Ever since the early days of online games, the ability to trade virtual goods between players has been one of the most interesting factors of MMORPGs. While some players dedicate a huge part of their time to playing the market, others prefer to spend their time more focused on actual game play. But even then you will need to participate in trades every once in a while.
Aion introduces a new twist on a familiar feature – the person store. Those entering the MMO world via World of Warcraft would only be familiar with the central Auction House (AH) system where you passed your goods over to one of the NPC merchants and set your price. When you returned to the game some hours later, you’d hopefully see the new mail icon indicating you had money waiting for you from the sale.
Back in the day of EQ, things were a little different. It was up to you to fix hooks inside your cloak, stand in a room full of other cloaked people and then flash when ever you saw a prospective buyer walk past. Ok, not quite that lewd lol. But close.
In EQ there was a single zone called The Bazaar. If you were ever on right after a server crash or down time, this would be nothing more than an empty room similar in resemblance to an indoor market hall. When the servers were alive and kicking however, it would be crammed with players all over hawking their wears. So crammed, that Sony eventually implemented a change that hid all players on arrival and only showed the ones selling goods you were after when you did a search. I blame the Ogre’s, they kept sitting on the Gnomes…
The system worked well. Being a Mage back then, I was able to summon as many pet items as my bags could handle before I went to bed and wake up to pocketfuls of cash.
Aion has taken a leaf out of both games. There are four ways to sell items in Aion: NPC Vendors of course, as well as personal trades via the designated trade channel. Those two are kind of a given. The real money however is made via the private shops and the trade brokers.
Like all games, NPC vendors provide the most basic form of trade and of course will pretty much always give you the lowest sale price out of all your options. Some items are worth much more than a vendor will pay for it, but because this is a very simple and fast way to get rid of items you don’t need, a lot of players sell items for a very low price to vendors, unaware that they could have gotten a better bargain by selling the item to another player. A prime example of this would be manastones: basic low level manastones sell for only two Kinah to a vendor, yet default to 10 Kinah via a personal store (of course you can change that price easily). So the only stuff you want to sell to vendors are soulbound items that you cannot trade with other players, or grey quality items that are basically junk and can be disposed of quickly by the handy “sell all misc” button at every vendor.
Most other items you will find are useful to another player in some way and should be sold via direct trade (using the in game trade channel and whispers to find a trade partner), a private shop or the trade brokers.
Unlike EQ where you were designated to a single zone to sell your wares, a private shop can be set up anywhere in the world. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good in that you don’t have to travel to sell what you don’t want, and of course can start selling from level one if you wish. But bad in that you will find your screen full of the little messages people leave above their stalls. Especially bad FOR THE ANNOYING FARTS THAT USE ALL CAPS!!! Gah…
Of course, a private shop is only useful if placed in a location where a lot of players come by, and one of their best uses is probably to provide a specific quest item right next to the corresponding quest NPC. The big disadvantage of this trade method is that you can’t do anything else while you have your private shop active, besides using the chat, so unless you are going away from keyboard for a while, you might prefer to use the trade broker instead.
Which brings in the biggest issue everyone has with private shops right now. You can AFK for hours and not get dropped from the game. If you walk away from your PC with your character just left standing there, you drop after 20 minutes. But with a private store open, you can stay online for 1, 2 or even 10 hours. This is of course wreaking havoc with the current server queues as the AFK store owners are blocking people from logging into the game, and then those same people set up a store so they avoid the queue again. Giant snowball effect and not the fun throwing kind.
So please: Only use the private stores for good, not evil!
I’ll do a separate write up for the trade brokers as I’ve not yet had a chance to use them myself just yet. I promise, as soon as I get to a major city and use one, I will tell you all about it. But for now…
How to Set up Shop!
Ok, so setting up your private store is really easy. Y is the default hot key to open the private store interface, in which you will see something similar to this.
Obviously the first time you use the store your inventory will be empty. To add items to your inventory, you simply double click what ever you want to sell from your bags located directly below. When you do this, another mini window will pop up asking you for a price, and will already be filled with the default sales price. It’s up to you if you wish to adjust the price or not.
The Store Message field is what appears above your head (see image) and can be anything you like. Use this to advertise any potentially rare or excellent items to attract buyers.
Once that’s done, simply hit start. And that’s it. You’re all set to start waving in any potential customers – no really, spin your camera around (both mouse keys) and watch your character for a few minutes hehe.
