Ryzom

Ok, this is a little far out and will require some imagination (which im sure you all have)

Auctions could be done in an "auction house" where there would be one in each of the main cities.
The player could enter this room and select whether they are a buyer or a seller. The sellers then select in a window what it is they are auctioning. The buyers select "im a buyer" and they get a window popup with all the items that are currently up for auction...
The buyer will be able to see who is selling, what they are selling, the stats of the item, the item bidding time, and whoever else is bidding on the item...
The beauty of this is that when you start bidding it will be possible for the devs to set a rule where you simply cant bid any figure higher than the total amount of dappers in your inventory!
When the auction ends it will be exchange completed then and there!

The beauty of doing auctions here in this forum is that you have the time advantage where you have a week to place a bid, whereas with my idea it would depend on how long the seller was sticking around for! Also to raise awareness of people putting things up for auction i think this bazaar forum is the only way! im still trying to think of a way around that part!

Guys see if you can think of some suggestions and improvements on this idea cos i think it could work and is also the extra content that so many are after!

Maybe Xavier can also have a quick mention of what he thinks?

Auction houses works rather well in other games. And it gives players not reading the forum a chance to participate in the auctions.
It's doesn't even to have to be complex as auctions often only require a few variables I think.

Length of auction - Say up to 7 days, as at the vendors. And down to an hour.
Escrowish on/off - When you bid, the bid is subtracted until someone bids higher, in which case you have your bid back.
Anonymous bid on/off

And while I am dreaming:

Contracts - Instead of items, you bid on something one will perform. For instance homin will dig 10.000 mats and others bid for it. Or a rent-a-healer-a-day. You get the idea.

And why do we have the merchants for the proper items if we are not to use them?? Ok, you cant make bids there, but few uses the merchants as they are intended.

With or without auctions i would like to have a parcel delivery system.(wow has a very good mailing system). This means i can attach one or more items to an ingame mail. In wow it was even possible to hand out the parcel only if player paid the requested fee. Very good for selling or buying.

It came to my mind when dealing with australian players. Some of them i can only meet weekends early morning . NA is not that bad, but not easy too.

I think this is a great Idea, alibasil.

Another good addition would be if you could deposit the auctioned item/items so that theres no problem getting the bought stuff of the sellers isn't online. =)