Detailed Proposal for an Auction House System

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http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...=1#post2124066

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Hell yes!!!!

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Nice idea. I hate how clogged the local chat filter is!

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great idea! everyone will benefit from the auction house. Traders can sell more for less money but make the same profit. Buyers can buy cheapper and faster.Anet can shut off a couple of servers to save cost since there will be nobody spamming anymore in towns high end items will still be sold for 100k+xxxectos<behold! 3 digits!> in fansite such as guildwarsguru. cheap items are really not worth the time spamming in town, so we can sell them in auction house in game.
Auction is muchhhhhhhhhie neeeded in GW, we are really sick of spamming and reading all the spams in trade channel and loca channel, we need an auction house to save our time and energy so we can focuse on pvp and pve! come on anet i will pay additional 20 bucks for the auction house too<20 bucks per chapter!>

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One minor suggestion, have either the house in a centeralized location accessable by everyone, or place one in each of the first towns that all characters from all chapters visit.(Examples: Lions Arch, Kieneg City, Kamadan.)

Mega Mouse

lots of posts here. i dont see why they wouldnt do one. over 200 posts.

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This auction house is going to bring benefits to everyone. Hell, i'll ask my friends(who plays ff11) to give gw a go should this be implemented.

The benefits will far outway the problems. Just a thought for NC-Soft, this could be a good gold sink if they charge a small fee upon the sale of items.

Mega Mouse

bah. rid us of this at last Anet. I really do't care anymore. I will never sell another item to anyone again the way you made nightfall I can easily use Every drop I ever find in some way or another... Especially Greens and golds... Just stick em on heroes... and with 90 plus hero combinations from all characters... Thats more then enough for ANY gamer to keep equiped...

Excellent Idea....An auction house will finally erase a lot of spam and also would be another great way of earning money.

A BIG

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/signed (in a year old thread)

/signed forever.. we NEED a AH

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obviously

we are waiting for it for a year and a half
but
Anet's stance changed since then, from "we are working on trade improvements, they are coming" into "we don't have this planned" or "don't expect it anytime soon"

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Im desperate for one of these babies

This thread has been here more than 1 year OMG ... and no auction house yet? oops! What's up ArenaNet? >.<

+50% of players want this feature, no? so, adding it is good for the "business", think in that ArenaNet.

WTB WTS spam is bullsh*t, and even bad for the server bandwidth (lag)

I didn't read it because it's long but the picture was pretty and over all I *really* want an Auction house type system of any kind at this point.

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Quoted for the truth. One thing about WoW I have allways thought was that their auction house was brilliant. You could play it, buy from it and sell on it very well. I know the proposed auction house could not be a direct rip off but something similar would be nice.

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AGREED. I was going to say the same thing myself. I'm also not sure i even like the idea of a "highest bidder wins" system anyways, particularly because of the chances of rigging an auction. I also don't like the idea of making this a "house", because it's an unnecessary complication. I think it would work just fine if this idea was NPC based: call it a [Trade Broker] or something. Upon opening the dialogue with the broker, you'd be "asked" what category you're looking for (weapon, armor, material, rune, upgrade component, or whatever) and then you'd get to view the items that are listed for sale in that category, sorted by asking price (set by the seller, as current trades are done).

I also really like this idea. I often try to sell stuff without an asking price, because I have no idea what people will offer for it. Many times I don't care, because I just think the item is genuinely useful to someone and I just want it to have a good home, and I hope to get a bit more for it than the Merchant will offer (or even a lot more, if it's worth it to someone).

Overall, I think that simple is the key, so if we had a list of the bare necessities that we would want in such a system, we'd be able to petition the idea even better. So far, this is what it seems people are saying:
- We want to "publically" display a handful of items that we'd like to trade (a limit of 5 at a time is reasonable) along with a selling price.
- When searching for items to buy from people, we just need a way to browse categories of items and see all the details on any item we're considering buying.
- We'd like to be able to browse everything available worldwide, but we'd probably settle for being restricted to buying only from our server, and even only from our continent, because anything's better than what we currently have.
- We really, really, really want to reduce the amount of WTS spam we have to endure. (More on that below.)
- We don't want to have to be online for people to submit offers to us, and we want to be able to accept the offer even if the person offering isn't online.
- We want the option of accepting or refusing offers, perhaps having a list of them to peruse when we check in on our stuff. As TokranePo noted, a person should not be able to submit more than one offer on our goods. Their offered money must be available as soon as we accept the offer, and so must be removed from their gold and held by the Trade Broker as soon as the offer is made (and refunded if the trade is given to someone else, or if the offer is withdrawn).
- We don't want to see a zillion useless items clogging the Trade system, so we think a small fee will ensure that users are careful in their choices of what to submit, plus some percentage of the sale price taken as commission because it's only fair. Also limiting each user to 5 items will help, and a time limit per item (1 week? 24 hours?) will also help. Let's leave it up to anet to decide!

On the reduction of WTS spam: of course, any system will still have people bypassing it to try and get sales and/or scam people into paying more than necessary. However, I'm absolutely certain that a good trade system will reduce that spam, perhaps even drastically if the system works well enough. At very least, those of us who just want to sell something will have a reasonable way to do it -- and there are enough of us who want this that the total amount of WTS info will be reduced. The WTB chatter might reduce a bit, because people can go check if the Trade Broker has it listed first; if the system works well, they might find what they're looking for. If not, they might request on the Trade channel, and I'd rather see WTB requests than WTS spam anyday, because people who WTB are genuinely looking for something specific, whereas the WTS spammers are invariably looking for a quick buck (which they'd be able to get even EASIER from a good Trade system anyways).

This system could be implemented in a simple way to start, and then enhanced later, with some of the suggested ideas mentioned above:
- filters for searching for items, to weed out the "perfect" items from the "imperfect" ones that newbs like myself would be very interested in; to search for just a flame effect; etc.
- option to offer items for trade instead of just gold, just like in the Trade window
- records of what we've previously bidded for, in case we need to try to bid for it again
- monitor amounts items sell for (though I seriously suspect that this will be too much information processing, and thus not viable)


We just need a simple system that vastly improves our chances of selling useful items to people who want them. Right? Simple and effective is all we ask for. We just need *something* to start with, something accessible to all, and then it could be improved later if it becomes necessary, or when the code for it is ready, or heck, perhaps not even tweaked at all because perhaps something simple might be best after all. I really hope the developers come up with something soon, perhaps using the ideas listed above by myself and by the many others who have contributed to this thread. Please, please, please!

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But, I do think there should be several local auction houses instead of one big one. Part of what makes trading interesting is that goods can be bought and sold for different prices in different parts of the world.

Items only found in one area might be worth transporting to someplace else, where they command a higher price.

Guild Wars needs more things similar to World of Warcraft. No need to go to a "real" MMORPG, but auction house, crafting (by player), and so on, will help a lot. IMO World of Warcraft is the only big competitor GW has, why not "copy" the good things? i.e. I like all games that "copy" Grand Theft Auto idea.

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I sure hope guild wars implements this, and I do agree that Guild Wars should pick up some things from world of warcraft.

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I have no objection to an auction house.

I also think Player 2 Player sales should continue. Not one or the other. I'd also like to see that changed so a person selling just has a bright green Dollar sign above their head and when you click on them you get a list of what they're selling and how much. Might help reduce so much trade spamming.

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considering that this post has been here for over a year and we still dont have an auction house, i doubt well ever get one.

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Well, Prophecies got materials storage, so these hope! I dont play WoW, so I dont know how it works, but Id like to say(again I think) that SWG(when still good) had an excellent system. Youd place an item up for action at a terminal(auction hose NPC, Xunlai Id guess), set a minimum bid, and how long the auction would last, then walk away, and just check on bidding once in awhile. Youd also get a message telling you who bought your item, and for how much, which is nice.

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Perhaps I would begin selling and adding to the economy again instead of selling ectos to the npcs

I agree its needed, and I also happen to know its been developed and tested in alphas, but Anet likes things as they are atm. so I Highly doubt it will make an apperance anytime soon. Trade is dead anyway, hardly anyone cares about it, and in the end I think that is what Anet was striving for...

By not giving us an AH, and making heroes to eat up extra weapons and upgrades and runes and dyes, bla bla bla, Demand got so high that trading stuff became obsolite, cause you want to upgrade your heroes instead...

I doubt I will ever make use of trade again anytime soon, with 9 characters worth of 10+ heroes to equip.

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/signed x100 - I have been wanting an auction house since I first started when Guild Wars came on the market. I do agree that World of Warcraft is probably the biggest competition to Guild Wars, and I think Guild Wars should look into how they control their market and the spam from selling. I have to say, the proposed idea sounds great, but there is always room for improvement. It looks solid enough to build on in my opinion.

The fact of the matter is, when you enter Ascalon City District 1, or Lion's Arch District 1 and you get so much spam it lags your computer, you need to do something about it. Think about it...When you type "WTB Whatever", and it disappears from the channel's text box in one second and the spam filter prohibits you from posting again, that just shows we need to fix it.

Guild Wars needs a community-oriented way to sell their items, not a hundred people per district mashing "Ctrl+V" and waiting to here the "bing" of a whisper. The current system is not a way to sell, it's a way to spam...

A Year and a half later, and I'm surprised there hasn't been one implemented yet. (this post was from June of 2005).

I think an auction house is even more important now that there are anywhere from 5-6 different places to sell items. Originally, It was just "go to LA AD1, spam until it's sold". Now, with The Jewel of Istan, LA, Kaineng, The Vabbian Capital, Droknar's forge, etc., it's even harder to sell wares.

Let's pretend it's a secret christmas present this Wintersday, so we don't give up all hope.

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My only suggestion would be instead of having 5 auction houses in seperate locations accross the game.

Have an entire new island be dedicated the auction house(s), like they do with the battle isles for PvP.

Have the auction house island, be accessible from the ship, like when going to the battle isles or a different campaign.

You could then have an entire seperate island, with multiple auction houses on it, with each one specialising in a profession, weapons, dye, greens, etc, etc, etc.

You choose which one to go into and then your whole idea about bidding can kick off.

I'm quoting this message because I think this is a very good idea and it could use some highlight. It should be easier to implement than the auction house and still pretty effective when trading.

When are we going to get some reply from Gayle on this matter? Please?

Wouldnt it just be easier to have a big notice board kind of thing, where everyones sales are shown and people place bids until a certain time expires.

I think to have glowing freen icons above everyones head who is seling would get very crowded and confusing. Espiecally if your going to have dozens in one location at a time.

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we really need an auction house..its really the only thing holding GW back from giving the other mmorpg a run for their money.

I like this suggestion. The only real problem I've had with this game since I started playing two weeks ago is that the current trading system is so out of whack I have no idea what to sell my items for. I usually just end up vendoring a lot of items because the trading system is just far and away too complex for newer players like myself to get a grasp of.

The NPC traders ARE NOT a solution, especially since the prices tend to fluctuate on events. (Such as dye prices at the trader on the double dye drop weekends.) The current system is horribly inaccessible and it's beyond frustrating. Even a basic Auction House would alleviate some of these problems.

Also, I'm sure it's been suggested in the pre-ceding pages, but I would like a "Buy Now" option at which the seller can set the max price they wish to sell at. If a person bids that price, they automatically get the item. This would help those of us who don't want to wait until the auction expires, since we need said item now. (The Buy Now option can be optional to the seller.) If you've played WoW, I'm basically suggesting a feature similar to the Buyout option on their AH's.