Auction Houses, Player Shops and Traders! Oh, my!

I am very prone to ranting and typing out giant walls of text. Anyone who knows me knows this. My most recent plethora of pixels came when I was browsing a set of forums for a new MMO and came across a thread about MMO economies, particularly ones controlled by auction houses or personal shops.

Four pages of browsing later, I had learned that players were split on this issue. Some favored the auction house for sheer simplicity, while others said that auction houses destroyed the immersion and ruined a crucial aspect of any MMO: community. Examples of many MMOs came up, from EQ to FFXI to the ever-present WoW. However, I did not once see a post regarding the current Trader-Player system within GW.

For those who are unfamiliar, GW (Guild Wars) relies heavily upon player interaction for trading. Go into any of the major cities-- particularly Kamadan AD1-- and you'll see a robust trade channel, flooded with people selling their wares. Walk around a bit more and you'll see NPC traders-- Dye, Runes, Materials and Rare Materials to name a few. So how exactly does this economy work?

In previous MMOs, things are a bit simpler. It is either an auction house set-up where people can post their goods for a fee, log off and collect any profits in the morning; or they can set up shops advertising their goods, avoiding the auctioneer fee entirely (this method is incredibly common in Korean MMOs). Some MMOs are a bit more diverse and offer a blend of these two methods. Again, Aion comes to mind.

In Guild Wars you have neither an auction system or a personal shop system. For some, this cements the idea of a community that has seemed to disappear with newer MMOs. For others, it is aggravating and tedious-- sometimes you will spam for hours to sell your "Adept Tormented Protection Staff of Enchanting, 100k 20e OBO." Some also argue that the NPC traders monopolize markets on certain goods. However, I think there are unseen benefits to having this NPC Trader system in place.

In previous MMOs-- Aion comes to mind again-- people gouge prices on specific goods, particularly crafting materials. This makes certain crafting trades unprofitable and nearly unobtainable. Without many hours of personal experience, I have also heard that this is an extremely popular (or should I say unpopular) trend in WoW. This is where the NPC trader system steps in and balances things out.

In Guild Wars, there is no real "crafting" system. However, you do need materials and goods to craft your armor from armor merchants. For the sake of demonstration, I'm going to discuss Obsidian armor, which is considered one of the most expensive armor sets in the game.

For this set, you require 105 Globs of Ectoplasm. If you visit the NPC Trader, he will offer to sell it to you for 8 platinum pieces per glob and purchase it from you for 7 platinum pieces per glob. Players will therefore sell Globs of Ectoplasm at 7.5 platinum each, which makes a 500 gold profit per glob for the seller and is 500 gold cheaper for the buyer. This is where players will argue that this system monopolizes the market, but where I disagree.

Without the Trader system in place, player-controlled markets become dangerous. As with Aion, some goods were ridiculously overpriced, making crafting a worthless system. This makes pure player-controlled systems dangerous. However, it is also incredibly unintelligent to control everything with NPCs, which ultimately ruins the give-take of an economy.

The blend of systems in Guild Wars, while it isn't perfect, controls this flow of the economy, keeping goods valuable and players competitive, regardless of NPC involvement in interaction.