Seems to me that the majority of people who post on Alla's boards do little more than complain about what SOE has or has not done.

Virtually this whole page of messages has been rants about the new bazaar. Do any of you remember the days of the EC tunnel? When the bazaar first went live, everyone complained, saying "Now I have to have two accounts to sell and play at the same time." Well forgive me for saying so, but how much real "playtime" did anyone get while standing in EC /ooc'ing their wares? Fact is the bazzar didn't change anything, it improved on the current situation by giving the players the ability to have funtional UI windows to sell, search and purchase items from other players.

A few people have made mention of the aspect of "realism" or "believability" of the old bazaar. For those persons I have this one question - ever been to a flea market or swap meet? If so, how many times did you see the merchants(if you will) standing almost on top of each other? Did you ever walk in and get a message of how many "traders" were active and the total number of items being sold? Neither the new or old bazaar are anything like what a real "bazaar" is. Point of fact, this is a fantasy game, real life expectations should enter lightly into desires for the game.

Change is indeed difficult to adjust to. In time we all adjusted to the bazaar from the EC tunnel, just as we will to the new design from the old. It is sad that when SOE trys to correct a problem that virtually all players have complained about, some will say "they took the easy way out." It is easy for any one of us to make statements like this, however SOE has, especially in the past year, attempted to make the changes their player base says they desire. So they make expansions without fixing previous content, 450,000 subscriptions says to any business "Hey you are doing a great job, keep up the good work." Nothing is perfect. No matter how many people say "come to WoW, no bugs here and all the quests work." They are, pardon the term, full of it.


Edited, Wed Feb 23 11:54:59 2005

This expansion doesn't require super high level or uber guilds. It doesn't even necessarily require groups. My 57Sk and a 57Druid were doing just fine exploring it. There are plenty of blues in Lavaspinner's and Broodlands, both of which are quite large, and there's still more zones to see.

The Barter zone, which I affectionately refer to as Bartertown, is a great concept, but it's usefulness will be determined by people actually using /buyer mode, and, more importantly, by people actually going to DoN to see what people WTB. Without active use, the zone is wasted.

BTW, anyone can go to Bartertown and pull up /barter to see what people want, but you need the expansion to go into /buyer mode.

Change is bad... I fear change, especially US Nickels because they are the wrong size and smooth on the edges. Change in the bazaar, while poorly thought out, was inevitable. I agree that server consolidation is forthcoming and that the new bazaar has taken care of that, but the whole concept of the bazaar is now gone. From an RP point of view, it just doesn't jive. It doesn't look anything like a place you would buy stuff from anywhere else in the game. Continuity is game design seems to have not been an option. I think the designers got caught up in the 'fluffy' aspect and forgot all about player function; yes the lag will be less of a problem and yes the graphics look much nicer (tiled floors), but if the average user can't easily find what they are looking for, what's the point. I would love to see a summer free of expansions, but full of fixes to existing problems. If Sony wants users to come back to this game then they should concentrate on making it work correctly rather than giving us more eye-candy. My 2cp...

Actually, I like the new bazaar. With the noded-hub design, all the traders are essentially the same distances from the bankers, so there isn't a "good" spot to stand. The Find Trader path leads correctly through the teleporters, but I can see how it might be a little more difficult if you were going to be a ton of things at once. To fix that, a teleporter connecting the two hubs would work perfectly. It would shave off the long loop to go from one to the other. Sorting the traders by distance, similar to Ranger tracking, might help ameliorate some of the gripes about the new Bazaar. An innate rate of movement increase in the bazaar and Bartertown would be another good, practical idea to help the situation.

I like the new bazaar.

My God....the new bazaar blows. Could they have made it any more complicated and difficult?

Short and simple, new bazaar sucks lets spam SOE untill they bring back the old one or some how fix this one!

On Fennin this morning, I couldn't even find the damn thing. The regular bazaar was totally empty, no bankers, no horses, no stablehands, no merchants, no NPC traders. Instead of zoning out into Shadowhaven, I zoned into PoK. Many of the old NPCS in bazaar were in the arena.

What the hell? The barter area doesn't REPLACE the bazaar does it? Just an add on?

Bazaar is a tradegy. This is a roleplaying game. The new bazaar looks nothing like a bazaar and no attempt was made to do so. The merchants look like statues lining the walls of ridicously large rooms. The traders look like a wax museum display on that platform. The division of the bazaar into two halves makes running for items tough. You select a trader and find he is in the red area then the next trader in the blue then maybe the next back in the red. There is still no brew barrel and the tradeskill devices are too far from the trders for doing tradeskillups without long periods of running through long empty hallways. The size causes previously simple runs to be long. Even with lag the old bazaar was simpler to use. The pattern of the rooms are maze-like and require you to use the map to get around. All the rooms and halls are alike so there is no point of reference to know where you. All in all I would have to say the new bazaar is worse than any nightmare I might have imagined on my own if they had even mentioned they were going to change it. BTW you will notice that nowhere does anyone even mention that the old bazaar would be changed, no even on Alla. Only mentions of new bartering system.

Why couldnt the old bazaar style with buildings, floors, stairs, tables, chairs, merchant counters, etc be used and allow traders to be BOTH buyers and sellers. Now you need 2 accounts if you want to sell and buy a piece you want. No reason one char couldnt do both with the seperate windows provided.

PLEASE bring back the old, more realistic and believable, bazaar!!

First time for me to buy the Module with out waiting and buying it in the box, since last one failed to include a book, I decided it not worth the wait.

OK, toured the new zones off of POK, ok,
Cool,
Still confused about the barter system area.
Bazzar is a total mess, I logged on my Bazzar char and was in the stables? I messed up and zoned out into SH and was over weight Thought it was a bug allmost sent a bug report in and reallized I was just over weight. Droped half my Invetory on the ground took a Strenght poition and moved back into the bazzar.
Some one told me that you have to zone to the ReD or Blue areas. So did.

Question? If I am selling in the RED zone will my sells appear to peeps in the Blue zone?
If yes Why no easy Port between the RED and Blue zones.
Will the R-click on the Trader name just point to a wall if the tradder is in the other zone?