Yep, guild traders are a crappy system when you're trying to buy something without getting ripped off or spending hours going through each and every trader with an Excel spreadsheet.

Luckily, it's easy enough to farm the stuff you want without having to buy it off of someone that is just praying you're not looking at their competitor's prices

Yup, the rich guilds gets richer. There's no place for the little guy trying to sell anything.

When gold selling through all top Guilds using corrupt politics and creating a monopoly gets exposed, they will have to change it. It's quite common, GM's raise 60 mil, withdrawal right before bid, launder the gold through websites or ghost traders and make real world currency.

Still think Guild Traders are a good idea? They control the in-game economy and make sure you join their enterprise or they shut you down(outbid your spot tenfold until all your members leave) it's common practice mob type shiz.

I think we can all agree that while a centralized auction house might be nice, it would have the following 2 hugely negative effects:

1. The folks who run master merchant would be boned, and they help shape the current ESO economy (believe it).

2. ZOS trading server would probably catch on fire the first day... it might even burn the whole place down!

Turning the entire game economy on it's ear is never a good idea. Is the current system inconvenient- sure. Does it make it hard to find what you're looking for easily- yes. Would some sort of search function make it easier to find what yo're looking for- yes, but it would be extremely difficult to code for. Think of what you are asking:

You want a search function to check every available item in EVERY guild store in real time. Even if you found your perfect item, it could easily be sold out from under you while you are porting to the guild trader.

The idea behind ESO's economy is that you are SUPPOSED to rely on different groups of people to get stuff done, even different alliances. Personally, with 5 guilds and 30 items in each- I rarely have all 5 guilds with no "dead space" to unload any items I find. All our items stay on the traders for LONG time, which is awesome (usually), but if you put something on and the price drops it can stay there occupying a slot till it falls off and gets returned.

ESO's trade system is not perfect, but it is definitely NOT the worst one I have ever seen, either. I'm going to through some us older gamers in a time machine: Asheron's Call. A really old MMO, but they had this area all players could port to called the marketplace. People set up traders there and sold stuff, bought services like portals, etc. It worked pretty well.

Some sort of area that could hold a guild trader for basically everyone, would be technically possible, but still a lot of work. Just kicking around some ideas for the OP to consider. If your game time is short and you need to shop, target the guild traders in big cities or simply advertise what you are looking for in zone chat.

Believe it or not any way to avoid a mega server wide market is good for the economy, everything becomes a monopoly at time point.

Malanthor wrote: »

I just resubbed after a couple of years away. One of the reasons i stopped playing back then was the lack of an auction house. I was/am mostly interested in buying stuff -not selling.
Sadly the whole process with running back and forth and checking out the various guilds kiosks were just too horribly. I play games to have fun, not do chores i might as well do at work. I would assume that most people would want a system that let them easily browse available goods and then make a purchase. Just like E-Bay, Amazon etc. Would anyone here want to get in their car and drive back and forth between stores to find something they were looking for instead of using google or a online marketplace like ebay? I assume the answer is a resounding NO.
Well the same goes for me in game, i don't want to saddle up my horse and ride around to the various kiosks to find what i'm looking for. My time is too limited for that.

Now i am sure there are those who appreciate the way the system works right now. With the limitations placed on selling stuff, there are far fewer sellers than there would have been with a regular global auction house. And thus a sellers market. Asking those sellers what system they want is like asking someone with a limited monopoly if they want said monopoly to go away with the following losses in income. What answer do you expect to get? Its like asking someone if they are ok with cutting their salary.

Remember that most people who play this game are not hardcore sellers, they are just people that from time to time want to buy and sell something. Why make things hard for them?
They by far make up the actual population, and are the ones who keep this game alive. Not the small select group of greedy businessmen who profit from the current system.

Please add a global auction house for the benefit of the masses!

Not this again. Go to the forums search bar and type in auction house. There will be the countless arguments about auction house. Believe it or not some people like the current system and don't want it changed, definitely not for an auction house either.

To say that the larger part of the population wants an auction house is just your opinion. For all you know the majority likes the current system and would hate an auction house, we just don't know. That is why it's best to only speak for how you feel about it and not what everyone else may or may not think about it.

You can't say with certainty that the masses would see an auction house as a benefit. I certainly wouldn't.

I guess it's a good thing zos has never mentioned implementing an auction house or even getting rid of the traders. If we can keep guild traders for the life of the game while keeping an auction house out the game will be better off for it, imo.

This is the same horse being beaten over and over again. Just search the forum and you will see just how many people like and dislike the current system. You will also see that ZOS has never given the slightest inclination that they would ever implement an auction house. (Thank goodness)

The user and all related content has been deleted.

I just want a keyword search. Why is that hard?

@cyclonus11 if you are on PC then AwesomeGuildStore gives many and varied search options including a "keyword search"

If there was a central house where you could do a keyword search and it told you where you could go buy the item from a trader that would be a decent compromise

S'yn wrote: »

Turning the entire game economy on it's ear is never a good idea. Is the current system inconvenient- sure. Does it make it hard to find what you're looking for easily- yes. Would some sort of search function make it easier to find what yo're looking for- yes, but it would be extremely difficult to code for. Think of what you are asking:

You want a search function to check every available item in EVERY guild store in real time. Even if you found your perfect item, it could easily be sold out from under you while you are porting to the guild trader.

Extremely difficult to code? Yet we have AwesomeGuildStore.

Malanthor wrote: »

I just resubbed after a couple of years away. One of the reasons i stopped playing back then was the lack of an auction house. I was/am mostly interested in buying stuff -not selling.
Sadly the whole process with running back and forth and checking out the various guilds kiosks were just too horribly. I play games to have fun, not do chores i might as well do at work. I would assume that most people would want a system that let them easily browse available goods and then make a purchase. Just like E-Bay, Amazon etc. Would anyone here want to get in their car and drive back and forth between stores to find something they were looking for instead of using google or a online marketplace like ebay? I assume the answer is a resounding NO.
Well the same goes for me in game, i don't want to saddle up my horse and ride around to the various kiosks to find what i'm looking for. My time is too limited for that.

Now i am sure there are those who appreciate the way the system works right now. With the limitations placed on selling stuff, there are far fewer sellers than there would have been with a regular global auction house. And thus a sellers market. Asking those sellers what system they want is like asking someone with a limited monopoly if they want said monopoly to go away with the following losses in income. What answer do you expect to get? Its like asking someone if they are ok with cutting their salary.

Remember that most people who play this game are not hardcore sellers, they are just people that from time to time want to buy and sell something. Why make things hard for them?
They by far make up the actual population, and are the ones who keep this game alive. Not the small select group of greedy businessmen who profit from the current system.

Please add a global auction house for the benefit of the masses!

I hate it too, but this might help.

https://us.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade/Search

It the best AH we will ever have in the game.

As I said in another post, notice how these types of threads are made by people with less then 3 stars on the forum?

Hyrianeth wrote: »

Yup, the rich guilds gets richer. There's no place for the little guy trying to sell anything.

Nope, I am a "little guy trying to sell anything" who belongs to 2 trading guilds (location Rawlkha & Deshaan) and I am selling everything I get from just playing (materials, gear, motifs etc).