Monday, February 1, 2021

ESO Traders

The Elder Scrolls Online, which is a great game (although very different from the Elder Scrolls single-player series), has an unusual global market system that varies considerably from those found in World of Warcraft and EverQuest II. In those older games, there is a large global market (by server, I mean), and all players can buy and sell on the market. But in ESO, in order to list goods that other players can find, players have to be in a guild, and that guild has to bid on a trader every week and win a trader ever week. In order to buy from that guild, you have to find the right trader in the world. Thus, some traders are seen as better than others, as they have a better location (easier to get to, usually). 

I wrote about the trade system in a paper a while ago, and IIRC the best data I could find (one of the wikis) indicated that there were around 160 traders in the world. But now, and more recently with game expansions (more parts of the world, with more traders), I was listening to a Twitch stream and the streamer said there were 239 traders. (I don't recall which streamer it was, it may have been Stardancer who is part of the ESO Stream Team). 

For some reason (trying to be accurate), I felt like that should be a blog post. 

Edit: Okay yes, in WoW there's the whole Horde/Alliance thing, and mostly you can only trade within your faction.