NOT MY ADDON - Just posting it here because I thought it was super cool
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Original post
Below is literally copy pasted, go to reddit post for feedback!

There is one thing in World of Warcraft Classic that is bugging me more than everything else: The auction house and the laborious way to get rid of the items you farmed. If you're using the auction house, you will need to put in all items every 24 hours as well as a deposit. If your item doesn't get sold in the auction house, then you will loose the deposit making deficit. This often results in items being sold to an NPC instead of another player, because the effort and the possible deficit due to the auction house might not be worth it. Another possibility is to sell your items using the trading channel spamming it every now and then. But imagine a few hundred players who want to sell something. The chat would just be flooded making it even less likely to sell something. Therefore, I tried to find a solution for that and found one:

I wrote a small AddOn that I call "IAmAMerchant", turning you into a real merchant like any other NPC merchant out there, and I want your opinion to that AddOn!

The only thing you have to do in order to use it is to download it and set up a bunch of items that you want to sell, as well as the price. The next thing you have to do is to wait for a player to click on you, inspect your items that you want to sell and whisper you with a request for an item. Imagine walking through Stormwind or Orgrimmar and rummaging what the other players have to offer. Or running around in Tanaris, accepting the cooking quest, and next to the cook is standing a tiny gnome selling the precious [Alterac Swiss] that you need for the cooking quest. ;) You could inspect and trade anytime and anywhere you want, as long as the other player also has this AddOn.

Current status of the AddonOn:



This is how the AddOn currently looks like after clicking on another player. Retrieving the offered items is already built in, however the sent items, item count and price is still hard coded. I need to code a UI for easily selecting the items and setting the price. This might also take some days as I'm 10 hours a day not at home and I'm pretty new to AddOn programming (just started last weekend), so have some mercy ;)

What features I will probably implement:

Main goal is to add the UI to select the items and set the price + some minor additions like disabling this AddOn in combat, adding tooltips to the items shown, finding another solution to open the window instead of letting it pop up every time a player is targeted, and implementing an auto /say function that says a given text every few minutes in order to do some marketing for your retailing.

Another feature I am thinking about it be able to allow other to inspect your inventory. So if they see something they need, but you are not offering it, they might ask for it. But I'm still not sure about this feature. Even if it would be optional via settings.

And now it's your turn, Reddit! What do you think about this Addon? A useful WoW Classic feature, or should I delete it immediately? :)

Update (16th August 00:28, Germany)
Today I was working to make a first beta version and implemented a few things:

Slash commands for enabling, disabling, clearing the item list and adding items to the item list. disabling the addon will only disable it on your side and not opening the merchant window anymore. However, other players can inspect your items for sale. The slash commands are:/iaam add <ItemLink> <count> <price e.g. 23456 for 2g 34s 56c>/iaam on/iaam off/iaam clear -> clears the items for sale listThese commands are temporary for the beta as long as no UI for adding items exist. I will probably also add the feature to remove items via rightclick in your own merchant window.

HyperLinks on mouser hovering added

Multiple minor bugfixes

It's late and I will go to bed now. I will try to upload the beta when I'm back from work, because I won't be at home this weekend :/

Kaiju wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Op Delivered. His first plugin build is up on wow interface for retail.
https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/ ... etail.html

Gitlab Repo: https://gitlab.com/MMRep/iamamerchant/

Lovely idea ! Main problem might be to let people know you’re “click’able” As an RP’er... I’d say awesome if you can pull it off !

That seems like a pretty cool idea, and I think you're right - this type of addon would need a lot of people using it to be effective.

I wonder what kind of performance penalty will be there. Seems like a lot of scripting overhead.

Shadow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Lovely idea ! Main problem might be to let people know you’re “click’able” As an RP’er... I’d say awesome if you can pull it off !

Pippina wrote: ↑

4 years ago

That seems like a pretty cool idea, and I think you're right - this type of addon would need a lot of people using it to be effective.

I wonder what kind of performance penalty will be there. Seems like a lot of scripting overhead.

Gallow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Performance penalty is something that I didn't think of. Would this be a load on the client or the server?
I think the trade addon that people use nowadays on retail makes the game load a lot slower, because it needs to get data from the Auction House (API)? AFAIK there is no API available in Classic (I'm probably wrong though)?

Seems pretty nice, similar to Linage 2 trading; but I fear that if the addon becomes too popular Blizzard may block it, trading without the AH avoids a money sink and Blizzard may not like it.

daisyKutter wrote: ↑

4 years ago

but I fear that if the addon becomes too popular Blizzard may block it, trading without the AH avoids a money sink and Blizzard may not like it.

daisyKutter wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Seems pretty nice, similar to Linage 2 trading; but I fear that if the addon becomes too popular Blizzard may block it, trading without the AH avoids a money sink and Blizzard may not like it.

Yeah this is a really cool addon, gives bank alts something to do as well instead of just camping mailbox or auction house. and a really nice way of implementing interaction between players like that of a real world.
i don't think the AH cuts thing is that big of a deal honestly, i mean it matters when youre still a lowbie and have fuck all money but once youre established its unnoticeable.

I believe that the dev can change the cursor when the player have the same addon on a mouseover, it will not impact too much in performance. Usually addons that can impact the performance are the ones that have to do a lot of math or search for a lot of things, like recount, all the things, etc. You can run my interface 100x in the same client that you will not reach the impact in performance that they reach.


PS: About the errors, this is because you are running a outdated addon that is causing a lot of lua errors (you can turn the lua errors on, so you can see what addon is causing it)

Pippina wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I'm not a software guy so I don't know, its really more of a question that a statement. I know I get warnings from time to time from the game client saying things like 'lots of LUA errors, slowing performance - please disable addons' so I know there can be an impact. And an addon like this seems like there would be a lot of chatter back and forth between clients as the addons try to figure out who has it, who doesn't, who is selling what, etc. Seems like a lot of overhead.

i mentioned it in the reddit post, though this may be a TOS issue.

It could be possible to allow whisper commands to browse the inventory with those not using the addon, and a template macro could be used in general chat or /say to say that you're using the addon.

Seems a bit weird. I've used addons before during raids that would allow you to put in a set quantity of coin which would initiate the other player to drop in consumes and hit trade. I've seen people use these things in major cities to auto sell for food/water (on private servers) and other things but this merchant system seems a bit... pointless? With the auction house I just dont see a reason to do this outside of roleplaying as an NPC. But, maybe im crazy and maybe a lot of people would prefer to play as an NPC.

For stuff that is always on the AH and sold in bulk, like crafting mats, this is worthless. But for those random BoE greens you accumulate that never sell when you put them on the AH, and which end up getting DEed or vendored even though someone out there might need them, this could be pretty good.

Op Delivered. His first plugin build is up on wow interface for retail.
https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/ ... etail.html

Gitlab Repo: https://gitlab.com/MMRep/iamamerchant/

Kaiju wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Op Delivered. His first plugin build is up on wow interface for retail.
https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/ ... etail.html

Gitlab Repo: https://gitlab.com/MMRep/iamamerchant/