The Auction House has been a point of discussion on our hardcore server for a while. Personally I agree with it not being involved in HC, and from what I've heard at the Fireside chats, the devs feel the same. But, at one of the earlier Fireside chats I attended, Kestrel had talked about maybe doing something else with the auction house, like a "market event." After hearing this I thought for a long time about what that could look like, and have come up with an idea.
The Open Market
I'd propose a designated area where players can come to trade, and find crafting services they need, keeping the sense of community we have with trade restrictions and lack of AH now, well freeing up world chat (hopefully) and adding something unique to the server.
The idea
- 1 or 2 (Horde & Alliance) dedicated zones for the market
- Lift trade restrictions to within 10 levels instead of the usual 5 (To encourage use of the market)
- Players can rent "stalls" to set up shops
- Limited in supply
- Based on professions, with x amount of "open" stalls (where a player could sell things like a collection of rare items)
- Level based (a set amount of stalls for 1-10, 10-20, etc.)
- Require a "stall voucher" to rent (gold sink to open)
- Stall voucher on a weekly cooldown(harder for guilds to dominate)
- Only online stall tendering
-A little explanation here, what I can see it as is a community place either near or in a neutral city, or one for each faction; this would be a place you could go when you need an enchanter, leather-worker or any professional. It would have a dedicated stall for all professions, including secondary, and then the wild card stalls, obviously this would all be X5 for each level range, totaling 80+ stalls. This would have to be a large zone, or instanced. Personally, I think not instanced is a better idea, to create a large community. But, I understand it may be easier to instance them. Like stated, I think there should be a lockout on stall rentals, to slow conquest of the market. Time, and a level range scaling stall voucher. For example, a 0-10 stall may be, 1g, well a 30-40 stall may be 15g. Stalls would be given out on a first come first serve basis, say just a right click-able spot that consumes a voucher, and only be in use for the duration the player uses them. Add a minimum of 15 or so minutes, so there's no accidentally exiting your stall and wasting gold. After that, when you leave, your time is over. No offline selling. Can't get a stall? There are other people there looking to buy! This would have people advertising what they please in /say, creating a great sense of immersion.
Thank you for reading,
-Gromgosh