DEVS, how about Designing a Cross Shards Trade WIndow ?

Often players are in need of something on a different Shard as their main where they have most of their gold and items.

So far, players willing to buy something on a Shard other then their main, they had to rely on middlemen or brokers to do the trade or, "trust" their counterpart and anticipate the trade on one Shard to then take the item(s), or gold being traded, on some other Shard.

Obviously, this often might lead to scams and players losing their item(s) or gold.....

How about, you Design a safe Trade system where a player would agree on a trade for something on one Shard, indicate precisely what the item(s) or gold that was to be traded on the other Shard was to be , and the Trade would only succesfully conclude when whatever was agreed upon for that given trade on the other Shard was to be traded to the other party.

Of course, also the unique account ID for the characters doing the trade on that other Shard would need to be indicated in the very first trade in order to avoid someone misrepresenting someone else for that trade.

Maybe it sounds more complacated that it might be to actually do it, but it would surely help out a whole lot of players, me thinks, in their cross shards trading....

And, to some point, it could also help towards Shard Bound items (which I am totally in favour of...).

For example, say that I have an extra Shard Bound Drogeni spellbook on Pacific, but I need one on Lake Superior, I could look for another player who has an extra Drogeni spellbook on Lake Superior but is looking for one on Pacific and use this safe Cross Shard trade to give them my book on Pacific and take theirs on Lake Superior...

You could kill 2 birds with a stone... possibly 3....

Leave Shard Bound as it is (which is good), YET, permit to players to more easily cross-Shard trade their Shard Bound items and thus give their extra on one and get the same on another Shard where they need it (sort of like transfering BUT, still within the boundaries of Shard Bound... all items would REMAIN on the Shard that they were created on without ending up most of them to 1 shard only...) AND, you would also finally give to players, in general, a cross-Shard Trading mechanics to finally be done with scams and players losing their items or gold to unreliable counterparts.

What do you think about it, @Kyronix & @Bleak ?

I'll go with you on this one.

Obviously I could make a lot of comments like - this is only to fix the problems that Shard Bound is causing, but I'm not going to do that, for a couple of reasons.

1. Trading is just a huge vital part of UO. I remember in the old days we used to use a website www.UO-Auction.com, and honestly that website was so cool, and it was so much fun trading that stuff.

2. Vendor Search is clearly having issues, especially on Atlantic. I'm a big fan of Vendor Search, it is certainly a step in the right direction, but when you are on a quiet shard, there is not so much in there, and everyone is physically migrating to the busy one, again, because Trading is such a huge part of the game, we are all after that exact piece of equipment for us, or that rare, or that artefact or deco etc. If the entire concept of Trading could be moved onto additional servers to cope with the load, and if the entire Trading function could be shared across all shards, it would help absolutely every player. All Buyers, and all Sellers would have maximum opportunity, there would be so much more to play for, and also, players would not be pressured into leaving their own shard where they may have best ping, just because they want to take part in the trading aspect of the game, or feel like that is the only place they could gear up or find what they want.

3. It would get rid of pricing arbitrage, where certain vendors put up basic goods cheaply to help new players, or players on their shards, and merchants bulk buy the lot, and sell higher on Atlantic. This does go against the spirit of what some players play for. This puts sellers on smaller shards off putting stuff on vendors, which reduces supply, and increases a small shards problems, it's the whole vicious circle.

4. Currently, pricing on Atlantic drives the pricing on other shards, due to above mentioned reasons. So you get the scenario where the hyper inflation on Atlantic pushes through to much smaller shards where they cannot afford those prices. A shared trading platform, would balance out the Inflation and pricing aspect across every shard to its most optimum level.

So I'm not going to say this is only to fix Shard Bound issues, in the bigger picture, this could add to the game, and this is the solution I was pushing, before Shard Bound came in, except I can understand it might be a lot of work for them.

A centralised Trading platform, shared between all shards.

I've re-read your piece more carefully - I've got to say, it's the Shard Bound bit of your concept that is still breaking it.

Why would items remain on the shard? They need to be able to go where the player needs them.

Upon reading your suggestion more carefully, it really is just a half baked solution to try and fix a half baked piece of implementation, I do apologise if that sounds overly critical.

My suggestion is actually the full and final solution, to many issues - yes it may require more work, but sometimes it's worth it, to get the quality of gaming.

I was wondering if I would get to enjoy a Popps novel today. I was not disappointed.

In short, not feasible for a number of reasons, the primary one stemming from technical limitations I'm not going to get into.  

 😂 the troll train is moving at full speed! 

so too summarise in a very short way, Popps has no one to xfer and of his stuff.   But I bet he does not even play other shards, so once again he feel the need to speak for others......

Asked and answered.  Time to close this one down. @Mariah