On Consignment!

Broker Changes in a Nutshell

By: Savanja

 

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I have to admit, I was skeptical.  From the first moment that I was face
to face with my local broker, looking at a system that was completely foreign to
me, as I sobbed quietly (I really dislike change, it confuses me!), I wondered
why those silly Norrathian Gods, had to mess with what I had thought worked just
fine.  Well, apparently it didn't work just fine, but that's not the
point, it worked fine for me.  *shakes her fist at the Gods*

So I very apprehensively peek through the new broker features, looks all
different *grumbles*, but I see a few very neat features.

Searching And Buying

Advanced search is pretty much set up the same as searches were previously,
my favorite feature here is being able to save searches, so when one is looking
for a particular type of item, they can quickly search each time they hit the
broker.  Other than user interface appearance changes, search is left
rather untouched.

Buying is also basically the same.  The biggest difference is, you can't
buy directly from an online player from their home.  I used to do this to
save myself the broker fees after finding the item that I wanted on the
broker.  It just seemed more cost effective, (especially for higher end
items) to run my rear across Qeynos to wherever, and grab the item directly from
the seller.  Not to mention the role-playing fun, of a well set up
merchant, showing their wares in their home/storefront.  I'm actually
rather sorry to see this taken away, and I dearly hope it's brought back soon,
and it looks like it will be with the new vending containers that have hit the
test server.

Selling

This would be where the biggest changes were made.  As I cursed those
Gods again, and moved everything from my vault inventory into the little broker
sales tab, then reset the prices on every single one of my items, I was still
failing to see where the benefit was.  Changing over from the old system to
the new one, probably should have been made a little bit easier and likely
should have been explained somewhere.  By the lack of items on the broker
for the first many days, that quite a few people weren't fully aware that their
merchants were no longer selling.  Silly people need to read those pesky
Live Update notes!  It actually took me a few days to get everything
switched over as well, but I think I'm selling now.  I think...

My favorite feature of the new selling system is that now my items for sale
are not taking up space in my vault or character inventory.  This leaves me
far more space for all the junk I hold onto to.  Beyond that, I can see my consigned
items from any broker or bulletin board, anywhere, and gather my coin from each
session, add items, remove items, etc at those same locations.  This is
great save of time!  The broker keeps an easy to read sales log, and once I
drag an item into the consignment sales box, it's added to my list of inventory,
and I can click on it and do a search for that item to compare prices.  The
broker automatically assigns the item a price, but these seem to be the price
that a merchant would buy it for, and generally are not the best price for the
market, so searching for market averages is always smart.  It will also
place your listing in red (the "Yes" under the "Listed"
column) if you have priced your item for less than what you could possibly get
from a merchant.

And as mentioned above, currently
on test is an update that will allow for different types of containers and
vending items.  This will include furniture shelves, pantries for food,
weapons and armor racks, and various other types of item specific
containers.  I love this idea, and cannot wait to see how it is
implemented!

 

Overall, I find the changes that have been made to broker system to be very
nice time saving features.  I'm happy to see that some of the previously
overlooked bits of the game are getting some attention (also note the addition
of the casual clothing in the test notes..YAY!).  With recent broker
downtimes, it seems that the broker overhaul was very much needed and hopefully
this will solve any of the previous issues that were happening.

 

Questions?  Comments?  I'm always available via
e-mail!