Auction House. Auctioning fees?

[Kromize]

Whats the point for them? Also, why have such a huge fee for the payment?

What is it, a 25% deduction from the end price? anyways...it's HUGE.

I remember selling an item on the AH for 100k plat, and got only ~ 75,000 plat...

Whats the point? Are the coinlords selling our plat on websites? Are they behind all the spam?!

Seriously. Why such a big fee?

[GreenGurgler]

It is by design from Turbine to suck plat/gold out of the system. It is an artificial means of putting the brakes on a runaway economy.

Agree with it or not (I dont).

[Dariuss]

it's fine. you still get way more than you would from a broker.

unfortunately this has been discussed many times on the forums already, and never with either side able to reach any sort of decent agreement, so i suspect this to go download.

[KoboldKiller]

I know this is just a fantasy game but in keeping with the story the AH is ran by the coinlords. Why wouldn't they charge a fee for them brokering a deal for us. Auction houses in rl charge a fee so it makes sense.

[cdbd3rd]

It is by design from Turbine to suck plat/gold out of the system. It is an artificial means of putting the brakes on a runaway economy.

I know this is just a fantasy game but in keeping with the story the AH is ran by the coinlords. Why wouldn't they charge a fee for them brokering a deal for us. Auction houses in rl charge a fee so it makes sense.

Both replies are dead on. Whether looking at it from standard game economic stability, or pure role-playing, the fees are a functional part of the world.

That said....Yeah. I hate them, too.

[ebt-dnd]

Isn't it 30%? And yes, it is a ripoff.

[genericearthling]

Taxation without representation!!! You would think the coin lords could afford to pay for a auction person in the portable hole along with a banker too!

[Alavatar]

Isn't it 30%? And yes, it is a ripoff.

Yes, plus shipping costs.

[ebt-dnd]

Shipping and handling.

[Vormaerin]

The game started without an auction house at all. The Devs conceived of their economy in terms of the prices you get from brokers for vendor trash and trading high end items. The Auction House was resisted for a long time because they knew it would add vast amounts of money to the system and reduce the number of items that 'go away' (when the brokers reset). They didn't have a plan for that kind of inflation.

However, the item traders were very nearly making the LFM unusable as well as sometimes being as bad as the plat farmers with general and tell comments. So the lack of an auction house became a problem even for the players that had no interest in the subject... everyone wanted the LFM to work again.

So the Devs compromised and put in a very expensive auction house. Money and item inflation has still skyrocketed, but at least some is going out somewhere.... In LotRO its not nearly as pricey, because all the items in that game bind once you equip them, so attrition is already in the game elsewhere.

[Glenalth]

So the Devs compromised and put in a very expensive auction house.

It is comparable to a real-life auction house. 20-50% in auction fees paid by the seller + a 10-20% buyers premium paid by the buyer.

[jjflanigan]

The game started without an auction house at all. The Devs conceived of their economy in terms of the prices you get from brokers for vendor trash and trading high end items. The Auction House was resisted for a long time because they knew it would add vast amounts of money to the system and reduce the number of items that 'go away' (when the brokers reset). They didn't have a plan for that kind of inflation.

The Auction House, by definition of what it does, adds NO money to the system. It simply repositions the wealth between the buyers / sellers. It actually removes more money from the system than using brokers does since there is a fee applied to the sale when you shift the plat from one player to another.

[Mad_Bombardier]

It simply repositions the wealth between the buyers / sellers. It actually removes more money from the system than using brokers does since there is a fee applied to the sale when you shift the plat from one player to another.

Technically, there is a "fee" for using brokers in that brokers buy and sell based on Haggle cost. 2 low-haggle characters selling an item to and buying the same item from a broker will flush x% of the item base value. For example, if it is 0 Haggle on a 50k gp item, 'sell' would be 15% and 'buy' would be 135% removing 60k gp from the game for the transfer.

The AH simply removes more coin from the game by having the fee as a set % and increasing the item prices. And the more you are willing to pay for an item, the more coin is removed from the game. Personally, I think it's a nice system.

[Vormaerin]

The Auction House, by definition of what it does, adds NO money to the system. It simply repositions the wealth between the buyers / sellers. It actually removes more money from the system than using brokers does since there is a fee applied to the sale when you shift the plat from one player to another.

The auction house doesn't add money to the system, it keeps money in the system. Before there was an auction house, the best you could do (besides direct trades between players) was sell to the broker for "vendor trash money". So you generally made less money per item than you do on the auction house, often by a lot. Most good stuff on the AH is well more than the 15-20k a good haggler might get from a broker, even after the 30% fee. So... the seller ends up with less money. Then a lot of stuff sold to the brokers never gets resold, it simply goes away. Buyer, meanwhile, is paying full retail. That's probably less than the AH price for elite things, but more than you pay for most mid level stuff.

Old way: 75k item. Seller brokers it for 15k. Buyer buys it for 75k or more.
AH way: 75k item. Seller sells it for 50k. Keeps 25k. Buyer buys it for 50k. Both the buyer and the seller have more money than the old way.

If the ticket price is really high, then more money goes out of the system than would have in the old method. But individuals end up with vast hoards of cash. You can't deny that folks get rich a lot faster with the AH than they would without it.

I do find it interesting when folks post things on the AH for less than they could vendor it for. Between the fees and commisions, you could actually end up losing money posting a a high price junk item that way. Anyway, I was trying to explain *why* the AH has the fees it does, not minutely examine the economic effects. Becuase if you start that conversation, you end up having to consider factors like whether money becomes worthless because you can't buy anything useful with it and other such issues.

[Vormaerin]

The AH simply removes more coin from the game by having the fee as a set % and increasing the item prices.

Right. If prices were at or lower than the old broker retail, then then the AH would "save" money. Since prices are substantially higher on a certain kinds of items (ones that generally couldn't be bought with cash before), the AH does have a net effect of taking more money out of the system in general.

[BlueLightBandit]

The fee also makes it dangerous to log onto another character and bid on your own item with the intentions of artificially raising the price. It doesn't stop it entirely, but it does make it dangerous.

[Mad_Bombardier]

The fee also makes it dangerous to log onto another character and bid on your own item with the intentions of artificially raising the price. It doesn't stop it entirely, but it does make it dangerous.

Now that you can't cancel your auction at any time after shill bidding with an alt, yes it does. Best AH fix ever!