This is ridiculous.

There's more lag every day and Sony is complaining about network issues. Now Sony is attempting to rebalance the load while bragging on how many simultaneous "users" are on the system. But are you really a user when your character is idle in the bazaar and you are sleeping?

The process of selling EQ loot for EQ cash is not really a network operation. In fact, transfering items and money from one character to another happens entirely within the EverQuest servers. There's no reason the EverQuest client needs to be involved, except that the bazaar feature was such a poor, bug-ridden mess from the start.

Becoming a trader in the bazaar forces you to keep a PC powered up and connected to the server. This inflates the user count which Sony can use in marketing press releases while degrading performance and stability, inflating server network costs, inflating consumer electric costs and preventing your system from actually being used to PLAY the game.

"Never attribute to malice what is adequetely explained by incompetence."

It might be in Sony's best interest from a marketing perspective to produce these bazaar-inflated simulataneous user numbers, but I actually doubt they'd continue it if they had a choice. The additional network and server costs must add up too high. Sony simply has not had the ingenuity to work out all the potential exploits of a real clearing house / consignment system of in-game commerce.

Maybe I'm wrong and those 500 traders in Bazaar aren't actually using up bandwidth. But I know for sure my PC has better things to do this...

/afk Stuff for sale cheap near the stables

Edited, Thu Mar 6 13:30:47 2003