As I was playing a MMO today I went up to a vendor to sell off stuff in my bags to make more space. Items I sold to the vendor were things like lower lvl potions, random craft items and so on.

I felt kind of bad selling off items instead of giving another player the opportunity to use them.

So here is my idea:

Items that are sold to a vendor (not including trash/junk) are moved to the auction house instead of being permanently gone forever. The seller could be the vendors name and the money spent goes into the game just like buying something off a vendor.

I think this could benefit an economy because even lazy players like me who don't like toying with auction houses and sell usable items to vendors can help keep up items on the AH.

Thoughts?

Pros?

Cons?

If that's the case, why even have actual vendors? Just do all the transactions, "vendor" and "auction house" in the same mechanic. You can access a "tradesman" and just hit the "sell items" tab, dump all your stuff like you would a normal vendor and move on. Or, if you wanted to post a sell, you accessed another tab.

Okay. Two problems I can see with this idea is that it will drive the prices of said items down on the auction house globally, and depending on how common it is could end up getting to a point where it's not even worth the time putting it on there. The second problem is: is there actually be any real need of this? The game's community isn't divided up in the traditional sense of servers so amount of players putting items onto the auction house should never get to a point where there is just too few auctions being made.

It's a cute idea, but I think it would be better if you wanted to involve the NPCs with business and not just be there as a rubbish bin would be to allow them to sell your old stuff on their shop shelves. Which while it isn't too much of a different idea overall, it would fracture the business relationship that the player has between the vendor and also the auction in your idea in the sense that it's not listed on the same window as costing X amount and this other big that is made by the player is slightly higher or lower. And even perhaps offer a work around system if there is a Bind On Pickup type of system in place, the shopkeeper could instead sell you a BOP weapon at an inflated price but maybe even be limited to the magnitude of how good of a weapon can be sold and how many per day. Plus it could loosen the hold auction house has on business within the MMO space. Kick that idea around in your head for a few minutes.

But really in truly there isn't any need to have either idea in place. But concepts for evolution might produce that need.