Why do you want an Auction House? (discussion)[dev1019]

[Sovereign]

My reasons are below!

- An AH could use a database solution to store items, sellers, prices, and histories. This would prevent all the data from being lost every time the servers go down (e.g. Marketwards)
- It could allow developers to connect the 3 cities together into 1 auction system which is more convenient for players
- It removes the need to go and find the individual NPC selling the item you want
- It adds a price history to allow prices to stabalize
- It adds context to players standing around 1 location (an auction counter) instead of just standing at an arbitrary zone line in Ul'dah
- It allows you to see normal items, +1, +2, etc... items as distinct items, unlike current market wards
- It is more familiar to new players (and honestly... we are going to need new players...)
- It could reduce the amount of data that has to be stored on servers (AH requires item, price, seller, and price history per item whereas market wards require retainer, price, item, seller, retainer location, retainer display settings, and probably more than I'm not thinking of)
- It provides a cleaner, more elegant solution to managing the economy as compared to a mass of random NPCs, staring blankly and selling a wide array of completely random items
- It would not have to replace the marketwards, as they could still be used to store retainers, I suppose

Overall I just think an AH system is the superior way to go.

[Dreamer]

My reasons are below!

- An AH could use a database solution to store items, sellers, prices, and histories. This would prevent all the data from being lost every time the servers go down (e.g. Marketwards)
- It could allow developers to connect the 3 cities together into 1 auction system which is more convenient for players
- It removes the need to go and find the individual NPC selling the item you want
- It adds a price history to allow prices to stabalize
- It adds context to players standing around 1 location (an auction counter) instead of just standing at an arbitrary zone line in Ul'dah
- It allows you to see normal items, +1, +2, etc... items as distinct items, unlike current market wards
- It is more familiar to new players (and honestly... we are going to need new players...)
- It could reduce the amount of data that has to be stored on servers (AH requires item, price, seller, and price history per item whereas market wards require retainer, price, item, seller, retainer location, retainer display settings, and probably more than I'm not thinking of)
- It provides a cleaner, more elegant solution to managing the economy as compared to a mass of random NPCs, staring blankly and selling a wide array of completely random items
- It would not have to replace the marketwards, as they could still be used to store retainers, I suppose

Overall I just think an AH system is the superior way to go.

Everything you've listed here could be implemented into market wards. There's no reason why you'd need to implement an AH to accomplish these.