gkz

Don't see how you could state that with certainty. Whether they are losing money or not depends on the average spending of each player with queue vs without it. It requires fine-tuning for which you and me don't have the data for. Second part is a slippery slope, since I spoke for the auction house and nothing else. There's a point to be made that it might affect how live the server appears to be, which in turn may affect the actual "liveness", and that can be discussed, but that's a different issue.

Auction house is an NPC where you put your items and the price you want to sell them for, so you don't have to setup a shop and can log off. Other people can use the auction house to see the item and buy them. When someone buys the item the adena is sent to you via in-game mail. Live servers have this, and it should greatly reduce the number of shops.

Of course, people can stay online for any arbitrary reason, like hitting NPC or just sitting afk in CH (I do that). However, arguably a lot of these PC shops that take active player spots will disappear if there is an auction house to put your items in.

The hundreds of player shops and people fishing are one of the reasons there are long player queues. I understand that these long queues generate revenue for NCSoft by pushing people into buying VIPs, but at some point this has to be resolved. One very easy way to do it is to introduce the auction house, and I think players should be asking for it.