technical question

[wayshaper]

what are the issues behind the inability to have off line vendor's / merchants available in EQ 1 (was available in EQ2 and starwars galaxies)

just curiosity on my part is all

[Gaell Stormracer]

Probably history and inertia While I've no doubt that an equivalent system could now be set up that doesn't require players to be on-line, it's a case of whether the resources are justified...

[Bara]

In EQ2 player bought residences also influence (pricewise) the offline sales/broker system. This would add a wrinkle I'm sure SOE doesn't want to get into either.
In the end I think it is simply that the player base has not been vocal enough about this to convince SOE the effort would be worth it for them.

[KyrosKrane]

There's also the practical effect to consider. Many people keep a second account primarily for a trader. If you could do offline trading, then those people might close their second accounts, resulting in a substantial loss of revenue to Sony.

[Gaell Stormracer]

I suspect the "second acct for bazaar trader" is more a side effect of "Oh no! I need more bank space for my tradeskilsl bits!"

[mewkus]

SOE is in cahoots with the electric company. They want you racking up the kWHrs so your electric bill goes up.

[Strokker]

There's also the practical effect to consider. Many people keep a second account primarily for a trader. If you could do offline trading, then those people might close their second accounts, resulting in a substantial loss of revenue to Sony.

Honestly I have had a second account and when I get a Job I will have again.... True it was for a Bazaar Mule but the temptation is oftimes too great for more in the way of a companion for your toon while searching for an exp group or waiting on the raid channels to be called. I have no fear that SoE will lose revenue from this sort of thing in fact it might just boost revenue more this way people can have their cake and eat it too.

[Tanker]

There's also an added wrinkle in that the character storage system for EQ2 is database-driven and, therefore, supports atomic sets of changes, i.e. "do this and this and this, or do none of them". (Note: not first-hand knowledge here, but I'm pretty sure).

EQ, on the other hand, has a compressed text-file based system for character storage. This makes it a bit more "fun" to modify characters that aren't online right now. While EQ does make changes to offline characters sometimes (specifically, offline de-guilding), it's not something we liked to happen often. Also, reading/writing character data is up there on the list of World server load issues. They're probably not looking for reasons to do more of it.

[Gaell Stormracer]

That wouldn't preclude a consignment system like WoW does it though.... you just do away with the trader being a "character" at all.

[Tanker]

That kind of requires a mail system either like WoW (where items/cash can be sent) or something like the SOE Player Auctions transfer system, only sending the items to a specific bazaar-like zone server, requiring a separate storage system for those items, as well.

That last one seems the most likely alternative, but none of them are simple. Items are tracked pretty crazily in EQ. "Losing" items through crashes etc. is the thing people scream loudest about, so they try really hard to be able to find stuff when it gets lost.

[wayshaper]

im not a computer knowledgable person, so dont know what it would take

im thinking something like this.

/trader

set up my stuff, then type

/tradercamp

sony server kicks me, and takes over control of the toon,

when i log in next, the moment i log in, it boots the trader, and allows me to log in, (yea, might have to sit there a moment while getting the "active character" text)

[Itek]

This makes it a bit more "fun" to modify characters that aren't online right now. While EQ does make changes to offline characters sometimes (specifically, offline de-guilding), it's not something we liked to happen often. Also, reading/writing character data is up there on the list of World server load issues. They're probably not looking for reasons to do more of it.

It's hard.

It's BuGG-y.

It's work.

It' a cause of lag.

Hence, for the technical reasons Tanker stated. (that is the difference between a file-based storage and a database type storage for characters)

It's the same reason you can't mod Diablo characters with Diablo 2 editors. The files are different. What works in one game doesn't have the same possibility of working in others.

[Sunshadow]

I imagine it working something along the lines of the shared bank slot so you so anything you put in there gets whacked up for sale. You can then go off and play your toon/s as per normal. Prices would be stored server side and people con make purchases at any Banker anywhere. Then basically remove the Bazaar as a zone as it would be obsolete.

Sunshadow

[Tanker]

Well, it's not quite like the Shared Bank, which is basically just additional bank slots that get loaded with each of your characters. This would be "trading" an item to a zone server that isn't your own (something EQ doesn't do right now, or we'd have that long-ago spell that "sends an item").

Zone-to-zone communication, especially when dealing with items, where you simply CANNOT mess up (or the fury of the wronged player abounds on the message boards) is tricky.

In one sense, this would be less tricky than the spell I mentioned, in that the zone you're sending the item to can't suddenly decide to be in another zone while the network packets that are sending your item to him are en route. (This is the BIGGEST issue with zone-to-zone transactions).

In another sense, it's more tricky, as zones save very little state. This zone would have to CONSTANTLY save the state of EVERY item/auction that it has in the system, WITHOUT connection to a true database (and the benefits of transaction-based access). IF such a system were put into place, I don't think I'd trust it in its first 2 or 3 release-iterations.

Finally, you'd have to be able to get items out of the system, so a potentially ever-growing list of "items that aren't up for sale anymore, but people haven't 'picked up' yet" would have to exist as well. Make no mistake, WoW's item email system would never have happened without a direct hookup to a storage DB of the items/emails being sent. Having a zone load every email for everyone into memory just wouldn't happen.

Hmm, looking back, it looks like the first step towards something like this would just HAVE to be some form of direct access to a DB for item/auction storage. Hopefully, this would be a first step toward character storage via DB as well. This is no small task, and my first impression is that it won't happen, sorry.

[Gaell Stormracer]

Well, maybe yes, maybe no. The current dev team aren't entirely bound by the "sorry, can't change it cause it was so in the beginning" philosophy.