Why do we have d3 trade forums?

[GIJoeWWW]

Just throwing this question out there. The moderators are doing the best they can, but to me, trade forums for d3 are not functioning.

Back in d2 days, I loved frequenting the trade forums, and made quite a few trades even if I had to go through the troubles of setting up games to swap.

Since d3 shipped, I have mostly used AH to get things I need, and so far, I like how easy the process is. Blizzard keeps track of the gold and items. They all exist on its servers anyway. I have attempted to purchase a few things here in the forums. Not working. I have made several offers including some with BIN prices, basically just never heard from the sellers again. This morning, I saw one player making an offer and being accused of low-balling. The seller quoted some insane price of similar items on AH. If he thinks he can get that kind of price, why not just sell it in AH? And also, I'm pretty sure the starting bid was no where near the final price that he was quoting.

I would love to swap things again with players here on the forums, but don't know how.

[krischan]

Yes, oldschool trading doesn't work well because the auction house is a better place for that. We are currently trying to put more emphasis on trades which you cannot do there. For example, you can offer crafting serves now. You will be on your own with respect to scams, however, except you have watertight proof. Things are still in the works...

[spiffymcbang]

Give it time.

right now folks are just listing the best items and requesting insanely high prices. The game is very new. If you make a list of items you want and ask for decent but not top tier items you might get a good response.

I am trying to avoid using the auction house.

You have limits to how many items you can list on the AH , here you do not.
It is hard to follow auctions and learn the economy on the AH as you you said, you can not see what items sold for. It is hard to track items.

Blizzard takes 15% of the gold if you sell something there. We do not.

There are reasons to trade here. We just need more folks doing it. We also need to get the the 1 posters to come back or leave for good. Just signing up to post 1 item and then never responding is not helping us.

I understand your questions but we are trying to give folks another option other than the AH.

[GIJoeWWW]

That 15%, how did I forget. It is a big hit every time I sold some thing.

[GIJoeWWW]

Two things that I think might help:

1. require all items for sale to have a starting price, so we know what the seller is expecting.
2. items offered for sale should have end dates instead of going on forever.