Since its launch two years ago, Guild Wars 2 has been using the same interface for its Trading Post. It worked, but good God was it clunky as hell to use, especially when you were trying to buy lots of different stuff at once. Thankfully, an upcoming patch will give the Trading Post a much-needed makeover.
Perhaps most importantly, searching for items will be made a lot easier thanks to the new filtering system, which you can see on the top image. Since you can now filter for profession and stats, you won’t have to wade through page upon page of different armour sets when you’re only looking for that one level 11 Elementalist DPS chest armour.
The profession filter applies to weapons, too, so if you’re browsing Elementalist weapons, you won’t have to skim over two-handed swords and axes as you do so — instead, you’ll only be shown staves, scepters, daggers, foci, and tridents.
The Trading Post’s selling interface will be improved as well with the removal of the sort-by-name feature, so items will appear on the Sell Items page in the exact order they are in your inventory. The page will also ignore items in invisible bags, so you can’t accidentally sell any of the stuff in your special bags, and the listing and exchange fees are also explicitly shown for each item.
The trading post’s slow-to-navigate tabs are also gone, replaced with a menu system similar to the Gem Store’s. The Pick-Up tab is also getting replaced with the Delivery Box, visible above on the bottom left. This box can be seen on every Trading Post page, and it shows whether you have money or items to pick up (and, obviously, lets you pick them up if you’re near a Black Lion Trader).
On top of all that, the Trading Post will be powered by a faster in-game browser that can load everything more quickly by relying more on the resources already available in the Guild Wars 2 client. The result is a Trading Post that no longer “slows down to think about” an item you are trying to look at.
The improved Trading Post will be part of the September 2014 Feature Pack, which will be released next Tuesday, on September 9.
Introducing the New Trading Post [GuildWars2.com]
Comments
3 responses to “They’re Finally Fixing Guild Wars 2’s Clunky Auction House”
Thanks for this news,
Normally GW2 stuff cops alot of flak from the die hard WOW fans on this site because its not WOW… But there are people out there like myself that appreciate and play GW2
Cheers
“Normally GW2 stuff cops a lot of flak from the die hard MMO fans on this site because it is casual as sin… but there are people out there like myself that appreciate and play GW2”
FIXED
All jokes aside, I should hit Wildstar back up again.
They biggest problem with their auction house when I was still playing (a year ago or so), was the inclusion of an undercut button.
All it did was put your items up for sale at one copper less than the current lowest to ensure it showed at the top of lists. While it sounds like it could be useful, all it did was drive prices so low that crafting was onlyuseful for levelling up and nothing else. If you wanted to make a profit, all you had was gathering.