Auction Time Remaining
 

Is there a mod currently available, or is it possible to create a mod that will show you the actual time remaining on an auction?

(almost) impossible since the server only returns an integer refering to short, medium, long and very long. so until you keep track of all auctions and are lucky to find the moment when this information changes, there'll be no way...

I'm new to lua coding, but my plan is to write some functionality to track my auctions, as well as auctions I'm bidding on, as far as time remaining. Obviously it is easy to track one's own auctions, as we know when it is placed in the AH, and what duration. For the items being bid on, it will rely on trips to the AH to check the remaining time. It won't be great, but could give a decent idea of when an auction will be over.

For example: If I go into the AH and place a bid, and the time is "Very Long". I know it is between 8 and 24 hours. If I go back to the AH an hour later, and it is now "Long", I know the auction will be over 7-8 hours from now (rather than 2-8, which is what the status tells you). These values can "tick down", so that an hour later that auction would be 6-7 hours from over, then if I happen to enter the AH near the next interval break (near the 2 hour remaining mark) then I may get lucky and gather even more info to identify the auction expiration within less than an hour. My intent isn't to increase trips to the AH, but rather put some common sense time tracking to auctions so that if I happen to be in the AH, and discover new info, then it can be used to my advantage. Worst case scenario is that I know no more than I do through the AH UI.

I suppose it would be possible to put in a mechanism to select auctions to "track" so that you wouldn't necessarily have to bid on an item to be able to track its time remaining.

The biggest hurdle to all of this is whether or not an item can be uniquely identified in the AH. It is common to see several auctions of the same item and quantity by the same person with the same bid/buyout. Is there a way to identify any one of those from the others reliably?

You'd have to take into account the fact that Blizzard has taken steps to prevent "ninja" bidding (for lack of a better term).

What this means is that if you place a bid on a nearly expired auction this will only expire normally, if no other player also bids on it within a short timeframe.
If there is a biding war happening during the closing moments of the bid the expiration time will be moved up.

This can happen repeatedly... actually it will keep happening as long as there's a biding war during the closing moments of a bid.

It's their way (I guess) to ensure that the player that is prepared to go higher gets it, and not the player lucky (or shifty) enough to place the bid at the "nick of time".

All in all, I think the bid expiration time is not as fixed as it would appear at first.

Also, the delay allows for a person getting the "You have been outbid on such-and-such" to leave the middle of nowhere where they are, to go run to an AH to re-bid on it... :D