No auction house, good or bad? (discussion)

[zallis]

If you have been playing ESO, by the time you reach daggerfall, you will probably notice that there is no Auction House system in this game. In order to trade you have to shout it out in zone chat and hope somebody wants your item. Only other option is the trading guilds or a guild store. At first, people will take this as a bad thing and a burden, however, as I thought about it more, I realized that it has its perks. Here are my thoughts on it, but what are yours?

Pros

1- People won't sell useless crap - In an auction house system, people will try to sell anything and everything, but with the way it works now, the top things I see being sold are good gear, Racial Motifs, and crafting mats.

2- Ecourages you to find the items yourself- If you cant find somebody selling the item you want, you are more likely to go out in the world and try to find that item yourself. You don't want to pay 50 gold for a rawhide scrap? fireball a deer.

3- Players can set their owns prices - In an auction house system, you can choose how much you want to sell an item for, but you mostly sell it for cheaper than anyone else, because no player is going to spend more than they have to. but in ESO, you can set your price as high as you want and as long as somebody is willing to pay that, they will buy it because they are not seeing anybody else's offers (unless there is another person selling the same thing at the same time)

4- You can flip stuff- If you see somebody who is selling an item for cheaper than you normally see it, you can buy it, then sell it for the normal amount. Lets say there is a guy selling a Motif for 600 gold. buy it, and sell it for 1.2K. gold.

5- Selling stuff is almost a skill- You have to know the market for things. This one guy bought rawhide scraps for 50 gold. That is way too much. Going back to the flipping, if you are smart about it and know the market for items, you can make more money and lose less money because you know the smart amount to buy and sell things for.

Cons

1- takes more time- With an auction house system, you can easily make a trip, sell your crap, and wait for it to be sold. With the way it is now, you have to take time to sit in town and hope somebody is in the same zone as you.

2- Competition- Competition can be good, but if you are selling something for 1000, and another guy is selling for 900, so you drop to 850, then he goes 700, you will end up either not selling it, or selling it for way less than its worth.

3- Clogs up chat- There is constantly people yelling WTS X in chat while people are trying to have a conversation. This can be an easy fix if there was a trade chat

4- Rip offs- If you don't know how much something is worth, you might end up paying way more for it than you should have. Or you might sell something for way less than you could have. If you get immediate responses after you post your offer, double check the price.

5- Inconvenient for buyers- If you want something, you might not be able to buy it. In the pros I said it is a good thing that you will be encouraged to go out in the world, but that is not a perk you will enjoy in the moment. That is something that you will think back on. People would much rather just stop at an NPC and pick up what they need.

What do you think?

[Ojike]

As soon as the guild has 50 members (individual accounts, not characters and alts) we can open our own Guild Store. From any Banking NPC a member can post items for sale in the guild store, which other people of NOR can purchase. You can also join up to 5 guilds, and many people have been working on forming "Trading Guilds" for the sole purpose of economic stimulation between other guilds, by acting as a medium.

This is ESO's form of an Auction House.

[Roxanne]

It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out. I am looking forward to see what the economy will become and whether or not I can finally strike it rich! In game, that is. lol