Edition #15 · Week of October 12 – October 18, 2026
Three major patches landed inside three days — World of Warcraft Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5 on October 13, Guild Wars 2's Shadow of the Mad King the same day, Final Fantasy XIV's patch 7.57 alongside them. Only one moved a market, and it moved it sideways: when current-tier gear stops being worth buying, the volume goes somewhere, and in WoW Retail it went into the recipes.
Market Movers
WoW Retail's patch 12.1.5 turns the auction house into a recipe market. Blizzard shipped Midnight patch 12.1.5 on October 13 in the Americas and October 14 in Europe, carrying the Decor crafting cuts that dropped lumber requirements across most crafted Decor and took the Apothecary's Worktable's Black Lotus requirement from eight to one. The response on WoW Retail was total: every one of the twelve highest-volume items on our board is now a recipe, pattern, formula, design or schematic. A week ago they were gear and Brewfest tankards. Anyone who read the WoW Retail Decor change as a lumber trade read it half right — the bid went into the crafting knowledge, not the materials.
Path of Exile's Allflame Mirror discount reaches 63.8%. With the PoE 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league dated to close November 9, Path of Exile's league-versus-Standard spread set a third consecutive record. More interesting than the Mirror is that the split is now visible at category level: Allflame armour, weapons and miscellaneous all print −5.6% and Allflame materials −7.5%, while the same categories in PoE Standard print +2.3%, +2.3% and +1.9%. For fifteen weeks the Allflame discount was a single-item curiosity. With 21 days left, it is the whole economy repricing against the exit.
Albion Online freezes the loot risk out of Dragonfire. The October 16 Albion Online Dev Talk introduced Item Freeze: gear carried into the Dragonfire areas is protected, and only loot earned inside can be lost on death. In a full-loot economy, destruction is demand — Albion Online's crafted-gear trade exists because players lose kit. Capping that inside Albion's busiest new content is quietly the most deflationary thing the game has shipped this quarter.
What Our Data Shows
WoW Retail's recipe board. Pattern: Arcanoweave Cord at 4,950g +394.6% on 283 trades and Recipe: Silvermoon Spire Fountain at 8,800g +216.9% on 259 led the bid — the Silvermoon fountain being precisely the sort of Decor line the WoW Retail lumber cuts targeted. Pattern: World Tender's Rootslippers took the volume crown at 2,398g +139.8% on 299 trades and went two-sided by realm: +450% on the WoW Retail realm Azjol-Nerub against −67.3% on Area 52. Worth a look on the Flip Finder.
Path of Exile's Mirror of Kalandra. The Mirror trades at 356,792c (−4.3%) in PoE's 3.29 Allflame league against 985,902c, unchanged, in PoE Standard — a 63.8% league discount, out from 62.5%.
FFXIV's Balmung. The FFXIV world Balmung's thirty-day reading deepened to −45.6%, and −11.9% on the week, a seventh consecutive down week — while its Occult Necklace of Blood sat unchanged at 17,975,000 gil on 10 trades for a seventh week, still Balmung's highest-volume item. FFXIV materials printed −24.7% overall, led by Rose Gold Ingot at 94g −67.6% on 295 trades. The one genuine bid: Ra'Kaznar Ingot 812g +25.1% on 261, reversing last week's −85.9%.
Guild Wars 2's flat tape. The Guild Wars 2 Trading Post index printed 0.0% for a fifth straight week — 24,228 of 27,753 items flat, every single category exactly 0.0% — and it managed that in the week Shadow of the Mad King opened. Iron Ore at +16.3% on 68 trades is still the only liquid item on the GW2 board; Candy Corn Cob is the one to watch.
Around the Games
Guild Wars 2 had the busiest week of the tracked five and the quietest tape. Shadow of the Mad King 2026 runs October 13 to November 3, adding the Fog Machine weapon set, a Plush Mad King backpack and a Mini Longhaired Black Cat bought with Candy Corn Cobs, alongside Legendary Mode for the Nexus of Eternity raid. The same GW2 build also folded the Living World seasons into the base game and expansions and handed an automatic gem credit to anyone who bought them after September 12 — a currency injection in a game where gems buy gold.
Final Fantasy XIV shipped patch 7.57 on October 13 with same-region matchmaking for the Japanese data centres and Crucible of the Unbroken scoring changes, and nothing at all for the Market Board. All Saints' Wake opened October 15. FFXIV's October 15 enforcement report, covering October 8–14, logged 302 accounts terminated for RMT participation and 184 for RMT advertising — down hard from the prior week's 547.
In WoW Forever, the October 15 beta notes were unusually market-shaped: the auction house gained an equippable-level column, finally displays stats for items with random suffixes, and cut vendor sell prices on many profession-made items, lowering the price floor under crafted goods before the November 4 launch. WoW TBC Anniversary gets Phase 3.5 and its Zul'Aman raid on October 22. RAID: Shadow Legends announced its Halloween champions, headlined by Orynyx Mindcrawler on an October 22 Fusion.
Quiet weeks, with no economy change located: Path of Exile 2, WoW MoP Classic, WoW Season of Discovery and WoW Classic Era.
The Wider Market
RuneScape 3 cancelled its second Grand Exchange twelve days after announcing it. Jagex confirmed on October 15 that RuneScape Reignited is dead: "it is clear that we missed the mark on this, and so we are not moving forward with it." Gone with it are the separate Reignited Grand Exchange, the permanent Reignited character type, the ban on Veteran-to-Reignited trading and the Reignited-only worlds. RS3's December 2 update still ships the Adventure Guide and the Remastered Journey. An entire parallel order book, announced and buried inside a fortnight.
EVE Online's September economy contracted by 227 trillion ISK. The long-overdue September 2026 Monthly Economic Report landed October 14, and the headline is the active ISK delta: −144.7 trillion ISK in September against +82.2 trillion in August. EVE's Module Price Index fell about 4% month-on-month, the Mineral Price Index kept falling, and mining value declined again. All of it measured before Crimson Harvest began dumping 90% of PvP wrecks into the market on October 6.
OSRS put more runite in the ground. The October 14 "More Gathering Efficiencies" update made runite golems drop more ore and let infernal tools be recharged — a straight supply increase into the Old School RuneScape Grand Exchange, six days before The Fractured Archive raid opens on October 20.
Storylines to Watch
- RuneScape 3's Reignited split Grand Exchange — cancelled outright on October 15, twelve days after the RuneFest announcement. The December 2 RS3 update survives; the second order book does not.
- WoW Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5 — live October 13, and WoW Retail's whole top-volume board rotated out of gear and into recipes, patterns and formulas within days.
- Path of Exile's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league — the Mirror discount set a third record at 63.8%, and the league-versus-PoE-Standard split spread to every item category for the first time.
- EVE Online's mineral supply chain — September's Monthly Economic Report finally published on October 14, showing a 227-trillion-ISK swing into contraction and a 4% drop in EVE's Module Price Index.
- Albion Online's Dragonfire economy — October 16's Item Freeze protects gear brought into the Dragonfire zones, cutting the destruction that drives Albion's crafted-gear demand.
Industry Notes
Funcom confirmed fresh layoffs and the departure of its CEO on October 14, narrowing the studio to Conan Exiles and Dune: Awakening. For Dune: Awakening that means a thinner content pipeline just as a million console players arrive.
The Week Ahead
- OSRS — The Fractured Archive raid (Raid 4) launches, October 20 UTC
- WoW Forever — beta closes, October 21 UTC
- WoW TBC Anniversary — Phase 3.5 opens with the Zul'Aman raid, October 22 UTC
- RAID: Shadow Legends — Orynyx Mindcrawler Mixed Fusion Event begins, October 22 UTC
- Black Desert — Blessing of Agris Scroll event ends, October 22 UTC
- Throne and Liberty — Auction House closes until the NC handover completes, October 26 UTC
- EVE Online — Crimson Harvest seasonal reward track extends, October 27 UTC
- FFXIV — Fan Festival 2026 in Tokyo, October 31 – November 1 UTC