Cross-Server Auction House

What are people's thoughts on something like this?

I'm thinking it would look/work just like existing AH except the history listings would look something like accounts here (Lakshmi.Wiener, Asura.Medals, etc.). I'd guess there's not enough developer resources to do something like this, but still want thoughts on how good/bad it would be.

Absolutely for it, fully, completely. it'll never happen (money for transfers, if that wasn't clear)

It's something that needs to happen, but still won't.

It's hard to say how difficult implementation would be relative to what they'd be willing to spend making it happen.

The AH health was a big reason for my move from Carbuncle to Asura. So the transfers (in a lot of cases back and forth), are making SE money that implementing this type of AH system would dry up.

Won't ever happen because of development resources. The aftermath would go something like this though:

- Economy in freefall as people badly try to game the new reality and fail
- Stabilization after a while
- Individual players on less populated servers would suffer in the long run, due to the overall inflation that would likely happen. Players with functional, active linkshells (or enough quintuple box accounts to farm things on their own) would likely benefit.

They could put an asuratax on everything (in the begining) if you buy from asura it costs 10% more etc. ( and/or seller gets 10% less)
Similar to how bazaar tax used to be a thing, Until it reaches a balance

You also forget that it doesn't make much sense businesswise because a portion of the server transfers are done because of how single-server AHs work.

I also wonder how much people quit because it's a pain to get their hands on stuff that is more readily available elsewhere. Can just as easily see people unsubbing rather than server hopping.

I mean, I understand that there's probably no economic incentive to spend time on this or they likely would have done it. My friends and I have talked about how they do make money from server hopping. Just putting it out there for discussion.

Probably as much as the possible lost revenue from creating a multi-server AH.

But we will never know. There is neither the incentive or the ability for us to conduct a study on any possible positive/negative possibilities for such a thing, nor does SE even care!

You can be certain that some people absolutely quit due to server inaccessibility (gear, help, conversation etc)

Most items worth anything cost more on the less populated servers already just due to scarcity. The items worth less but still helpful to new or individual players aren't even listed on Lakshmi.

You can also be certain that people quit due to the game being boring.

That's neither here nor there. The same people who quit due to item/gear inaccessibility most likely would have quit anyway from boredom.

But, is it not the cause and effect lol? Can't get "thing" so became bored, and quit sooner

Chasing the carrot is the sole thing that keeps anyone playing. Keeping that carrot just out of reach is what keeps you subbed. If that carrot is that far away, there's no incentive to chase it.

I'm not denying that your argument has merit, but I'm just merely presenting a counterpoint to the whole notion that creating a multiserver AH would keep people from quitting.

Oh yeah, absolutely wouldn't solve the problem, merely a single log in a dam that needs many many more logs.

I don't think a multiserver AH would stop, alter, or even slow the flood of lost subscriptions at all. So, it is basically pointless to attempt and better if SE uses their very limited resources on other things to keep the playerbase.

it's more of a "please let me play on a server that isn't asura" (without a fine) than a "keep me active" solution.

And that could potentially save some subs, allowing play on not-asura, but not a 'significant' amount.

For example, 10,000 characters* are active due to this free play (77k to 87k) lowering sub/free2play would be a "significant" change.

If there was a server wide AH, it might be a big temptation to go back to Carbuncle.

I'm hesitant to speak to the economy health affects, but I'm not entirely sure I fully agree with Idiot Boy.

Lower population servers would have access to a lot more items on the AH & would have more access to selling items on the AH. The changing of hands of items and wealth would significantly speed up (for the lower populated servers), and it is this exchange of goods that promotes advancement, for anyone.

I'm sure there's a lot of nuances to the whole thing that will be viewed as bulleted lists of pros and cons, but I can't imagine it would be more bad than good for the lower populated servers in the long run.

Like I said in my first post though, I don't know that for SE the difficulty in implementing (hours/costs) such a system is particularly valuable for them because not only would it cost them man-hours to implement, but it'd cost them a lot of the paid server hops that happen already.

In a lot of ways, a Merge VS Auction House combined is similar as people in MT and NY suddenly being able to buy from Amazon vs moving the people from MT to NY. One option is acceptable to a lot of people, the other is not.

Yeah, I was thinking of those types of things, too.

One of the more obvious ones that would stand out, I think, is empy/abys farming.

It's probably critical to look at the nuances of that than almost anything else, as this is probably one of the larger factors that keeps lower population server people on lower population servers.

I could see possibility for lower population servers to start up bots to farm these. But I suspect the demand on Asura would not match what bots or legit players would be able to produce from all the lower population servers combined.

Meaning that it'd probably be a fairly healthy equilibrium, but maybe someone else with a stronger economic mind wants to dive into all the nuances in more detail.

I vote for it so I can unload all these cheap medals I bought

Brah, all the medals are being hoarded right now. So many medals. This isn't that thread though.

Nothing Sandraa posts has ever made sense, just let him go on thinking he has any idea about game development/balance/whatever.