My first level 60 character in World of Warcraft, Raslebol, is a warrior. For some reason there are not many "bind on equip" epic items in the game that a warrior could use. I got a 1h-sword from a quest series in Scholomance, and the epic 1h-weapons available on the auction house are simply not as good as the blue sword I already have. I've never seen any purple plate mail armor parts for level 60 on the AH. The only epic item I could possibly buy there is the Skullflame Shield, and I'm not even really sure about that one, because it has a chance to deal some fire damage to all targets around me, which could seriously mess up crowd control if it awakes enemies that were sapped, shackled, or sheeped. So with Raslebol I never felt any "auction house envy".
With Kyroc, my level 54 priest, I don't have that tranquility. There are purple staves which he could use, the purple Truefaith Vestments pattern, and a lot of expensive enchanting recipes and materials. I had a closer look at the Truefaith Vestment pattern, which sells for between 200 and 400 gold, and then needs another 300 gold worth of materials to make the item. Crusader enchantment recipe, 400 gold. Glowing Brightwood Staff, 700 gold. And all this does for me is to annoy me. I know the stuff is so bloody expensive because there is no way to get these items by normal playing in a targeted way. These are all random drops with ridiculously low chances of dropping, at no specific location. Getting them is like winning the lottery. And I'm not sure that this is good game design.
Okay, camping items in Everquest wasn't perfect either. My personal record was 16 hours camping (not continously) for a Wooly Mammoth Cloak. But at least if you absolutely wanted the cloak, you knew where to go, and what to do. Killing a stupid ice goblin every 23 minutes until he drops his rare drop was boring. But farming gold in WoW for days and days to be able to buy the purple item you want from the auction house isn't better. It only encourages people to buy gold from gold farmers, which then further drives up the prices.
Now Kyroc certainly bought a lot of his equipment from the auction house, twinked by Raslebol. As I explained with the meta-level concept, having better than normal equipment makes you level faster, because you fight like somebody a few levels higher, but get xp based on your nominal character level. Nevertheless even that twinking has a disadvantage: If you already bought / received the best possible equipment, you rarely get any loot or quest rewards that are interesting to you. It will be more fun once Kyroc goes raiding places where his tier 1 blue gear drops, and he can find items for himself.
So I was wondering whether the ability to sell, send, or trade looted items and materials was absolutely necessary for a MMORPG. I could imagine a WoW without an auction house, in fact lots of newbies play for quite some time before they discover its existence. All items in WoW could be "bind on pickup", and every character would have to find his equipment himself. Then eliminate the stupid world drop items, and put all items in specific places, so if somebody is after a specific items, he has to organize a group for a specific place.
There could be one exception: Crafted items could be bind on equip like before, so that people could do tradeskills and have a market for their items. But even crafting would be more fun if the materials for crafting couldn't be bought.
Only crafted items on the auction house would seriously limit twinking and gold farming. You could further eliminate gold farming if you made it impossible to transfer or mail money. Depending on whether you would like to keep twinking or not, you could introduce a common bank slot that all characters on the same account can access, which is what Everquest 2 does.
Eliminating most of the player-to-player economy would make the game economy a lot more stable. Right now, whenever somebody in a MMORPG finds a bug that allows him to dupe or otherwise produce money in large amounts, it affects all the other players on his server. Making every character have to earn his money and items for himself, without a way of transfer, would create lots of insular one-man economies, which wouldn't be hurt if something goes wrong with one character. And in a way it would be more in the heroic spirit of the genre: The hero goes out in a quest for a specific item in the legends, he doesn't farm Hearthglen for two weeks to buy Excalibur in an auction.
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