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Editorial Policy

This page states what TheWoWDB publishes, where each number on the site comes from, and what happens when something here turns out to be wrong.

Written and maintained by Christopher Lucas. Last reviewed 3 September 2026.

Heroes of the Horde and the Alliance arrayed around an open parchment map, from a World of Warcraft loading screen
Loading-screen art from the World of Warcraft client, read out of our own copy of the game files.

How often the numbers move

Retail Auction House, US realms and commoditiesevery 15 min
Retail Auction House, EU commoditiesevery 15 min
MoP Classic, US and EUhourly
Classic Erano Blizzard data yet
WoW Token, US, EU, KR, TWevery 15 min
PvP ladders and Mythic+ boardsevery 3 hours

That is the schedule our scanners actually run on. Blizzard rebuilds its auction data on its own clock, so a price here is the last snapshot we took, stamped with the time we took it, and never a live quote from your realm.

What we publish

Four things, all of them made here:

No page is a republished copy of another database site, and no page exists only to hold advertising.

Where the data comes from

  • Blizzard’s Game Data APICalled with our own registered keys. Auction House listings, WoW Token prices and the PvP and Mythic+ ladders come from here.
  • The game client’s own data tablesExtracted from an installed client after each patch. Names, tooltips, icons, maps and 3D models come from here, which is why an item page can be right before any fan site has written about the item.
  • Our own scanners and databaseEvery snapshot is written to our database and kept. Price history, supply depth, the Cheapest Realm search and the weekly report are built from that record, not from a third party’s feed.

What a price is, and what it is not

A price on this site is one reading of one realm or region at one moment. Between readings the auction house moves and we do not see it, so treat every number as a snapshot and check the listing in game before you spend gold.

Classic Era realms and items are listed, but Blizzard does not publish Era auction data through its API, so those pages carry no prices rather than borrowed ones. The day that feed opens, the same scanner starts writing them.

Cheapest Realm, Deals and the WoW Token pages all read from that same snapshot record.

Corrections

Wrong data and broken pages get fixed, and the fix is on the record.

  1. Tell us. Email [email protected] or use the Contact page, and name the page and what looks wrong on it.
  2. We check the claim against its source: the snapshot row, the client table the page was built from, or the working behind the guide.
  3. Market pages correct themselves on the next scan. A guide or a report is edited and the edit is dated on the page.

One person reads that mail, so a reply can take a few days. If we cannot reproduce the problem we say so rather than closing it quietly.

Advertising

Advertising pays for the servers and keeps every tool on the site free to use. Ads are served through Google AdSense and the other networks named in our Privacy Policy, and the sellers authorised to sell this inventory are listed in ads.txt.

No advertiser sees a page before it publishes and no advertiser can change one. Where the site earns a commission from a link, that commission has no effect on prices, rankings, or which items a page shows.

What we do not do

  • Sell, buy or broker gold.
  • Sell accounts, carries, boosts or powerleveling.
  • Take payment for coverage, for a ranking, or for a link inside a guide.
  • Dress an advertisement as a price, a ranking or a recommendation.
  • Republish another site’s database as our own.

TheWoWDB has no relationship with any real-money trading service. The full legal language is in the Terms and Disclaimer.

Who writes this

One person. Christopher Lucas, an independent developer in Las Vegas, Nevada, runs the site as a sole proprietor: he writes the guides, builds the scanners, and answers the mail. Anything on this page that stops being true is a correction, and the Contact page is how you report it.

Related pages

World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. TheWoWDB is a fan site and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment. Every picture in this policy is client art: the strip at the top is a loading screen, the ledger sits in the achievement frame over quest parchment, and each heading icon is an icon file from the game.