Having "ignore" ignore not just the player but the account should kill of gold sellers since this is a P2P game. The guild approach is no different than an AH except they will be smaller and have fewer items available. If the AH shows the seller's name, I could always try to haggle with him directly.

All this approach does is make me join 3 (or more) trading guilds and have to sort through gear three times to find what I want while with an AH I would only have to do it once. Sure, that will take more time and maybe the developers were solving to maximize time in game, but they should have faith in their product. I'd rather spend my time exploring then pouring over trading guild lists to find the restoration staff with the trait I need.

It's best to keep it as a small community, auction houses ruin mmos for me. It should be like a real life community, this way people just starting out can actually afford things, if there were an auction house, there would be people buying up all the low priced items and reposting them for incredible amounts. That would cause everyone else to compensate buy upping their prices. Then in order to afford anything for a new character, you'd already have to have had a higher level character. In an auction house, the rich always win, it stops being about helping out your community and it starts being about money, the most you can get from an item, you start under cutting people, or if you're rich enough, you just buy out everything and reprice it. This is why I left SWTOR, there are no more low cost items, gold sellers buy everything and reprice it 500% or more than what they are actually worth, which in turn forces the people that really want the items to buy gold from them. Auction Houses are for the greedy, the guild shop way of doing things is the way it should be.

You get 5 guilds to join, at 500 people each, that's 2,500 people you can barter with, that is more than enough for a successful economy, but you'll want at least 2 that aren't trade guilds, so 1,500 people to trade with, more since the other two can also have shops. If you can't sell to that many people then you're in the wrong trade or you're just greedy. I will second a trade alliance idea though, someone mentioned letting trade guilds for alliances and letting those guilds buy from alliance shops.

Turkeysammich wrote: »

It's best to keep it as a small community, auction houses ruin mmos for me. It should be like a real life community, this way people just starting out can actually afford things, if there were an auction house, there would be people buying up all the low priced items and reposting them for incredible amounts. That would cause everyone else to compensate buy upping their prices. Then in order to afford anything for a new character, you'd already have to have had a higher level character. In an auction house, the rich always win, it stops being about helping out your community and it starts being about money, the most you can get from an item, you start under cutting people, or if you're rich enough, you just buy out everything and reprice it. This is why I left SWTOR, there are no more low cost items, gold sellers buy everything and reprice it 500% or more than what they are actually worth, which in turn forces the people that really want the items to buy gold from them. Auction Houses are for the greedy, the guild shop way of doing things is the way it should be.

Or, alternatively, a new player can spend 10 minutes harvesting and get more money than they would in 10 hours of questing. If things are actually selling for such a ludicrous amount of money, even "cheap" easy to acquire items, it should be trivial to get money by selling those easy to acquire items. Given the way the costs of mounts and repair bills scale in MMOs, high price markets actually tend to favor new players, as it gives them the opportunity to access perks like faster mounts earlier than they would be able to otherwise.

Larger markets make monopolies MORE difficult to create, not less difficult. And FYI, gold sellers do not get gold from playing the AH, they get it from stealing accounts.

You get 5 guilds to join, at 500 people each, that's 2,500 people you can barter with, that is more than enough for a successful economy, but you'll want at least 2 that aren't trade guilds, so 1,500 people to trade with, more since the other two can also have shops. If you can't sell to that many people then you're in the wrong trade or you're just greedy. I will second a trade alliance idea though, someone mentioned letting trade guilds for alliances and letting those guilds buy from alliance shops.

It's not quite that simple.

If one wishes to buy or sell a rare or difficult to produce item, access to a larger group of buyers/traders is favorable, as there will naturally be fewer people in that market. Allowing for a larger buying/trading pool makes it easier for both buyer and seller to get what they want in a shorter period of time.

Other major problems with the guild AH system:
-25% fee renders many auctions irrelevant. Inexpensive items are no longer inexpensive, and the fee on expensive items is to crushing that you'd have to be touched in the head to use the store to sell them.
-No way to sort.
-No way to sell without using a guild slot.
-No way to sell to general public without controlling a keep and advertising.
And that's just for starters.

The current system is tremendously inconvenient for players like me that only have a couple hours a day (at most) to spend. I don't want to waste all of my time online spamming WTS/WTB, or manually looking through an absolutely horrible guild store interface. I want to be able to spend a minute to post my items up for sale, another minute to buy anything I need, and spend the rest of my time actually playing the game.

I know for people that can play 8 hours a day, wasting 30-60 minutes to sell/buy something isn't as big of a deal. When that's half of your play time, it matters a lot, and it's a huge PITA.

stealing accounts? lol the majority of gold selling money IS from auction houses or farming high value targets, it's a fact. So you're saying millions and millions of gold is taking from random accounts? that might not even have a lot of gold. If that were true then there would be a lot of people right now saying that their account was hacked. You're just spouting nonsense.

They might steal accounts AFTER someone gives them their info for powerleveling, but the thing you have to consider, is gold selling, while a breach of a game's policy, isn't illegal atm, the government has yet to close any of their websites down, they are technically "legit" businesses, and have legit websites, if stealing accounts was the way they made most of their money than that would be illegal, and the government would step in.

Turkeysammich wrote: »

stealing accounts? lol the majority of gold selling money IS from auction houses or farming high value targets, it's a fact. So you're saying millions and millions of gold is taking from random accounts? that might not even have a lot of gold. If that were true then there would be a lot of people right now saying that their account was hacked. You're just spouting nonsense.

This falls into the realm of common knowledge. Do a google search. Compromised accounts account for most of the gold that gold sellers peddle. Botting is the other big source.

I'm a bit confused on the second point. Are you saying that farmers are selling millions of ESO gold, and that the lack of an AH has had no impact on them? I thought discouraging gold sellers was the main reason you were opposed to AHs?

They might steal accounts AFTER someone gives them their info for powerleveling, but the thing you have to consider, is gold selling, while a breach of a game's policy, isn't illegal atm, the government has yet to close any of their websites down, they are technically "legit" businesses, and have legit websites, if stealing accounts was the way they made most of their money than that would be illegal, and the government would step in.

Uhh, why would they? They haven't for WoW, or any other MMOs in the past.

If you're suggesting that "the government" (I assume American government?) not "closing down" foreign owned and operated websites is proof that gold sellers don't sell gold from hacked accounts, I'm honestly not quite sure what to say.