and what our own price tracking is picking up across the games we cover. New editions land every Monday from here.

Market Movers

Path of Exile's Mirage economy is winding down — expect a hard reset in days. Path of Exile's 3.28 Mirage league ends July 20 at 3 PM PDT, followed by a four-day gap (with a teased interim event) before 3.29 Curse of the Allflame launches July 24 at 8 PM UTC (Maxroll). End-of-league is always the most volatile window in PoE trading: currency ratios swing as players liquidate, mirror-tier items get dumped, and standard-bound speculation begins. Our PoE currency tracking is already showing that churn — Exalted Orbs spiking against a steady Chaos Orb baseline (more below). Allflame is crafting-focused, with a socket-color overhaul, a new Dead Man's Sulphur crafting currency, and 15 new uniques — every one of those is a fresh price to discover on July 24.

WoW's Midnight profession market is climbing ahead of Season 2. WoW Retail sits on Patch 12.0.7 "Revelations," but the real story is the Patch 12.1 "Curse of Ula'tek" lead-in quest that went live July 7, with Season 2 widely expected in August (Wowhead). Season-2 prep means crafters restocking, and our Auction House data shows Sin'dorei profession reagents and tools running hot — the kind of pre-patch demand spike that reliably front-runs a new raid tier. Traders sitting on enchanting and inscription mats should watch the August window closely.

Albion's Season 33 opened with a sell-off. Albion Online's Season 33 began July 4 with the new Keeper Uprising event and tweaks to territory Season Point generation and control costs (Albion Online). Fresh seasons compress mid-tier gear prices as everyone re-gears and dumps last-season stock, and our Albion index is down on the week with adept-tier bags, mounts, and runes leading the slide. This is a buyer's window for anyone rebuilding a set — but the bottom usually comes a week or two into the season, not on day one.

FFXIV's Dawntrail patch cycle keeps the crafting board busy. FFXIV shipped Patch 7.51 on June 2 (the Dancing Mad Ultimate, plus the final Cosmic Exploration planet), with Patch 7.55 due July 28 to close out the Occult Crescent and the last Phantom Weapon relic stage (Nova Crystallis). Relic and Cosmic crafting keep steady demand under gatherable materials and intermediate ingots — our Market Board tracking shows very heavy churn in exactly those crafting reagents (details below), though the day-to-day swings are wide enough that we're treating the raw index as noise for now.

What Our Data Shows

This is the part only AuricDB can tell you — live prices from the markets themselves. A note on the numbers: several of our per-game indices were freshly re-based this week, so we're leaning on item-level moves and trade volume over headline index percentages where the baseline is too young to be meaningful.

• Sin'dorei Scribe's Spectacles (WoW Retail) — 14,473g, +399% on the day, 233 trades. The standout mover in our Auction House data, and a textbook Season-2 prep signal. A companion inscription reagent, the Sin'dorei Enchanter's Crystal, sits at 12,578g (+215%, 250 trades) — two profession staples bid up in tandem is exactly what you'd expect as crafters restock for a new tier.
• Darkmoon Deck: Void (WoW Retail) — 5,099g, +359%, 215 trades. Trinket decks tracking upward alongside the profession mats — worth watching whether this is genuine demand or a squeeze on thin supply. The Sun-Blessed Sickle gathering tool (8,633g, +116%) rounds out a clear "everyone's tooling up" picture.
• Exalted Orb (PoE) — 18c, +500%. A dramatic reading, but on thin end-league volume, so read it as a direction, not a settled price: Exalt demand firming against a flat 1c Chaos baseline is the classic late-league currency shift as the economy drains. This is the single number we'd most want confirmed after the 3.29 reset re-anchors everything.
• Adept's Rune (Albion) — 6 silver, −54%, 162 trades. Enchantment runes and adept-tier gear like the Adept's Assassin Jacket (−61%) leading Albion's early-season decline. The one green shoot: the humble Novice's Bag up +44% — new and returning players kitting out from scratch.
• Shiro's Leggings (GW2) — 33s, +11%. Our cleanest dataset: the Guild Wars 2 index sits at 1,201 (+1.7%) on 50 active Trading Post items — a calm, healthy market with the weapon category off −2.6% and armor up slightly. Nothing dramatic, which after Dragon Bash and a mid-July balance pass is exactly what a stable economy should look like.
• Black Star (FFXIV) — ~2,000g, 361 trades. Flagged, not featured: our Market Board data shows enormous volume on crafting reagents and ingots, consistent with relic/Cosmic crafting demand, but individual listings swing wildly enough that we're watching rather than calling a trend. One to revisit once the board settles.

Around the Games

Guild Wars 2 — the steadiest market we track. Index +1.7% on the week, Dragon Bash wrapped in June, a July 14 balance pass touched elementalist weapons, and the Black Lion store added the 800-gem Poolside Party Homestead package. No shocks. WoW Retail (Midnight) — the busiest AH in our data, all of it pointing at the August Season 2 window. WoW Classic — TBC Anniversary realms continue with GDKP raids still banned on NA/EU, a deliberate lever to keep gold-buying pressure off the economy; MoP Classic isn't yet in our tracking. Path of Exile — end-league volatility now, full reset July 24; PoE 2's Return of the Ancients (0.5.0) is mid-cycle and quiet by comparison. Albion — fresh-season gear deflation, a buyer's market for another week or two. FFXIV — heavy crafting-board churn into the July 28 patch. Watchlist: OSRS raised its Grand Exchange trade cap above 2.147b GP in mid-June — a structural change for the high-end bond and item market — alongside the Blood Moon Rises grandmaster quest; EVE Online's June economic report showed production and mining recovering post-Cradle of War, though the Mineral Price Index is still down ~52% year-on-year. RAID: Shadow Legends ran the Haggibah the Nestmaid traditional fusion (July 1–17), a 16-Rare, 4-Epic grind that reportedly wanted 20M+ silver banked to clear the artifact-enhancement stages — a collection sink more than a market move.

Industry Notes

The only business item with direct economic knock-on this window is structural, not corporate: WoW Classic's continued GDKP ban on Anniversary realms and OSRS's Grand Exchange cap raise are both deliberate interventions in how (and how much) players can move value. Both are worth tracking not as news but as changes to the rules of the markets themselves.

The Weeks Ahead

• July 20 — PoE Mirage (3.28) league ends (3 PM PDT); interim event window opens.
• July 24 — PoE 3.29 Curse of the Allflame launches (8 PM UTC). Full economy reset.
• July 28 — FFXIV Patch 7.55 (Occult Crescent finale, last Phantom Weapon relic stage).
• Early-to-mid August (est.) — WoW Patch 12.1 "Curse of Ula'tek" and Midnight Season 2. No firm date yet.
• Ongoing — Albion Season 33 gear market still settling; watch for the mid-tier price floor over the next 1–2 weeks.

Next edition lands Monday. We'll have post-launch Allflame numbers, a settled Albion floor, and — if the date holds — a first read on WoW's Season 2 economy.