MMO News Weekly #3 — PoE Resets, FFXIV Reveal, Albion Dragons

Edition #3 · Week of July 20 – July 26, 2026

If last edition was the tide going out, this one is the water rushing back in. The three resets we spent July counting down to have arrived, and the dominant theme across our tracked economies is price discovery — the frantic, high-margin scramble that happens when an entire market has to re-learn what everything is worth. Path of Exile wiped and came back a different game. FFXIV ran its single busiest two-day window in months. And Albion's players quietly stopped caring about the season they're in and started positioning for the one coming August 31. Here's what mattered, and what our own price tracking picked up.

Market Movers

Path of Exile's Curse of the Allflame is live — and every price we track was born three days ago. Path of Exile's 3.29 launched July 24, ending the Mirage liquidation exactly as scheduled and detonating every currency ratio in the game (Maxroll). Two structural changes are defining the opening economy. First, the league introduces Ducats — ten new tradeable crafting currencies (Kishara's, Brinehook's, Merrick's and the rest), each locked behind a specific Chart, which makes them artificially scarce and expensive in week one. Second, the socket-color rework removes color restrictions entirely, making Chromatic Orbs genuinely rare for the first time — they're commanding premiums over Chaos Orbs in the early economy, an inversion of one of the game's oldest ratios. Days 2–3 are historically the richest currency-per-hour window in any league; the traders who reached red maps first are printing. Set an alert on Chromatics before the supply floods.

FFXIV ran a reveal and a patch-eve at the same time — the highest-margin double-header the game gets. Final Fantasy XIV closed Fan Festival Berlin (July 25–26) with the full "Evercold" reveal (the 8.0 expansion, January 2027): a new tank job, Bastion, a redesigned "Seasons" item-level progression system that will reshape Market Board demand cycles at launch, and an FF7-collab raid series for Patch 8.01 (Sportskeeda). Layered on top: Patch 7.55 drops July 28, and July 27 was the final pre-patch trading day. Classic Dawntrail crafting reagents spiked hard into the deadline — the Phantom Weapons' final upgrade stage alone wants 1,200 units of Crystal Paste, and speculators are positioning on North Horn's new gathering nodes. Our Market Board data (below) shows exactly the reagent bid-up you'd expect.

Albion stopped trading Season 33 and started trading dragons. Albion Online is mid-season, but the market's attention jumped ahead on July 23 when Sandbox Interactive announced Dragonfire — dragons, a new Ancient Lands realm, a raid dungeon, and tradeable Fire Drake mounts — launching August 31, the same day Season 33 ends (Massively OP). The announcement is already pulling speculative capital toward dragon-adjacent materials and crafting-station access, and our data shows the flip side: the mid-season mount market is bleeding as players free up silver (numbers below).

WoW's economy is now a housing market. WoW Retail had no economy hotfixes this week, but the story that keeps eating the Auction House is Midnight's homestead decor market — individual decor pieces still moving for 20,000–90,000 gold, with Lumber remaining bind-on-pickup and the single most supply-constrained material in the expansion. Inscription leads decor recipe counts; Alchemy and Jewelcrafting sustain the consumable margins. The "Curse of Ula'tek" content update — still expected in August — carries Auction House quality-of-life improvements in its feature list, and Season 1 gear continues its slow slide toward obsolescence.

What Our Data Shows

The part only AuricDB can tell you — live prices from the markets themselves. As always on fresh baselines, we lean on item-level moves and trade volume over headline index percentages.

• Black Star (FFXIV) — 2,222g, +48.1% on 389 trades. The single highest-volume item in our FFXIV data, and the clearest pre-patch signal we track — the materia-and-melding bid-up that reliably front-runs a new content tier. It's not alone: Ra'Kaznar Ingot is up +134.7% (2,300g, 323 trades), Thunderyards Silk +315% (2,490g, 286 trades), and Star Quartz +50% (600g, 273 trades). Four crafting reagents surging in tandem on heavy volume is what July 28 looks like from inside the Market Board.
• Mirror of Kalandra (PoE) — 957,779c, +43.4%. On thin fresh-league volume (8 trades), so read it as a direction: the chase-tier top of the market firming while the everyday floor sits near zero — Gemcutter's Prism at 3c (−50%) and Stacked Deck at 3c (−62.5%) against a flat 1c Chaos Orb anchor. Fracturing Orb (924c, +269.6%) is the early crafting-currency standout. These are the first prices of a brand-new economy; expect wild swings for another week.
• Darkmoon Deck: Void (WoW Retail) — 5,000g, +73.1% on 212 trades. The pattern we called two editions ago holds: trinket decks carry their value into the next tier while disposable Season 1 plate gets dumped. Its sibling Darkmoon Deck: Blood cooled to 3,718g (−17.4%) after last week's run — worth watching which deck the market settles on before Season 2.
• Swiftclaw (Albion) — 68,929 silver, −34.3%, and Expert's Armored Horse −42.5% (68,999). The mount market is the soft spot again as capital rotates toward Dragonfire speculation. Meanwhile Novice's Bag is up +61.8% (979 silver) — the reliable tell that new and returning players are kitting up mid-season. And Adept's Rune has settled flat at 8 silver, a quiet end to the item that swung −54% then +157% across our last two editions.
• Guild Wars 2 stayed the calmest market we track: no patch until August 11, movers clustered within a few percent of flat, and nothing on the Trading Post you'd call a story. After a busy month elsewhere, boring is a feature — and the Flip Finder will catch the first weapon that breaks the calm.

Around the Games

Path of Exile — fresh league, all eyes on Ducat and Chromatic price discovery. FFXIV — Fan Fest reveal into patch-eve; crafting reagents peaking. Albion — Season 33 rolls on (Final Invasion Day Aug 29) but the trade is Dragonfire; mounts sliding. WoW Retail — housing decor still the dominant AH story; Token near 258,000 gold; Season 2 prep continues. WoW Classic (MoP) — Phase 5 Siege of Orgrimmar mid-cycle; a July 21 hotfix buffed Coffer of Celestial Chance charm yields and opened Challenge Mode Platinum toys to the exchange; third-party gold near $23.20/100k. Not yet in our live tracking. PoE 2 — mid-league and quiet; the 0.5.5 patch slipped from late July to early September to clear GGG's August race calendar, so no reset until autumn. RAID: Shadow Legends — the monthly Haggibah the Nestmaid fusion is the beat; recent updates doubled Iron Twins' Fortress rewards and bumped the Soul Merchant refresh to 4x daily. A collection cycle, not a market move.

The Wider Market

• OSRS's Wyrmscraig weapon is the GE speculation of the week. Jagex revealed the Isle of Wyrmscraig rewards July 26 (content launches July 29), and one item is dominating the pre-launch book: Hallowfell, a 75-Attack two-hander that cleaves up to three targets. Jagex's own line — it "should significantly outperform every other melee weapon in the game" when hitting three — has the community projecting an 80M–150M GP opening price. The July 22 Summer Sweep-Up also reworked Inquisitor armour (set bonus split into per-piece bonuses) and nerfed Burning Claws. OSRS isn't on AuricDB (yet), but this is a textbook new-BiS launch to watch.
• RuneScape 3 rebalanced the mid-game. The July 20 Mid-Game Rebalance re-tiered Fletching, retuned God Wars Dungeons, and improved Divination energy rates — a broad patch touching several supply streams at once, so expect GE recalibration on affected materials (Massively OP).
• EVE Online is rerouting a supply chain. Version 24.01 (July 23) added station beacons for four Crystalline minerals ahead of the Item Traders' removal on July 28 — a deliberate change to where players source those minerals, forcing production chains to reposition. The June Monthly Economic Report confirmed the broader picture: PLEX down 20.1% over the year since the Global PLEX Market unified, and Mineral/Ship/Module indices all down double digits year-over-year — deflation across the board.
• Black Desert is overhauling its gearing loop. The July 26 Global Lab update (hitting live July 29–30) removes the seasonal Boss Equipment Exchange, slashes Agris Essence enhancement costs by 33–60%, and adds a Cron Stone processing pathway. The 33rd class, Agent, launches July 30 with a new tradeable-drop zone — a reliable spike in leveling consumables and accessories at every new-class launch.
• Lost Ark's gold is still being bound. The July 15 Summer of Extremes rebalance continues to reshape the market, shifting a slice of raid gold to non-tradeable bound gold and introducing the new Coin of Fire and Ice from Kazeros Extreme (up to 45,000 gold + 200 Coins per clear). Server merges and the Warpweaver class are queued for later in Q3.
• New World: Aeternum entered terminal deflation. With all real-money purchases disabled July 20 ahead of the January 31, 2027 shutdown, the Trading Post is now a closed system with no new currency inflow — a slow, one-way compression. A grim but instructive look at how a player economy behaves when the taps are welded shut.

The Week Ahead

• July 28 — FFXIV Patch 7.55 (Occult Crescent: North Horn, final Phantom Weapon stage, Forked Tower: Magic); EVE Crystalline mineral Item Traders removed.
• July 29 — OSRS Isle of Wyrmscraig launches — Hallowfell and new tradeables enter the GE; BDO live-server maintenance (July 29–30).
• July 30 — Agent class launches in Black Desert; Archboss Ramux, Throne & Liberty's first two-phase Archboss, goes live (top-tier loot enters the market).
• August 29 / 31 — Albion Final Invasion Day (Aug 29), then Dragonfire and Season 33's end (Aug 31); Fire Drake mounts arrive.
• August (est.) — WoW Patch 12.1 "Curse of Ula'tek" and Midnight Season 2. Still no firm date.
• Early September — PoE 2 0.5.5 event and soft economy reset.

Next edition lands Monday — with a first real read on the Allflame currency market, post-7.55 FFXIV reagent prices, and Hallowfell's launch-day number.