Unfortunately the artisan quests are level capped, so industrious crafters who progress to that point early, will have to obtain avatar levels 35-40, depending on craft. Also, not all the recipes for crafting are available at trainers. There are rare recipes that can be found off certain enemies or from specific out-of-the-way vendors in limited supply.

  Once items are created or found, they canbe sold on the auction house. Similar to most MMORPGs, this area is the hub for in-game economy, for a price. Players who choose to sell items on the auction house have to put a non-refundable deposit on the item based on how long the auction lasts. If the item sells, they will receive their money directly via in-game mail, but if the auction fails, the item is returned and the fee kept. As an unfortunate side effect of this system is inflation, but that is normal for online role-playing games.

  Unfortunately, Blizzard saw fit to have only three auction houses in the game. For the Alliance side, auctioneers reside in Ironforge, the Horde in Ogrimmar, and a seldom used neutral auction house in Gadgetzan. The problem with this system, especially in a seamless world, is the amount of traffic these areas get. This results in the game freezing for moments on end while our PCs try to handle all the player models being loaded. The bandwidth overload upon entering these areas has resulted in numerous disconnects. With several major cities on each side of the conflict, I don抰 see why Blizzard didn抰 duplicate the auction house in each city to handle the overload. Currently, the cities of Darnassus, Stormwind, Thunder Bluff and Undercity lack this function, so are nearly vacant outside of beginning players.