The end is Nigh!

So, Blizzard is going through with the Mobile Auction House after all. I'm sure people are happy that they can look for a battered hilt from work, or whatever. Here's what I'm worried about.

These are premature worries, because the entire armory crashed under the strain of twenty million people rushing to check out the new features. But based on what I know about the current armory and web technology, I think they're pretty reasonable worries. They stem from a simple fact: you can't trust the client software. The armory website runs javascript, XML, and a few other neat features. Even if the mobile AH were in flash, you can't trust flash (since in order to run, you have to send the client your compiled flashcode, which can be decompiled and deconstructed).

So, somewhere out there, there's a blizzard server with webservices like cancelAuction(id) and the like. I'm sure that they've got the security in place that a malicious user couldn't randomly cancel someone else's auction just by figuring out what the id is (there's probably some token-based security involved, because I don't see having to generate an authenticator key number every time I post an auction, but I digress). But there's probably no way to keep me from running a java application that looks and feels just like a web browser (since I can generate arbitrary user-agent strings in my application) to the web service.

That means, within a matter of weeks after the mobile AH launch (probably sooner), there will be applications that let you cancel all your undercut auctions and repost them. The functionality blizzard exposed to the mobile AH (including posting auctions from your mail inbox) will let this work.

There will also be automatic purchasing- you can run an application when you're at work that buys up all the Frost Lotus that drops below a certain price threshold (up to some maximum amount if you're worried about overbuying)- no more hoping you snipe those good auctions when you're logged in.

There will be automatic snatching in general: no more finding cheap deals on the AH or the weird auctions where people post something for less than its vendor price. Every realm will have a few of these not-even-l0gged-in auctionbots.

I imagine that blizzard will make the use of this software bannable. Or not, because they can't really tell if someone's using the software besides looking at behavior tracks (is that a robot, or is that guy REALLY logging in every half hour?)

But either way, this is going to be an ENORMOUS shift in the way the auction house works. I'm glad I got my gold already, I'm not sure I feel like writing this software. And I'm sure as hell not going to download somebody else's software- that's like putting a "hack me" sign on your account.