In depth look at Auction House feasibility

What you guys are failing to notice is that ANet already has these items in a database, all they need to do is add a new interface to that database. Maybe a new boolean in the database entries to tell their server if it's up for auction or not. All these witty and creative methods seem wasteful to me. Why would they duplicate the data that they already have?

And its really that simple?

Well god damn, case closed... make it so ANet!


come on, if it was really that simple, don't you think that along with all the other things they've added recently that we've been asking for for at least 18 months now, they'd have added the Auction house aswell? umm, yeah... ok

point of interest.

some time ago in a finiancial report they announced that they had passed 2 million ACCOUNTS with a separate figure of copy sales.

AN ACCOUNT IS ONE ACCOUNT NO MATTER HOW MANY CHAPTERS ARE ADDED/LINKED TO THAT SINGLE ACCOUNT

Basically as I understand it, at present items are only saved on characters (and storage boxes). Items sitting "by themselves" on the ground in zones do not need to be saved because the zones aren't persistent. But an auction house requires each item to be somewhat independent from the other, because items can be taken up and put down at all sorts of different times, and the list of items can expand and contract indefinitely, while player inventory is a small and limited size, as are the rune/material trader lists. They would therefore need to create and delete records for each individual item, which leads to a lot more transactions than they are used to. (As opposed to keeping all character info together and saving it at once every few minutes, including items, skills, quests etc.) Things like party search don't suffer this limitation because again, they aren't persistent, simply hang in memory and do not need to be saved to disk. The unfortunately too small text box there is probably a concession to memory issues.

if there's a will, there's a way.

this new information still doesn't prove that an auction house can't be added to GW. its just something complex to add and they don't want to do it.

like all game developers, i imagine, they have an alotted budget for game improvements and for future developments. i'm guessing they won't bump up the budget for game improvements while EoTN is on the horizon. however, given the amount of expressed want for trade improvements, this is something that should have been created and packaged with Factions, Nightfall, or even EoTN.

more goes into a simple wording change to a skill than you'd think, for example. it has to be proposed, quantified, squabbled about, developed, sent to the translators, squabbled about some more, approved, then run through a quality control department. (i only have experience with EA games, but i'm guessing most game developers work on a similar system) this process can take weeks, if not months. THEN the change can be rolled out to the masses. (off topic...but i imagine whoever made those mistaken changes to the texts in the last update now has their head on a platter!)

now imagine the hoops you need to jump through to create something as game-changing as an auction house. that's a lot of work. its not as simple as most people seem to think, but its not impossible either...like anet seems to think

Ah, you are right Rohara, however, look at some of the additions that have come recently that were done by devs on lunch breaks, or off hours and just wanted to do it...

hell, I'd bet theres some acne ridden, pale ass, milk bottle glasses wearing geek, holed up in ANet's basement (that they've probably forgotten about and lives off Gailes cookie crumbs) beavering away trying to make it work right now...

That is surprisingly NOT the case. You might want to look at the link previously provided. And maybe the thread here about the interview too.

An auctionhouse in GW isn't going to happen, get over it.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile/Frog_Talk/20070527

GW doesn't need an action house. That wont fix the borked up economy. An action house just means that when you're selling that gold axe, there will be 120 other people selling that same axe for less than you. The masses of bot farmers would be putting golds up at 1k each. Prices would plummet even faster, making everything worth nothing overnight.

No, GW just needs GW2 to come out with a more intelligent economic system.

After reading the database notes in the other thread, it is fairly obvious why an auction house won't happen in GW, despite the fact that other MMO's have done it. The decision to use the database as a bulk storage for BLOBs, instead of a true RDBMS, basically kills it.

And btw, the numbers of items, etc is trivial and irrelevant - I work with databases that have millions of items per day added.

You're right about the bots. I hate em! They have almost ruined the game for me due to the nerfs ANet is forced to do (rightfully so) to try to stop them.

On the other hand, if the auction house charged 1k per item placed in the auction house, the bots probably wouldn't use it. Of course, maybe they would just put their golds up for sale for 1.5k or 2k.

Oh well, I guess I just keep merching all my drops. I don't have time to try and sell anything....

Here an example of an extremely extensive database, that is queried in almost notime.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Basically i dont mind whether there would be an auction house or merchants for mods, gold weapons (stripped) and the like. I would surely appreciate it, because what the merchants give is not a lot. I that would drop the prices, then so be it. It would also do good to the availability of mods and weapons. Trying to find them now in kamadan or the like is not always a fast process.

QFT
sooo true.

Although it wont help the broken economy (nothing can save it at this point), GW still needs some improved means of trading. There are still items that do sell, but selling them takes long hours. Same with buying something very specific, like some obscure wand - everyone just sells it to merch because wts'ing it would take ages but there are always a couple people our there looking for it.

how will that affect the economy of GW1? they won't be linked and you can't take gold or items through to GW2

He's saying that the GW economy is broken beyond repair...
@ OP : You would need 5 more digits and this is why: Firstly you need one digit to indicate whether an item has been customized or not (which should not be allowed to be sold on the auction). Secondly, you need one digit to indicate stackablity and the other 3 digits to show how many is in a stack.

I don't have any ideas on how to improve the economy...since HM it has just gone downhill. There are the elite-uber items for > 100k and there are dirt-cheap ones with no in-between...no one wants normal golds anymore...sigh

Well then, I'm going to ask for a refund, since I haven't paid for a game to be broken beyond repair.

¬_¬

And as I said in other threads, the fact that we wont be getting an auction house -
(which I really despise, private stores would be much better*) - shouldn't be a reason to go running and buy GW2 the second it comes out. GW1 flaws shouldn't be a reason to buy the next game. GW2 will be a new game in every aspect and should not be misinterpreted as a corrective patch for the game we now have.

* We know that there are tons of possible options, and they (anet) know it even better, I imagine how sick they must be from reading the same complaints over and over, but, strangely enough, they don't even increase the party description space, which is the main reason people give for not using it.
So I guess they deserve to keep reading these annoying complaints until they do something about it. Either that, or they start banning everyone, until this game is populated only by those who wish GW was a 3rd person action game.

With brilliant assertions like this, I think theres no doubt that the GW devs are better programmers than the people posting here.

It might be dificult to implement (the whole game is difficult to implement), the question is do they want to implement it. They have their reasons for not implementing it.

Like someone else said, I think they will not bother with the effort for GW1; maybe it will be in GW2.

Their reasons for not implementing it is because it is difficult and God forbid they move a few developers back to Guild Wars when Guild Wars 2 is in the works.

And man, I feel like in this game we lose and lose because of bots. It is like battered gamer syndrome. ANET cannot fix the bot issue, so they take it out on the average player.

All successful MMO's have a centralized trade unit in place. Right now since ANET doesn't the economy is based solely off power sellers and people who will trade spam or use out of games means to trade. For the average player there is no economy since they see no way to sell most of their stuff outside of selling to the trader.

I am willing to bet this does not change in GW2, nor will ANET's way of dealing with bots.