NPC Traders no longer have 'hidden inventory'?

[Annywyn Picnicmaker]

Before this last patch, I enjoyed 'merchant farming'. You could find all kinds of cool tradeskill items sometimes.

Before, when you would buy an item that was shown in the NPC's inventory (and not one that they normally stock (ie. was player sold to them) , there used to be a 'hidden', 'under the counter' inventory. So once a slot was cleared, and you clicked on the merchant again, that slot (well one at the bottom) would now be filled with a new item from 'under the counter'.

Now, What you see in the inventory is what you get. There is no 'hidden stock'. Upon testing, whatever you sell to the merchant if they are full, goes 'POOF". I realize that SoE may not have intended to have a hidden inventory in the first place ( ie limiting resources etc) , but that is how it has been since I started playing. I reported this as a bug, as there was nothing in the patch notes pertaining to it.

Is anyone else noticed this?

[andaerice]

There is already a thread about this on the General board. Not only is there an item limit, but the new code is buggy and gives lore messages when you buy out all of an item.

While many are crying nerf over this, I can understand why it happened. Instead of letting merchants have a variable, possibly unlimited, inventory, they now have a static 80 slots. Under the old setup, a database request for merchant inventory would require one or more joins to display, possibly resulting in hundreds of records most of which would never be seen. With a set limit, this operation could be done with only a single request and a single database record per merchant.

[Inyidd]

Just for clarification - vendors (as far as I know) have never had an unlimited inventory. They used to be limited to 90 slots, 10 of which weren't visible.