Broker Price Tracking Mod

[Sinbad]

Back in 2006, Talrath opened a thread here http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=6630 where he discussed a WoW mod called Auctioneer.

Like Talrath, I recently returned to EQ2 after playing other games for a while, WoW being the most recent of those. Unlike him, I preferred a different mod, WoWEcon Prices, which actually accumulated price data in an offline database from all servers, on both a per-server basis and a merged-basis, then published that data in a freely available mod that you could update as frequently as you liked. It stored the data in a saved variable file on your hard drive where it was accessed whenever you needed to know any type of information about an item, such as the vendor price, the average market price, or the high and low market prices. If you want more information about that mod, take a look at their site http://www.wowecon.com for details.

There is already a site which accumulates data like this for EQ2, http://eq2markets.com/ and it has a price search page which will present you with a stock broker style chart for either all servers or your individual server—provided they have the data uploaded for your server. They are still collecting data and rely on players to provide data by uploading their store logs—a text file that is readily readable. If this site could be persuaded to cooperate by supplying a mod author with access to downloading their data files, or even letting a mod author cooperatively publish a mod through their site, then it could save an immense amount of time and trouble.

I don't understand how it would be a violation of the EULA in any way, shape, form or fashion to create a broker mod that would access a database that was created offline, then stored on your hard drive for the purposes of trying to price your goods fairly and competitively with others.

My personal reason for wanting such a mod is not to be able to price my goods higher, but to be sure that I do not price them TOO high and thus have them sit there and make everyone think I'm a jerk. I have been gone so long that I have NO idea what the current market prices are for most items, so I don't have a feel for the market and I don't know whether someone is pricing something fairly that I want to buy or not and I don't know how to price many of the things that I make and loot. I also used it to determine which items I could safely chuck and which I wanted to be sure to hang onto when adventuring. Sometimes it is surprising what some of those vendor trash items can sell for!

Personally, I would find such a mod a god-send! So, won't someone PLEASE create it for the benefit of everyone, since it is LONG overdue?

[Morpheusdead]

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS ~~~ !!
DID I SAY LOVE YET?
I WOULD ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO SEE THIS!!!

(sorry for the caps this idea excites me very much)

[lordebon]

I believe it would be easy if their data was included in simple txt files. Easy to display in-game that is.

But the uploading and downloading of data is something that would have to occur out of game (obviously) via something like EQ2MAP's auto updater. That's not written in EQ2's XML or anything like that (EQ2MAP's is in .NET), so they'd have to find someone that can do that for them.

[Sinbad]

Originally Posted by lordebon

I believe it would be easy if their data was included in simple txt files. Easy to display in-game that is.

But the uploading and downloading of data is something that would have to occur out of game (obviously) via something like EQ2MAP's auto updater. That's not written in EQ2's XML or anything like that (EQ2MAP's is in .NET), so they'd have to find someone that can do that for them.

Obviously, as you say, the uploading and downloading of data would have to be performed out of game in exactly the same manner as EQ2MAP's Autoupdater.

In the meantime, the more people who upload their store logs to http://eq2markets.com/ the better their data will be and the better the statistics they derive from it. Before someone accuses me of plugging a site I am associated with, I am not in any way associated with them, but I really want to see this mod produced and I see this site as being a major factor in that possibility.

As for the format of the data, it would not need to be supplied to the mod in a text file, but rather in some form of table or library that is readily linked and read from within an XML file so that it can be searched and the RESULTS of that search displayed. What you want to look for is very specific information on prices for one or more items, not the whole list. A text file would be bulky, would take up more space on your hard drive and would take a lot longer to download, too—all good reasons to use a more compact file format for what should become a rather data-dense file once enough people are using the mod.

Still, there should be an option for browsing the price list, as well.

WoWEcon had a direct tie-in that displayed the vendor price, average auction price and, if you set it to, the high and low auction prices whenever you examined an item.

I do know now why the original WoWEcon is not only against the EULA, but is not available for EQ2. It uses packet sniffing and decrypting info technology to grab the data from the game when doing a broker search and that is definitely something that Sony has done their best to block. In fact, I believe that is a direct violation of Rule Number 11 of the EQ2 Rules of Conduct:

11. You will not attempt to interfere with, hack into, or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers running EverQuest II.

I am NOT suggesting that any mod be constructed that would violate the Rules in any way, shape or form. Using the format that I have suggested does NOT violate the Rules, to the best of my knowledge, and should not degrade game performance significantly, any more than running EQ2MAP does.