Purchasing system

[Valaglar]

I finally understand what has been tickling my brain about this new system of buying/selling... window shopping, or the lack of it. I've been noticing that some sales are being lost due to nobody browsing. Sure, you can still do that if you select the specific buyer and see what is being sold (but I suspsect that few people do that).

One of the things that made the EQ1 bazaar successful was window shopping and secondary purchases. I've been trying to think of how to get those impulse buys to happen in our current system, and haven't been successful. Most just type in what they want and buy that single item from the broker, and totally miss that a lot of similar items are for sale.

I know this has been covered to death (which is why I've placed this in rants), but was hoping this particular angle hadn't. Still, I'm glad that we can sell and I'm sure that the system will work out in the end. Even if a recreated East Commonlands tunnel happens, we crafters will sell our wares. I am cheerful of that :)

[Torval the Harvester]

Well, you can search by specific trader as well.

Honestly, when I see something at a very good price I tend to check out the other things that person might be selling. Can be very rewarding sometimes.

At higher end items it might be worth it to actually visit people. I'm pretty sure I've been visited at least a couple of times in my room because people have bought stacks of things.

This system has it's weaknesses, certainly, but on the whole it's pretty darn good and I like it. If you really want to start a tradition conducive to a more social and active market, while at the same time conceeding that people are going to sell afk 95% of the time, you could always encourage people to take closer note of the people they are buying from when they buy. Then they might be more encouraged to search by vendor (as I suggested) but also perhaps to send a tell. Sure the vendor is assumed to be afk, but if they are afk they could have a message set to inform people of their usual business. And that's kinda cool too.

'Val