Auctioneer (AddOn)

Auctioneer is a highly popular AddOn written by Norganna to expand the auction-house interface by tracking, analyzing and acting on observed market behaviour. Auctioneer has been downloaded more than 29 million times from Curse, 2 million from WoWInterface , and an unknown number from the addon's main website AuctioneerAddon.com. It remains the most-downloaded addon within the "Auction & Economy" section of Curse as of mid 2020. The addon's popularity began in Vanilla and was sustained on Retail until at least 2019 when several versions were downloaded in excess of 500 thousand times each. This addon also was featured in many fan-made "gold making" guides and forum posts such as the now-defunct JustMyTwoCopper blog.

However, Patch 8.3.0 overhauled the native Auction House UI which obsoleted some of Auctioneer's enhancements such as the ability to list large quantities with few clicks or have a batch jobs for common transactions (implemented as favourites in the new native UI). Norganna has not yet published an updated AddOn compatible with this new UI, but announced development work was underway. Nevertheless, the addon remains highly popular on Classic with its Nov 2019 update being installed 700 thousand times from Curse within six months.

Auctioneer is in fact a suite of different addons including Auctioneer, BeanCounter, Enchantrix, Informant, and Stubby. This Auctioneer Suite compilation has been credited to a team of active developers including Nechckn and MentalPower.

BottomFeeder controversy
Until October 2006, Auctioneer included a module titled BottomFeeder that automated certain functions such as buying underpriced items and potentially relisting them. The module was voluntarily removed by the developer to avoid conflicts with botting and automated program policies.

Only three months later, Patch 2.0.1 changed the auction house API so that user-interactivity (like a button click) was necessary to execute trades. BottomFeeder was then rebranded as BottomScanner and re-introduced to scan and identify opportunities, but requiring a mouse click to confirm any orders. This human-in-the-loop variant has since remained an accepted part of the addon, and even expanded in 5.2 to include features branded as SearchUI.