Player-based shops

[gifthorse]

Well you would pretty much always have certain items in stock. Same thing as buying from an NPC: you wouldn't need to go to the trouble of tracking rare items down, or if an item doesn't exist on the server at all, you'd have a better chance of finding it. Of course, the prices would likely be a bit higher, but much lower than computer NPCs' prices.

It seems like a small increase in convenience.

Player housing can only work if there is not a more convenient market-system in place. The market wards are basically automated AHs now, so a player-owned shop couldn't really compete with a centralised market district like that.