Edition #10 · Week of September 7 – September 13, 2026
Blizzard used BlizzCon's opening ceremony to announce a fourth Warcraft economy, Square Enix shipped a patch that gave Final Fantasy XIV's crafters something to smelt for, and Albion Online's dragons kept eating the mount market. Three ways to move a price, one week.
Market Movers
BlizzCon 2026 gives Warcraft a fourth auction house: World of Warcraft: Forever, November 4. Announced September 12 at the BlizzCon opening ceremony, World of Warcraft: Forever is a third, separate WoW client — not a change to WoW Classic Era, WoW MoP Classic or WoW TBC Anniversary. The level cap stays at 60, but the world around it does not: three new zones, a thousand-plus new quests across the 1–60 bracket, nine more dungeons, 10- and 20-player raids, a new neutral elven race, all included with any active WoW subscription. The trade angle: a brand-new level-60 order book opens November 4, with a September 17 beta to price it in, and nothing has been said about whether professions, gold or anything else carries in from existing Classic realms — assume nothing does until Blizzard says so. Blizzard dated nothing for WoW Retail: the Midnight follow-up Eclipse landed without a date, The Last Titan is aiming for 2027.
Final Fantasy XIV's patch 7.56 flipped the ingot tape green. FFXIV patch 7.56 went live September 8 with Dawntrail's final story chapter and the Beastmaster limited job — melee, level 1 to 50, sharing its gear with Monk and Samurai. That combination matters more than it looks: no new gear tier means no new gear market, but a fresh 1-to-50 levelling wave runs straight through mid-tier crafted melee kit and the metal that feeds it. Our board turned within the week.
Albion Online's mount bid broadened just as Guild Season 34 opened. Dragonfire made ordinary mounts feed for the Firewing Drake two weeks ago, and the bid has now spread well past cheap riding horses. Albion's Dragonfire Patch 1 on September 8 then halved small Ancient Lands portal lock times to 15 minutes, widened entry windows from 3 minutes to 8 and stripped 50% of the health off large-portal trash — all of which raises throughput on the Dragon Bone and Dragon Wing supply chain. Guild Season 34 opened Saturday September 12 with two new Guild Might levels, Ancient Lands and Dragons, and Resilience Penetration removed.
What Our Data Shows
FFXIV metals bid, FFXIV fibre offered. Post-7.56, AuricDB's Final Fantasy XIV boards went one way on metal: Bismuth Ingot at 3,000 gil on Adamantoise, +350.5%; Tungsten Steel Ingot at 3,000 gil on Gilgamesh, +328.6%; Dwarven Mythril Ingot at 1,249 gil on Balmung, +213%; Steel Ingot at 393 gil on Behemoth, +162%. Mythrite Nugget is up on three FFXIV worlds at once (+317.4% Gilgamesh, +45% Adamantoise, +23.1% Behemoth). Cloth and leather went the other way: Undyed Cotton Cloth on Adamantoise is 25 gil, −94.4%, Aldgoat Leather −89.4%, Undyed Woolen Cloth on Behemoth −79.9%. If you were long FFXIV cloth into the patch, the patch was not for you.
Path of Exile's league discount widened instead of closing. A Mirror of Kalandra trades at 369,846 chaos in Path of Exile's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league against 967,492 chaos in PoE Standard — a 61.8% league discount, up from 56% last week, after the Allflame Mirror fell about 17% week-on-week while the Standard Mirror barely moved. The gap runs across the whole Allflame board: Exalted Orb 3.03c vs 15.0c in PoE Standard, Ancient Orb 10.0c vs 30.9c. Seven weeks in, migration is not closing that spread — it is feeding it.
Albion's mount trade climbed the price ladder. Swiftclaw printed 768,972 silver, +774.4% on 132 trades, and Journeyman's Riding Horse is +25.6% on 153. The bag complex that bled for a month reversed: Expert's Bag is +27% on 201 trades, top volume on Albion Online's board, after −35.7% last week. In Caerleon on Americas, Season 34 hit the tape the same day — Master's Longbow +58.7%, Master's Warbow +27.9%, on 19–22 trades each.
WoW Retail's Sin'dorei tool bubble finished deflating. Last week the volume vanished; this week the prices followed. Alchemist's Sturdy Mixing Rod is 1,400g on the WoW Retail realm Illidan, −74.4%, after printing +40.1% at 2,800g on Area 52 seven days ago. Chef's Smooth Rolling Pin is −78.8%. Round trip complete.
GW2's Trading Post is still one item wide. AuricDB's Guild Wars 2 index is up 14.9% on the week, and Iron Ore — 71 trades, +16.7% — is essentially the entire move; every other constituent on the GW2 board printed exactly four trades.
Around the Games
Guild Wars 2 detailed Code of Creation on September 8 ahead of its September 15 launch: the Leyspring Hollows zone, the Nexus of Eternity raid and 50-player Convergence, the Solitary Throne fractal, and — the bit that moves mats — the Wages of Stars legendary sword plus the Tenebral Ward armor and Shining Ward weapon sets. Precursor and legendary-material demand is the trade, and the GW2 Trading Post has not priced it. Worth an alert before Tuesday.
WoW Retail was quiet on the ledger: the September 9 and 10 hotfixes were pure class tuning, nothing touching the auction house. Patch 12.1.5 is still undated, with Blizzard Watch's September 9 read of the eight-week cadence pointing at October 6 — when that 5,000,000-gold Sporebearer Fungal Strider sink starts pulling. WoW TBC Anniversary got the non-announcement of the week: BlizzCon was where Anniversary-realm progression was meant to get clarity, and Phase 4, Fury of the Sunwell, is still "autumn 2026" undated.
Path of Exile 2 clarified something left open a week ago: Forbidden Rites and Runes of Aldur run fully separate economies, and both end at the PoE 2 1.0 launch on December 11. RAID: Shadow Legends is still on Echoes of Oz, Ozilda and Dorothy Gale summonable from November 10. WoW MoP Classic (Phase 5, Siege of Orgrimmar), WoW Classic Era and WoW Season of Discovery were quiet.
The Wider Market
EVE Online finally published its August 2026 Monthly Economic Report on September 9, closing a gap that had left July as the newest data for weeks. Mining value is recovering from the May slide, but the Mineral Price Index is still trending down and the Module Price Index fell about 4% month-on-month.
Lost Ark completed server merge phase 2 on September 9 — Balthorr into Inanna on NA East, Gienah into Arcturus on EU Central — leaving NA East with three servers and EU Central with two. Auction house listings are cancelled and mailed on a 30-day claim at merge: expect a liquidity hole, then tighter spreads.
Old School RuneScape made Ancient Warriors' equipment Grand Exchange tradeable on September 2 — a market-structure change that deserved more notice than it got, moving a long-standing player-to-player trade onto a public order book.
Storylines to Watch
- World of Warcraft: Forever (Classic+) — announced September 12, launching November 4, beta September 17; a level-60 economy from scratch, no word on what carries over.
- Final Fantasy XIV's Dawntrail 7.5x → Evercold cycle — patch 7.56 landed September 8 and the FFXIV ingot complex turned hard while cloth kept falling.
- Albion Online's Dragonfire mount-as-material economy — the bid climbed from riding horses to Swiftclaws, and Dragonfire Patch 1 opened the Ancient Lands tap wider.
- Path of Exile's 3.29 Allflame league economy — the Mirror discount to PoE Standard widened to 61.8% rather than closing.
- WoW Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5 — still undated; the estimated October 6 slot is when the 5M-gold mount sink starts.
- EVE Online's mineral supply chain — the August MER arrived September 9; mining recovering, mineral and module indices still soft.
- Lost Ark's server merges — phase 2 landed September 9; NA East at three servers, EU Central at two.
The Week Ahead
- Guild Wars 2 — Code of Creation, final Visions of Eternity update, September 15 UTC
- World of Warcraft: Forever — beta opens, September 17 UTC
- RuneScape 3 — Leagues II: Equilibrium ends, September 21 UTC
- Dune: Awakening — console launch and character-centric PC update, September 22 UTC
- Guild Wars 2 — Code of Creation Challenge Mode, September 29 UTC
- Albion Online — Guild Season 34 mid-season Invasion Day and storage payout, October 10 UTC
- World of Warcraft: Forever — launch, November 4 UTC
- Path of Exile — ExileCon 2026, Auckland, November 7–8 UTC
- Path of Exile 2 — 1.0 launch, ending the Runes of Aldur and Forbidden Rites leagues, December 11 UTC