MMO News Weekly #13 — OSRS Lifts Its Grand Exchange Cap

Edition #13 · Week of September 28 – October 4, 2026

For weeks this beat has been pricing guesses. This week it got a calendar: Blizzard dated World of Warcraft Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5, Jagex dated an Old School RuneScape raid and a second OSRS economy, and CCP dated EVE Online's Crimson Harvest. Almost every one of those dates is a loot faucet or a new place to burn currency.

Market Movers

World of Warcraft Retail finally dates patch 12.1.5 — and puts a clock on crafters. On September 29 Blizzard confirmed it for October 13 (NA) and October 14 (EU). The economy content beats the content: ten Ascendant Venomstones raise the item level of a fully upgraded WoW Retail Season 2 Hero, Mythic or top-quality Tidal Crafted weapon, trinket or necklace. That makes WoW Retail crafted weapons, trinkets and necklaces upgrade targets rather than stopgaps — the first real bid on that complex since the Season 2 reset gutted it. Behind it sits the 5,000,000g Sporebearer Fungal Strider (7,000,000g fully optioned) and a new weekly sink trading raw gold to Orin for an extra Nebulous Voidcore. Two weeks to stock mats. WoW Retail dashboard.

Guild Wars 2 opens a magic-find faucet and pays in Mystic Coins. The September 29 build added Challenge Mode to Guild Wars 2's Nexus of Eternity raid, the Solitary Throne fractal and the Nexus of Eternity Convergence — and, quietly, the Dismount Rush bonus event, running to October 6 at 19:00 UTC. Clear events in Central Tyria or Heart of Maguuma without summoning a mount and you stack +20% magic find per stack, three stacks, +60% on everything you kill. Three repeatable regional dailies each pay one Mystic Coin — a legendary-crafting currency minted three at a time, per account, per day, for eight days, into a Guild Wars 2 Trading Post that has not moved in a month.

Albion Online runs a Fame Rush and pointedly refuses to touch the tradeable Fame. From October 1 (Albion Asia) and October 2 (Albion Americas and Europe), Albion Online pays +25% Fame on all activities for ten days. The exclusion list is the interesting part: PvP kills, Challenge progression, and Tomes of Insight — the one Fame instrument that actually trades. Sandbox Interactive turned the faucet on and bolted the market shut behind it. October's Harvest Challenge opened the same day, dripping Adventurer's Tomes, silver and resources into the Albion Online market.

What Our Data Shows

• Path of Exile's Allflame league re-widens its Mirror discount to 60.2%. Mirror of Kalandra prints 395,049c in Path of Exile's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league against 992,063c in PoE Standard, out from 58.3% a week ago — one week of convergence, reversed. The Allflame Exalted Orb doubled to 3.01c while its PoE Standard twin sat dead flat at 14.0c, and PoE's Allflame Fracturing Orb collapsed 95.3% to 3.70c against 930c in PoE Standard.
• WoW Retail's Tarnished Dawnlit bid is now a three-realm floor. Tarnished Dawnlit Band 1,000g +567.2% on the WoW Retail realm Azjol-Nerub, 700g +133.1% on Stormrage, 420g +72.1% on Area 52, with Tarnished Dawnlit Loop 1,689g +68.9% on 207 trades. Edition #12 asked whether that was a floor or noise; three realms is a floor — even as the WoW Retail realm indices fell again (Area 52 −7.2%, Illidan −7.0%, Stormrage −6.5%, Azjol-Nerub −4.1%).
• FFXIV's crafting complex is being sold and its armour bought. Final Fantasy XIV material prices are −14.5% and weapons −25.1% on the day while FFXIV armour is +9.4%. Thunderyards Silk ran +3,660% to 1,880g on 263 trades; White Gold Ingot went the other way, 300g −86.7% on 328. FFXIV's Black Star still refuses to have one price: 10,486g +1,474.4% on the FFXIV world Gilgamesh against 1,399g −63.2% aggregate, a third week.
• Albion Online's bag ladder bid at both ends and sagged in the middle. Novice's Bag 1,111 silver +52.6% and Master's Bag 98,892 +23.7%, against Adept's Bag −1.8% and −6.9% — exactly inverted from last week. The Albion mount unwind hit week four: Swiftclaw 55,000 −32.1%, Journeyman's Riding Horse 11,878 −20.6%.

Around the Games

Guild Wars 2 shipped four builds in four days and the Trading Post index still printed 0.0% for a third consecutive week — 24,134 of 27,758 items flat, with Iron Ore at 70 trades and −3.3% once again the only liquid thing on the board.

WoW Retail's highest-volume items were seasonal rather than seasonal-content: the Brewfest pair split hard, Terrific Tankard O' Terror 495g +88.9% against Tremendous Tankard O' Terror 110g −45.2% on ~250 trades each, while the October Darkmoon Faire opened on the 4th and took Darkmoon Deck: Blood to −52.2%.

WoW Forever got its first enforcement test. On September 28 Blizzard's Kaivax posted that while RMT sellers have always been actioned, "we will increasingly take action against buyers' accounts", warning WoW Forever players that accepting gifts from strangers can get them actioned too. Days later Blizzard stripped roughly 500g of viewer "donations" from streamer Ziqo, leaving him nine silver and no ban, which satisfied nobody.

Final Fantasy XIV's October 1 report terminated 470 accounts for RMT participation and 355 for advertising, both easing, while botting suspensions nearly doubled to 60. Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 closed their ExileCon 2026 qualifier races with no PoE 3.30 announcement; RAID: Shadow Legends is mid-Theimios fusion; and WoW MoP Classic, WoW Season of Discovery, WoW Classic Era and WoW TBC Anniversary were all quiet.

The Wider Market

Old School RuneScape lifted its Grand Exchange cash ceiling on September 30. "GE Improvements: Beyond Max Cash" lets OSRS offers exceed 2,147,483,647 gp by automatically mixing coins and platinum tokens, for an effective ceiling near 2.149 trillion gp. Item stacks are still capped and GE tax unchanged — but the detail traders should care about is that OSRS guide prices now update every three hours instead of every 24, and may move 20% a day instead of 5%. A decade-old reference price just got eight times faster and four times looser.

Then Jagex dated a second OSRS economy. At the RuneFest 2026 OSRS Summit on October 3, Hardcore Worlds were confirmed for November 4: single-life characters with full Grand Exchange access on a separate economy from main Old School RuneScape — and a one-way valve into it, since a player who dies may transfer to the main worlds keeping their gear. The Fractured Archive, OSRS Raid 4, lands October 20.

EVE Online is about to double its PvP loot drops for a month. Crimson Harvest, announced October 1, runs October 6 to November 3, and for the duration 90% of items from ships destroyed in PvP drop outside highsec, with capsules having a 50% chance to shed implants. That is the cleanest dated supply shock on the beat: a month in which EVE Online destroys far less of what it kills.

Storylines to Watch

• WoW Retail Midnight patch 12.1.5 — dated for October 13 (NA) / October 14 (EU); Ascendant Venomstones make crafted weapons, trinkets and necklaces upgradeable.
• OSRS Grand Exchange reform — shipped September 30 after sitting undated since June; guide prices now refresh every three hours with a 20% band.
• OSRS Hardcore Worlds — November 4, a separate Grand Exchange economy with a one-way death transfer into main OSRS.
• Albion Online Dragonfire Patch 2 supply shock — two weeks on, no Dragon Bone, Dragon Wing or Drake Egg print has appeared on our Albion board at all.
• PoE 3.29 Allflame league currency — Mirror discount back out to 60.2% and the Allflame Exalted Orb doubled, with no PoE 3.30 date yet.

The Week Ahead

• EVE Online — Crimson Harvest, 90% PvP loot drops outside highsec, October 6 – November 3, 2026 UTC
• Guild Wars 2 — Dismount Rush ends October 6, 19:00 UTC; Code of Creation raid Legendary Mode, October 13, 2026 UTC
• Albion Online — Guild Season 34 mid-season Invasion Day, October 10, 2026 UTC; Fame Rush ends October 12, 2026 UTC
• WoW Retail — Midnight patch 12.1.5 goes live, October 13 (NA) and October 14 (EU), 2026 UTC
• OSRS — The Fractured Archive (Raid 4) launches, October 20, 2026 UTC
• Final Fantasy XIV — Tokyo Fan Festival, October 31, 2026 UTC
• WoW Forever — launch, November 4, 2026 UTC; OSRS — Hardcore Worlds launch, November 4, 2026 UTC
• Path of Exile — ExileCon 2026, November 7–8, 2026 UTC