New Bazaar Rant...

[Iannyen]

So it looks like there can now be more than 500 traders in the bazaar. Cool. Except if there are 500+ traders, anyone that tries to search for an item gets crashed to desktop. Immediately upon activating the search screen. Which is the only way to accurately tell how many traders are up. Whee. THis oughta be a good one...

[Kilyn]

I noticed this in the patch message. But as of this morning, there are still only 500 traders allowed on Xev. at least as of 2am cdt, when it took me over 10 minutes to get a spot before I went to work.


kilyn.
Newb Tradeskiller

[Arista]

Re: New Bazaar Rant...

Originally posted by Iannyen
Which is the only way to accurately tell how many traders are up.

Another way of getting the number of traders is to type /who trader (so you can see if it's safe to /bazaar).

[Lilosh]

On the Bazaar Search screen , press the "Welcome" button.


Thats the best way to know exactly how many are in Trader mode.


-Lilosh

[Iannyen]

Yeah, but the second you activate the search screen with the handy welcome button, you crash. DOn't have to actually search. The /who trader is a good idea tho, didn't think about that...

[GraemeFaelban]

Unless they changed it again, EMarr is limited to 500 again, as of two days ago at least. This would be their "fix" for the problem.

[Phabos]

This past weekend (over Labor Day), those of us in serverwide.eqtraders were joined by a friendly developer (he had an soe.name tag). During the few hours he spent chatting and answering questions, he made mention that the Bazaar was again limited to 500 traders temporarily. He told us that the original plan was to increase the limit to 550, but that crashes and bugs had forced them to roll back the changes until the problems could be worked out. So yes, there is a 500 trader limit now, but SOE is working again on raising it.


Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr

[Iannyen]

EMarr was supposedly dropping people left and right this morning, myself included.. when I opened the search window. Unless its just a coincidencs, but I didnt' get the "You have been disconnected" message, just "wham, desktop".

[Cigarskunk]

Erf - this is how the CTD bug that got me started - it only crashed me when I used EQ windows mode - here's hoping that this doesn't turn into a case of anyone who uses the bazaar getting CTD out of the game.

[OberonMiM]

no problems ever on rallos. But then again if the bazaar gets to 250 traders it considered crowded :P

I cant imagine how much database processing power is required for that zone.

[Arista]

Originally posted by Lilosh
On the Bazaar Search screen , press the "Welcome" button.

Thats the best way to know exactly how many are in Trader mode.

Yes, that is normally the best way to get the number of traders. However, as Iannyen says, the whole point of this rant is that since the patch, this method is currently not viable because it is a chicken-and-egg problem: you can't find out how many traders there are until you open the /bazaar window (because the welcome button is on that window), but you can't open the /bazaar window unless you know beforehand that there aren't currently more than 500 traders (otherwise typing /bazaar will crash you out of the game). That's why the "/who trader" command was suggested as a workaround until SOE gets this fixed, as it allows you to check the trader count before trying to open the /bazaar window.

It sounds like some servers have been temporarily rolled back to the 500 limit to allow people to open the bazaar search window, but some servers definitely still haven't been rolled back yet (7th Hammer has 509 traders on right now, and typing /bazaar causes a crash). I hope they fix this soon, because players are losing potential sales any time the trader count is over 500 and customers can't search the bazaar. My full-time trader used to make sales at all hours, but now I only make sales during the day.

[GraemeFaelban]

When you zone into the bazaar, it gives you the same welcome message, listing number of traders and items.

[Iannyen]

Correct. But when that number is 498 (as it often is in the mornings EST) then its a risk as to whether or not you can search.

The /who trader does work, however.

[GraemeFaelban]

Can you actually have more than 500 now? I have not been able to enter trader mode if there are 500 traders up, so, it would seem that there should not be any issues in that regard.

[Iannyen]

I too couldn't enter trader with 500 up. /shrug.

Who knows what they've done now....

I did have a client crash upon entering the search screen. Now I have a hotkey for /who trader. I won't hit CTRL-A without it reading 499 or less.