Thus furthering the horrible trend you see in UO today.

If you believe this wouldn't have an adverse effect on the game then you either look to profit (RL $$$) from UO or need to pull the wool from your eyes.

UO needs to get away from things that will make things easier for people to make RL money from playing, else things will get worse.

has it's good and bad points would like to see it implemented but if it done right

UOGuy you seem to have a very firm grasp on marketing strategies and effects, however your rational is backwards from reality IMO! Let me give you a for instance, I log in and see a group of friends going to a champ spawn. We manage to finish the spawn unraided (hmmmph highly unlikely!) anyways for my participation Im awarded a 120 magery scroll. Finally a highly coveted item I can sell and make some decent cash on. I put on my vendor and see 6 others for sale all listed by the same person (obviously a champ farming guild) and all at the same price. So I stick my ps up and undercut his price by 10gp (why go less with recall option it wont cost a potential buyer anything to come get it and he saves 10gp). Do you really believe that other guys is gonna keep his 6 priced higher than mine. He will have all 6 of them lower than mine in a shake! My only option becomes to either wait it out and hope his 6 sell before he can restock or price even lower. The negative impact here is it becomes a war in which we both keep pricing lower until he just buys mine and adds to his stack and shoots the price back up or I have to wait and hope he runs out (highly unlikely as he already has 6). with the way the system is now I can set a fair price drop off a couple runes and sell that same day or even spam sell it at a bank! With the scripting duping the way it is highly coveted "rare" items arent exactly rare anymore but still carry a hefty price! Why should the "little guy" not be able to make a decent profit for a decent item? Why should he constantly be underpriced by the "farming, cheating, scripting,duping, whatever vendor". The reality is these unscrupulous players are going to win everytime as they dont care about the "costs involved". They have no time invested and no costs so they can always win the war! Supply and demand is going to win for the player everytime but the merchant will lose.

That could be how it goes Merth, but UOGuy said it earlier where he said something along the lines of "buying out" the price cutters and just placing it at whatever price the big seller had it at in the first place thus knocking out the competition, bringing up their supply higher, and still making profit with YOU doing the work instead.

Simply as I stated before, this entire idea is horrible.

Dude, on the contrarey... I believe it will revolutionize UO commerce for evermore... Changing it into a true competative marketplace, through advertisement...

After all, what is a search engine for? To advertise things for sale and to allow the "Buyers" to brouse your wares freely & comfortably...

The problem with Selling in UO, is there is realy no way to advertise your items other than place the items on your vendor (my est 1500-2500 vendors on a shard), which is one in many.... and Hope someone buys from you...

or you can stand at the Bank and spam everyone, handing out runes...

or just drop runes at a moongate (I gota be honest with you, I pick them all up and resell the to an NPC)....

and the Problems for a Buyer in UO, is you gota search all those 1500-2500 vendors, by hand... clicking, clicking, clicking.... I guess outa frustration you can always buy the 1st one you see, for whatever outrageous price....

Merth, Dude, its a nice theory... and only with heavy competition do I see this happen on WoW...

If there is heavy competition, that only means there are "alota guys" out there trying to sell the same item, at the same point in time... In WoW the sales ads are only allowed to run 24hrs max (or shorter, if the seller choses)... So, all the sellers have a chance to relist their items, while the other guys ads are still running and they were the ones undercutting you in the 1st place...

Merth, in your senerio there are only 2 sellers, you and the other guy... and he has 6ea, you have 1ea for a total of 7 items... and he has 6 of those 7... So what make you think he even cares how much you undercut him by? Do you think all 7 items will be sold today, now? Do you even think he knows that you have one for sale? How long do you think it will take to sell all 7?...

Now, in order to know all the information in these senerios, I gota ask, How many vendors did you search before coming across one with 6 120 Magery PSs? Didn't it take all day? Do you know for a fact, this guy has even sold 1ea at the price he's offering? The trueth of the matter, is you have no idea if those 6 have been sitting month after month gathering dust or actuelly selling... making the guy millions...

Same goes for him, he had to search everywhere just to find your vendor to see you undercut him... Now, your saying he's going to run right home and lower all 6 of his items, undercutting you...

and your going to immediatly know this and your going to run right home and undercut him... Right, is that what your going to do?

The Point you both missed, was while you were undercutting each other competeting, niether one of you sold any... So, maybe theres no Buyers around now... or maybe theres no market for that product anymore... Just because its a 120 magery PS doesn't mean anyone is looking for that item... or on the other hand maybe there are 10 ppl looking and all were sold overnight (in this case price is no option, undercutting only reduced your own profits).... If this were true, how come you found 6 on one vendor?

A surplus only means a weak market, I don't care about "How rare" it is... If no one is buying, makes no differance what it is...

Merth, you make it sound sooo easy to sell something... Just drop a few runes by a moongate or spam the Bank and you sell the item in minutes... You didn't tell us How low your "Fair" price was either... or did you find some sucker?... and charge him double... Bartering face to face is an art... Most ppl in games don't want to wasted the time, just give them a buy price, they don't want to haggle...

I bet you sold it for less than the other guy...

This is exactly why UO needs an auction/vendor search, so all this can stimulate "free enterprise" in UO... The In-game economy would benefit and not the outside sales for US$... It would allow the little guy to compete with the big Corps...

UOGuy my scenario was based on the what if there were a search system in place! And my original vote was Lets talk some more because I'm neither for or against I'm really just not sure if it would be a good idea or not. It would definitely make pricing and buying easier, but I'm just not sold on it being good for the economy of UO which already is outta whack!

If it ever got put in game, I'd reactivate my account to "work" UO, not "play".

The use of that type system in UO would revolutionize the RL $$$ making, not the UO Commerce.

and thats what we are doing... Talking more...

Dude, this idea only bolsters "Competition"... and "Competition" is Good for any economy...

Why would it NOT be Good?

There ARE many other reasons "why" UOs Economy is Whacked out....

#1- NO consumables... Nothing wears out or is lost in any way shape or form... Crafters are penalized, so their tools wear out... Newbies are penalized, if they don't know about corpes/item decay... But once you get an Arty set or an Uber Armor set... Thats it, you "Buy" nothing else....So the Economy comes to a stop...

#2- Unlimited supply of Gold... in Huge amounts at High end spawns... On top of any Rare items recieved...

#3- Mega Rarity based Item system...

IMO, other games have solved these problems in various ways... and have come up with Higher Memberships than UO will ever have because of it...

I think it would be great. I hate going to Luna and buying things. They are really overpriced of course on all 6 char I have a total of no more then 2 mill in gold.

Why should UO search, uo treasures, and Uo whatever dictate what the going rate of an item is? So they can make real $$ and drive the little mom and pop vendors out of business. So what if I undercut my price and someone buys it and sells it for more? I got the item for free, only spent insurace money to getting it. Lets say sell my PS for 5 mill and they buy it for the 5 mill and the turn around and sell it or 7 mill. I get 5 mill profit and they get 2 mill. I still made out higher then they did.

I only purchased gold once and I felt so bad doing it, like I cheated the system. After that I told myself I would never do that again. I already give EA money and I am not giving someone else money out of my pocket for fake money.

If UO starts a vendor search type system, then yes I believe the prices will go down at first until the market finds it's mean and equals itself out. Then possible raise after that.

How would it be any different?

If this got put in game, the ones with all the gold in the first place would only make more and STILL drive the prices to be whatever they want.

If someone has an item that the big guys have in abundance and tries to sell it at anything less than what the big guys price it as, they would buy it out and place it at their price and make a little profit (difference from the undercut single player price and their original price).

OR if the player gets the item and prices it at the same price the big guy has they'll buy it out and price them ALL higher to recoup from buying it in the first place.

You are blind to the facts if you do not think this would happen.

Very true..I didn't think about that. It most likely would have the adverse effect then we would what it to have. We would like for some type of service out there to market our products, for people to stop by our store, and buy our items; but just like in reall life the big businesses buy out the smaller ones becuase they can. They have the money and don;t care. As long as their pockets are getting bigger. So yes theses guys would use this type of system to search out and buy all smaller market products and turn around and sell them at higher prices. You see it all the time, they drive out the smaller markets and then increase their prices becuase they can afford it and becuase they can offer more resources.

Take Starbucks as an example. I like Starbucks coffee. But I used to love this one coffee shop when I was in college. It was a small moms and pops store. But Starbucks popped up across the street and drove them out of business.

I believe the same would happen here....

This is a great topic!!!!!!!!!