Whether you think it has it's good effects or not, there are some more subtle problems it's creating. They aren't numerous, but they are mmo-breaking. That is, they remove important social aspects from the game.

1. Guilds are there for trading. Who here belongs to at least 2 guilds just for the purpose of using their guild store to buy/sell? Who here belongs to at least one non-trade guild that never talks or does anything? Maybe these are just my experiences, but it seems as if guilds have changed from being social interactions to just ways to trade.

2. Zone chat. You can moan about barrens chat all you like, it's still better than what we currently have. There's very little real discussion (relatively speaking), because it's constantly interrupted with big blocks of business opportunities or guilds trying to recruit (usually also for the purpose of trading).

I think players have pretty much given up on zone chat, and for someone like me, that's a very bad thing for my game experience. I don't have RL friends playing, and I don't plan on joining a bunch of guilds just to hopefully find a good one (have tried twice so far).

Now... is auction house the solution?

I don't know. What I do know is that I have started just vendoring items that could otherwise be sold to players because it's not worth the effort.

A trade channel is hardly a better solution (actually see ideas below and it might be). It will likely be phased, and even then still be a stream of WTS crap that no one is going to sit around hoping to see something they want.

I have a lot of great ideas for this sort of thing, but there's no point talking about them because they'd never get implemented. So I have to stick to what I think is remotely possible. At the current rate, it's very likely ZOS will give into the demands for an auction house.

Firstly, if nothing else is done, remove the ability to link items in zone. Sorry, that's not what that should be for. Add a trade channel. It won't help much, but if it's zone based trade channel, at least it should be targeted at the right group. Further, in the trade chat, players who send a message should be able to use hash tags, a total of 3.

BUYERS who are in the trade chat can filter the chat to show only messages that match their hash tags. Such as #Bow #Stamina #Sorcerer . Get it? And if you set up a tab like this, you'll be alerted every time a message matches. Useful eh?

Players could also use affixes as hash tags, so they get specific items. Or the name of a set. etc.

If it comes down to an auction house, build a better one...

Firstly, it should be zone-based, and expensive to list. A flat fee that is much higher than guild store, possibly 10x. Plus twice as much % wise.

If possible, I think what would be good would be to require the character who listed the item be online for it to appear in search results. Not just the player, the character. The reasoning is that a: it's another disadvantage to guild stores, b: even footing with trade chat, c: In an ideal world prevents bot-farmer type accounts from just listing items and doing nothing else, allowing laundering of items and such. d: creates a more realistic buyer to seller relationship as if they are actually trading with each other.

There is sadly no TLDR for this, sorry if I'm long-winded. But let's save guilds and zone chat from being mediums for trade only. Yes hardcore guilds will still interact, but I feel like social relaxed guilds are being completely squished out.