Guild Wars Auction House! help or hurt?

I have heard many rumors about an "Auction House" being available with the upcoming Factions release. Many of my friends play WoW and swear by the idea of one- saying it saves so much time. I was just wondering what my fellow Guild Wars pals (all of you) felt about such an option. Would it add to or take away from the game play.

Well considering that nearly everyone has been requesting this, I'd say most people including myself definitely feel it would add to the game. The greater supply of everything should help drive down prices.

help --> I dont have time to auction stuff for 30 days just to get a decent amount of bids

Definitly help.. Instead of having to run around Lion's Arch spamming "WTS/WTB" I can just put up an auction in the auction house..

I figure what will happen when you sell or buy, is the gold/item will be transfered to your storage.. (Which arises some problems.. Such as if your storage was full)

Personally I liked how in Final Fantasy online there was a pop up message when you made a sale. Also the way auction houses worked in Final Fantasy, was that the B/O was unknown. There was an average quote for the item and you'd base your price on that, if it were too low it'd say too low of a bid, if it was B/O or higher you'd buy it. (Unless it was an extended auction in which the auctioner would let bids flow in, and make it stop when ever he wishes)

Auction Houses are materials best friends, just throw them all in there and within a week they'll probably all be sold.

Well, to put it simply, it depends on how they implement it. could be good, could be bad.

As a side note, Gaile said that a "Auction House" is not assured, but some form of trade improvement is. So, once again, we will just have to wait and see what they have in mind.

It also helps those who don't like to farm make money.

Say I was in ascalon helping a guildie, and I got:

rare Poisoners Longbow of Fortitude
10-12 Dmg
+12 > 50%
+25HP
Lengthens poison
Value: 56

Some newbie may want that, but how am I supposed to find him? When you are new the the game, you don't sit around watching trade spam do you?

Now in this case, I could set it up in the new trade system for 300-500 Gold.

That is like 8x more profit from random missions and the drops. And I could make money anywhere instead of just attacking the same creature untill I get a special 300k Item.

And the newbie now has a bow that is better than the nearby collectors, and he could sell it when he is done with it.

I feel Non-Chat-Based trade systems are VERY important for games with variable item stats. You would be surprised what kind of crap you can sell (You may not make much from selling low level items, but hey, its better than waisting them on the merchant).

wow i think auction off items and such will be awesome...i have thought of it my self a few times, wondering how high i could sell some items

Wow, this is some great input. I only posted this tonight and everyone is being very constructive. Thx!

I just thought of another +
although prices would go down. You can sell more so the income you get should be the same. New players could get upgrades more easily and exp player could keep thier storage uncluttered. Everyone benefits.

and also....you don't have to wait around LA for 10 minutes seeing if that sheild really is worth 50k. Just check what everyone else is selling them for at the acution house

Does anyone have any negative thoughts on this?

None offhand, but of course, until we know how it will be implemented its pretty much impossible to say.

Will the item disappear from the persons inventory when they put it up?, if not, whats to stop them selling it out of auction, or putting the same item up multiple times.

Will anything be in place to enforce that bidders pay?, eg, will the money automatically leave there inventory/storage?
Eg, Bob is selling stuff .. and i don't like bob, so, i bid high on all his items and don't pay! .. that'll teach bob.

Will anything be in place to help prevent people tampering/rigging?
Eg, guildies inflating prices for you, making your item seem better/more desirable then reality.

Suppose the item/gold automatically leaves you when you participate in an auction .. when you win/lose, how do you get the item?, what if your inventory is full and can't fit the gold/item?


Theres a lot of variables, but if they weren't happy that it would work well, i doubt they'd release it. So we'll see.

/Signed, As the best thing they could add!

It would be great for everyone buying and selling and might just stop the
masses of scammers from ripping new and old people off with their items.

As most people have stated, you can drop off your items and theyre gonna mostly
sell themselfs to whoever wants /need then and all is well, no more standing about
spamming the trade channel for hours on end bored half to death waiting for that
someone to come along and take it off your hands.

Don't you all get annoyed at all the spam thats in ascalon, l.a and droknars?

Auction houses save a lot of time and make trading a lot fairer. Upon implementation, they will hurt people with commodities and help those with gold, though.

dont think it can possibly harm. Heck, it might even reduce the stupid trade spam in local by, oh... 1% or so

It will help alot. Since it save us time from advertising it in the local/trade chats. Also possibly save us from those scammers out there.

I like the idea, personally I'd prefer the item to dissapear from you when you list it, and the winner to have to go to a certain npc to collect it (no full storage problems). Have it with two types of sales, an auction and a set price sale. Also I'd like the auctions to be totally anonymous - no showing of buyers or sellers names at any point, this would help prevent the shill bidding.

On a final note I'd also like if the 'auction house' took 5-10% of the proceeds as comission.

This will help out great deals depending on how it's implemented (if it's like the ffxi system) it should be great.

What this will create stable prices across the board cut down on scams and overpriced items. Some people will complain about have easy to access to know what the value of some items are, or the change as things become stable pricing.

This is of course, the AH is implemented similar to ffxi.

Example a common drop green goes for 10k but most don't realize it. If the auction / trade system shows the common price, and people find it's an easy drop people will catch on and drop the price due to over farming.

X person at selling 10k will be ticked but will allow real market value to become common knowledge.

WARNING: RAMBLING ESSAY BELOW, SOMEONE WRITE CLIFF NOTES.

I think there are really two ways to go as far as 'selling goods automatically' is concerned.

I'm a veteran of many mmo's, i mainly want to talk about WoW and Lineage 2.

WoW of course has it's auction house system, a very well designed system much like eBay where you designate auction times and amounts, buy out, etc.
This system works pretty well, but it was also implemented from the launch of the game, thus the economy developed around this system.

My only concern with auction houses in guild wars will be how it affects new players and how the prices are going to be arranged.

Also, where do you fit auction houses into the story line and where do you put them. In ascalon, how would an auction house system survive the searing, and will these auction houses all be linked?

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to just pop a tent up in the major cities that represents the auction 'house.' but how do you go about linking them to other major cities (unless they are all independent, in which case would be ideal)

How do you go about sorting items? lots of filters and categories would be the key, but how do you know if you're not getting ripped off.

Also mentioned would be storage space for when auctions end. This could be solved much in the way WoW does it, with a mail box, or the box that shows after you exit a mission showing items that were assigned but not picked up.
(also mentioned would be the npc to visit to get an item)

The other thing i wanted to mention was lineage 2. Lineage for those who aren't familiar with it revolved entirely around buying and selling items in main towns used in everyday combat and crafting, Very few high end items were available from any npc, so to fix this they implemented player stores.

You could just type /sell or /buy and set a price for the item you wanted, Buying stores had a set price
i.e. you could sit down in Lions Arch and setup a buy store for ectos at 6k each, player walks past, has ectos, sells them to you for 6k each. All while you're logged in, but not necessarily playing.

Sell stores worked much the same way, but vice versa. you had items you wanted to sell, you put them in the sell window at a certain price and other players could come by and purchase items.

the only problem with this is that you might have price differences between districts, so shopping would be time consuming unless you just hoped you got a good deal in district 2.

However the only flaws with both of these systems is a flaw inherent to player economies. Inflation and Saturation, and farmers ruining all the fun.

Inflation occurred when rare items were put up for auction by player A. Player B purchases item at the original cost from Player A, only to resell it at a higher price to Player C, acting as a middle man. usually this all evens out over time, but it often causes problems for new players who just don't have the resources to buy from player B.

Saturation really occurred with Lineage 2. All major towns (gludio for example) would take a long time to load because of all the player buy/sell stores in the towns, literally a sea of people to walk through and it would slow down even the most mighty of computers.

and farmers of course ruin it for everyone by artificially inflating prices (like the Player A. B. C. example) thus creating a need for other players to either farm gold themselves of resort to buying off of EBay or similar site.

I don't know how coherent this was , but i tried to type it on the fly while at work.

any comments or criticisms are welcome.

also various other issues would be the large variety of items and mods, and reaching the best audience for your items.

edit: various spelling and grammar mistakes

I like the Idea of an Auction House, but keep in mind that it may actually drive up the prices. For example in WOW items slowly rose in value not because they were worth it, but because people started spending it. All an auction house does is allow those with money to easily outbid those without the same monetary means. In WOW prices for certain items rose from a few gold to over a hundred gold, not because it was rare or really worth that much, but because people had the money (unfortunately this seemed to tie into the rise of buying gold online).
Under the current system it's easier to haggle the price, because you will come across a person who is spamming WTS ?? for like an hour and is willing to drop the price just to finally make the sell. It takes timing and patience under the current system to find those with the money wiling to overpay. Whereas with an Auction House your access to those wiling to overpay dramatically increases, and keeping those who put forth honest effort to make money the ability to purchase these items, and those who pay their real world money for gold will just got to ebay to buy that new item at the auction house.
Unfortunately those Ebay gold buyers allow Auction Houses to ruin the game, which IMHO ruined WOW.

The best things in life are free
But you can keep it for the birds and bees.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Money don't get everything it's true.
What it don't get I can't use.
So gimme money (that's what I want)
A little money (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Yeh gimme money (that's what I want)
A little money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
So gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Your lovin' give me a thrill
But your lovin' don't pay my bill.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Money don't get everything it's true.
What it don't get I can't use.
So gimme money (that's what I want)
A little money (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Yeh gimme money (that's what I want)
A little money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
So gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That's what I want.

Hurt -> If you think the current auction system is the best (then you are a complete moron)

Definitely help, no more spamming WTS and WTB at local chat, I can finally turn it back on!

i've been excited about auction houses for a while since i find it soooo boring to try and sell things. I've sat for 2 hours trying to sell some stuff but now i hope i'll be able to just pop it nto the auction house and boom there goes the boring WTS this and that. I really want those auction houses

Such a hideous amount of HELP that a paragraph couldn't justify the explanation.

The auction house would be a great addition, im sure they will add it, the benefits being less and less WTS/WTB ads in !All, they really do my head in when trying to talk to people.

At least you dont have to travel to every town, district etc to try and find a buyer.

I could also be easier to find that weapon you wanted, say for some reason someone wanted the Bludgeoner, they could goto auction house aha there is one, make a bid and hope.


I do hope they add this.

as said this will devalue the cost of items to a point.

I'm fine with this however

would definitely help!
1) no more spamming WTB/WTS (or at least not that much)
2) less time wasted on selling items more time to spend on the actual game
3) better economic balance

So yeah, bring on the action houses!!

I don't think its a clone of WoW Auction house. its more a you got an item you offer it for a set price... Then walk away...

someone then goes to the NPC merchant that has your item for sale. and if they like the price they buy it...

Later you go back to either reclaim your item, Or retrieve your gold if sold...

If you can't sell it, prob the price is too high...

Least this was the original proposal I had seen in the past for the GW version... The concept of a E-bay style Auction house I think would be a waste of time to code for... Its not worth it as it takes too long to sell anything in this matter... and typically the last sec is the vigorous bidding frenzy in 1 gold increments trying to get the item cheap...

in any case. Lets Wait and see what they opted for.. Like I said earlier discussions were the described model above...

I think a well-designed, well-run auction function within Guild Wars would have several major positive impacts on the game. You'd see the end of the 'Trade' tab, pretty much the end of the mindless and endless "WTS blah blah blah" in 'All' chat, people would be able to find items of interest a lot quicker than what then can do currently, and people could concentrate on gameplay rather than trying to sell their green and gold items.

This could be huge...

Only downside is many might over price and i mean OVER PRICE, and no one will buy the items up for sell. Many districts may be full from hundred or thousands or millions, seeing Guild Wars did hit the million mark. Of afk or away from keyboard people who are selling the items and went out or whatver they left the computer for. Other than that dunno?

Help

I've only played like 40 hours on WoW, but I have alot of friends who have lvl 60's. From what I have seen, and auction house sounds AWSOME for GW.

Oh a definate help - should have been in from the start though.

Damn right it would help help help

1) Charge the auctioneer 5-10% of the asking start price up front. This would stop people from asking stupidly unreasonable prices for items that just aren't worth it since people would be highly unlikely to spend 5-10k putting a sword up for 100k unless they thought it would sell.
2) Charge the auctioneer 5-10% - the initial cost of the final sales price as payment for auction house usage.
3) Items that sit for more than X days are removed and vanish into the ether.
4) Items can be removed at any time but the initial 5-10% cost is forfeit.
5) A maximum X items per player can be placed on auction at any given time.
6) All sales are "as is" and final.
7) Auction house must be highly sortable by a number of variables such as "price" and "item type".

Probably would need a few other factors to make it work but that would be a great start.

Auction house worked well for me FF online.
But this will drive prices down quicker than normal over the long run. Especially on high supply items and most all greens. It may drive prices up for the harder to find high demand items like rare skins, etc. But when you start seeing a few 15>50 Fellblades and Storms in the auctions, those will drop too. Consider all the nice stuff people have stored away.... Only the uber stuff will stay high imo.
Other factors are how much people will now horde new found stuff and what it does with existing merchant system. I assume most farmers will try to sell items quicker now that they can just set up an auction. Merchants prices will have to drop to make sales and they will offer less for materials and that will send more material farmers to the auction house, which will lower prices even more.

Or maybe with all the new players and people coming back, everything will triple or double.

Easy way to fix that. Everything stays at the AH (strategically placed by storage) until you retrieve it. It might act something like an extra storage, but without the flexibility of a normal one.

I wonder what affect this will have on the traders though.. my guess is that they will still be around to make sure that prices don't get too out of hand on the inflation side, but without people buying/selling to them, how are they supposed to judge the correct prices?

i neevr understood what people meant by auction house and now reading this thread i got a good grasp of what it is. It is an amazing idea so now you can find an item that you want IN GAME! I heard the frog mention that the auction house was likely.

I say to the guy who didn't know how to put in the auction house as part of the game...Make a new area that will be unlocked by doing quests with the release of Factions. (or have it linked from the boat in LA) Say like a new chain of islands were discovered.

Auction house will probably help normal players and hurt gougers

Well you could make the auction house an area you teleport to like using observer mode. Hit "A" or whatever and it asks you if you want to go to the auction house. If you accept then you are teleported to the auction house.

I would suggest limiting the number of items you can put in there to prevent people from putting tons of junk in there. With no limit I could see a bunch of idiots putting 100 different auctions for 1 wood. :|

If it did happen this way then you would have to not allow presear characters in there.

There should be a short time limit also. Maybe like 1 hour max.

Keep it clutter free.

The final fantasy xi auction house is beautful in design and it predates wow (before it came out too).

You have an item, you got to aucition house you choose the item and the price you want to sell it. From this point it is out of your inventory, don't have to be online at all.

Now from buyer perspective, go to AH, browse the catagory -> sub, see qty of that item. You put a bid on it. (it shows you bid history of that item of past transactions). If your bid is higher then the lowest sell point, you get it, gold (the full price you bid) is then sent to the mog house system waiting for the winner.

Behind the transaction.
Item #22
Seller One - wants 100 gold
Seller Two - wants 250 gold
(Average price is 200
- public info)
Buery bids 300 gold, say he's insane, Seller one item gets sold 1st no matter when the item was put up. 300 gold goes to Seller one

This also prevents overpricing, due to if you over price your item, as long as someone has it cheaper, there bid goes with them, not you. And yes, I've sold many items at fee + 1 gold and got "average" price on FFXI. Aka moves out of my stuff ultra quick and make just about as much money as other prices at "average".