Merchant Archive

Just wondering if anyone has ever suggested making a galatic type newspaper? Something we could go to and pay 100 credits to buy and have it list vendors and their specials for the week. Merchants could pay some kind of fee to advertise in it. A good money sink for the economy and a spam killer too.

I've seen one or two attempts at this - in-game newspapers sent by mail that have one or two adverts in them. They've not really been a success - in fact, I wanted to start one myself a good few months back, and put out a call for advertisers on my (then) galaxy forums - not one response.

AFK spamming will always be free and SP-free, but unless you have two accounts it's not ideal even for those with no compunction about word-littering! Not much else you can do when you're afk-spamming - perhaps a bit of hand-crafting if you've a suitably-equipped droid, but that's about it. And AFK-spamming limits you to a geographical area - the range is 64m for a /shout or an /announce, isn't it? Hardly global or even galactic coverage!

It's a mystery to me why I've not come across more in-game periodicals that are supported by advertising. I suppose one of the reasons is that we have no way of making any sort of text-based object... if you could do a factory run of 1000 'holo-papers' and get everyone in your guild to put them on their vendors and all the major bazaars for a couple of hundred credits, things would be different. As it is, you have to send them by mail and manage a mailing-list completely without any automated support, which I guess would be a real pain in the RRRRs.

Actually, just occurs to me that some way of producinga permanent written record (like a holo-paper or datadisk that you could put a load of text on) would have masses of uses. CIty information leaflets in a kiosk (merchant tent) by the shuttleport, instructions on how to programme your droid, guidelines on the best sort of weapon for customers to choose, tips for maximising your armour, programmes for entertainers' performances, rules for a PA or city, regulations for player-run events, etc etc etc. The could just be semi-permanent - they could certainly decay after a couple of months with no problem, as the original text would probably be on someone's notepad and a new schematic could be produced in no time.

I've gone off-topic, haven't I? Sorry!

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Aethal Sar, Weaponsmith. Retired from game - probably missing it already!

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I was think more along the lines of something like a media terminal. Like the Bazaar terminal. Where for a fee the merchant is allowed say 20 lines in a particular category (i.e. weapons). to advertise their wares. I'm no merchant but I am tired of searching all over to find what I want/need. I would be willing to pay a fee to use the terminal to look at the advertisements so I could possibly locate what I want with out having to travel to 4 diff planets just to find one item. I'm not saying people would always be truthful or the like, just that I would love the opportunity to locate goods / specials with out wearing out another pair of boots.