MMO News Weekly #2 — PoE Wipe, WoW Sell-Off, Albion Bottoms

Edition #2 · Week of July 13 – July 19, 2026

If last edition was the map, this one is the tide going out. The dominant theme across the games we track is transition pricing — the specific, exploitable distortions that appear when an economy knows it's about to change. Path of Exile is days from a full wipe and its currency market is already draining. WoW's crafters are unloading gear that Season 2 will make obsolete. Albion's Season 33 deflation is bottoming out right on the schedule we called two weeks ago. And out on the wider beat, a survival MMO offered a grim reminder of what happens when the rules of a market fail entirely. Here's what mattered, and what our own price tracking picked up.

Market Movers

Path of Exile's Mirage economy is being liquidated — the wipe lands July 24. Path of Exile's 3.28 Mirage league closed July 20, with 3.29 Curse of the Allflame launching July 24 (1 PM PDT) (Maxroll). Our currency tracking shows the classic end-league split: chase items firm as they migrate to Standard while everyday consumables get dumped (numbers below). But the real story is a structural one for traders — Allflame makes all sockets white by default, meaning any gem fits any socket. That guts the historical demand for Chromatic Orbs, one of the most-traded currencies in the game; expect Chromatics to spike briefly on rarer drops, then collapse as the color-matching problem simply disappears. Second, Mirage's Djinn mechanic — the league's primary Scarab pipeline — is gone, and even with doubled Betrayal Safehouse chest yields, the community consensus is a net Scarab supply crunch at league start. Scarab prices are the single biggest opening-week opportunity we're watching. Set an alert before Thursday.

FFXIV crafters are front-running Patch 7.55 — and Fan Fest Berlin is the wild card. Final Fantasy XIV's Patch 7.55 arrives July 28 (Occult Crescent: North Horn, the final Phantom Weapon upgrade stage, Forked Tower: Magic), and the Market Board is already in its pre-patch window. Our data shows heavy churn in exactly the reagents you'd expect crafters and melders to be stockpiling ahead of a new content tier (below). Layered on top: Fan Festival Berlin runs July 25–26, where Square Enix is expected to drop fresh Evercold expansion details — historically a same-day spike event for crafting mats, housing furnishings, and any newly revealed cosmetics. The pre-patch-into-reveal double-header is the highest-margin window FFXIV gets outside a raid launch.

WoW's Season 1 gear is heading for the exits ahead of Midnight's next tier. WoW Retail is prepping for Patch 12.1 "Curse of Ula'tek," now pointing at ~August 11 with Midnight Season 2 a week behind it (Massively OP). Season 1 embellished gear will be statistically outclassed within two weeks of the new season, and our Auction House data shows the sell-off already underway — crafted armor pieces shedding 30–70% on the week. The patch also brings a one-time Profession Knowledge reset, which will scramble crafting supply as specialists pivot to whatever Season 2 makes profitable, plus persistent AH filters — a small but genuine quality-of-life win for anyone scanning the market daily. Traders sitting on Season 1 embellishment mats are in their last stockpiling window.

Albion's fresh-season floor is bouncing — right on schedule. Two weeks ago we said Albion Online's Season 33 gear deflation would bottom "a week or two into the season, not on day one." It did. The mid-tier gear and enchantment runes that led July's slide have reversed hard in our data (below), while the sell-off has rotated into mounts. Keeper Uprising runs through August 31, with the Ashborn faction dropping Might and Season Points — pulling non-PvP players into seasonal scoring and keeping a steady bid under mid-tier consumables and gear. The re-gearing dip is closing; the easy buyer's window is nearly done.

What Our Data Shows

The part only AuricDB can tell you — live prices from the markets themselves. A note on the numbers: several per-game indices are still settling on young baselines, so we lean on item-level moves and trade volume over headline index percentages where the baseline is too fresh to trust.

• Mirror of Kalandra (PoE) — 711,287c, +12.4%. The clearest end-league signal we track: the game's ultimate chase item firming as wealth consolidates and migrates to Standard, even as the everyday currencies bleed out. Gemcutter's Prism is down −60% (2c) and Stacked Deck −50% (4c) against a flat Chaos Orb 1c baseline — the liquidation dumping consumables while the top end holds. Every one of these prices resets to zero on July 24.
• Black Star (FFXIV) — 3,500g, +170.9% on 343 trades. The single highest-volume item in our FFXIV data this week, and a textbook pre-patch materia/crafting signal. Star Quartz is right behind it (3,599g, +206.8%, 260 trades). This is exactly the reagent bid-up that reliably front-runs a new raid/foray tier — the July 28 window is doing what we expected.
• Visage of Unseen Truths (WoW Retail) — 178,458g, +27.5% on 222 trades. The standout gainer while the rest of the board sells off — durable, raid-relevant items holding value as disposable Season 1 gear gets dumped. Contrast it with the Breastplate of the Final Defense (30,000g, −70%) leading the crafted-armor slide. Darkmoon Deck: Blood (4,999g, +42.8%) climbing fits the same pattern — decks carry into the next tier; last-season plate doesn't.
• Adept's Rune (Albion) — 18 silver, +157.1% on 134 trades. Our cleanest called shot. This exact item was −54% last week; it's the top gainer in our Albion data now. The Adept's Assassin Jacket made the same U-turn (from −61% to +63.9%), and bags are surging (Master's Bag +75%). The deflation has rotated into mounts instead — the Swiftclaw is off −72.6%.
• Alpha Conduit (GW2) — 8g, +12.5%. A rare mover in an otherwise placid market: the Guild Wars 2 index sits at 1,081 (+1.6%) across 50 Trading Post items, with weapons and armor barely budging. After the July balance pass, this is what a healthy, boring economy looks like — and boring is a feature. Worth watching whether the post-patch build churn puts more weapons like this in motion; the Flip Finder will catch it if it does.

Around the Games

Guild Wars 2 — The steadiest market we track. The July 15 balance patch (delayed a day by an ArenaNet hardware failure) reworked Weaver, Druid, Harbinger, and Bladesworn, and flattened PvP/WvW Rush reward curves — meta shifts that historically ripple into demand for specific stat combos, sigils, and runes on the Trading Post. Nothing dramatic in the data yet; index +1.6%. WoW Retail (Midnight) — the busiest AH we track, all of it pointing at the ~Aug 11 Patch 12.1 / Season 2 window; Season 1 gear selling off now. WoW Classic — the TBC Anniversary realms are limping through an AH sorting bug from the July 7 patch (sort options default to Current Bid/Total Price regardless of settings, no hotfix confirmed) — a real efficiency tax on active flippers until it's fixed. WoW MoP Classic — approaching its first anniversary in Phase 4/5, with Siege of Orgrimmar on the summer horizon; third-party gold sits around $23.20/100k. Not yet in our live tracking, so we're watching from the sidelines. Path of Exile — end-league liquidation now, full reset July 24. FFXIV — pre-7.55 crafting churn into a Fan Fest weekend. Albion — fresh-season floor bouncing, mounts now the soft spot. RAID: Shadow Legends — a quiet stretch for its collection economy after early July's Haggibah fusion and nine-champion wave; no major market beat this week.

The Wider Market

• Dune: Awakening's economy collapsed. The week's cautionary tale: a second Solari duplication exploit hit the CHOAM Exchange shortly after Funcom patched the first, and combined with RMT buying it triggered catastrophic hyperinflation — basic crafting mats up 10–100x in three days, Aluminum hitting 250,000 Solari, high-tier items listing past a billion. Funcom issued a ban wave and patched both holes, but with no rollback confirmed, the inflated floor is baked in. A textbook lesson in what a dupe does to a supply-and-demand market: it resets the floor without draining the wealth. Dune isn't on AuricDB (yet), but it's exactly the kind of live economy we'd want eyes on.
• OSRS is rebuilding the Grand Exchange for the ultra-rich. Jagex published its "Beyond Max Cash" plan — a Coins + Platinum Tokens system lifting the effective trade ceiling from 2.147b GP to roughly 2.149 trillion, targeted for late summer/autumn. It finally lets 3rd Age-tier items that had outgrown the cap trade on-exchange instead of in opaque, scam-prone P2P deals. The 2% GE tax stays. One of the most structurally significant GE changes in the game's history for the top of the market.
• EVE Online's war economy is recovering. The June Monthly Economic Report shows production and mining values rising and Active ISK Delta turning positive — the post-expansion returning-player pattern — as Cradle of War beds in. The new Exordium starter region runs a deliberate two-tier structure (−20% mission/bounty ISK, higher fees, Grade-0 ores) to keep newbie space from competing with established highsec income. New hulls and modules should keep manufacturing demand firm.
• Lost Ark tightened the gold faucet. "Summer of Extremes" is live — Aegir Extreme pays up to 45,000 gold per clear — but the consequential change is structural: 50% of gold earned below Item Level 1,710 now converts to Bound (non-tradeable) gold. That's a direct RMT deterrent and an inflation check that compresses the supply of liquid gold at the game's mid tiers. Server merges are also inbound, reducing market fragmentation.
• Black Desert repriced the Central Market. A July 2 patch raised price caps across Blood, Meat, and Empty Bottle materials and — via a new guaranteed Artifact-to-Lightstone conversion — cut the Purified Lightstone floor nearly in half (8.25M → 4.5M silver). More predictable supply, lower ceiling.

The Week Ahead

• July 24 (1 PM PDT) — PoE 3.29 Curse of the Allflame launches. Full economy reset; watch Scarabs and Chromatics from the first hour.
• July 25–26 — FFXIV Fan Festival Berlin — Evercold reveals; expect same-day Market Board spikes on crafting mats and any new cosmetics.
• July 28 — FFXIV Patch 7.55 (Occult Crescent: North Horn, final Phantom Weapon stage, Forked Tower: Magic).
• July 29 — OSRS Wyrmscraig — new tradeables enter the economy (Hallowfell, Jeweller's Chisel; expect gem-cutting throughput to pressure gem prices).
• Early–mid August — PoE 2 0.5.5 event league (soft economy reset); Aug 31 closes Albion's Keeper Uprising.
• ~August 11 (est.) — WoW Patch 12.1 "Curse of Ula'tek"; Midnight Season 2 a week behind. No firm date yet.

Next edition lands Monday — with post-launch Allflame numbers, a first read on the 3.29 Scarab and Chromatic markets, and whether Albion's floor held.