Auction Houses? Guild Stores.

Hello Internet! Happy New Year.

For those of you following ESO (Elder Scrolls Online), you probably know that there is no Auction House. Instead, there are Guild Stores. This changes the nature of economy and trade in ESO. Most MMOs go with a system of being able to buy from any player, and being able to sell to any player, and being able to view EVERYTHING currently on the market. With Guild Stores, your market is now limited to a maximum of 1500 players. PLAYERS. You see, each account gets to join 5 guilds. And unless I missed something, the guild cap is 300. It has been said the guild cap will probably rise, I’m guessing to 500. Even still, this puts your market up to 2500 potential buyers.

If you’re a crafter, you’ll have to manage your guilds very carefully. If you’re not a crafter, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. I don’t mind. As a crafter, you’ll need to make sure you’re in active guilds with a ton of people in them. Preferably with no other crafters. You’ll need active and full guilds to maximize that 1500-2500 player base, and have characters that are leveling up and need new gear, more potions, or more food. So if you haven’t yet, check out some guilds, join one or two. Going back a bit, I said “Preferably with no other crafters”. I really meant to say “with almost no other crafters making the same stuff as you”. By being one of the only people crafting a certain item in your guild, say, heavy armour, you’ve now got a niche market. Niche is kind of a funny word, isn’t it? Sounds a bit like quiche. To maximize this niche, you should only focus on the one craft. If you want to craft more than one type of item, that’s cool too. More people will buy your stuff if you’re selling more than one thing!

Even if you’re not crafting, it is still wise to select your guilds carefully if you want to make a buck off the Guild Store. If you like to buy things cheap, and re-sell them for a higher price, you’ll want to be in guilds outside of the Six Degrees of Separation (it’s ok if you need to google that or niche). What I mean is you want to be in guilds with as few people in common as possible. Because if someone is doing the same thing and is in the same guild as four of yours, you’ve got some serious competition. If you’re more of a PvPer or raider, consider joining some non-pvp or raiding guilds too. There will be less chance people are putting up the same items to the Guild Store. Of course, size and activity are also key to making money off any Guild Store. You won’t make any money off guilds with 20 people, and you only ever see yourself online.

As an afterthought, I remembered how Cyrodiil plays into this. I almost even clicked send to Chillbilly to post this article.
Cyrodiil (PvP) unlocks a whole new element to how Guild Stores function. If your guild owns a keep in Cyrodiil, anyone who visits that keep can browse your guild’s store. And likewise, you can browse the Guild Store of any keep your faction owns. So ideally, you want to be in five guilds that each controls a keep. If possible, at least one in each three alliances. If you can achieve this, then you can now sell to everyone playing the game.

I’ll leave you gold goblins for now, with a quote to ponder:
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
- Andy Warhol


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