SWG which was also an SoE game had a system where you purchased an npc, gave them your goods, set prices and they would sell for you while you played the game. So you could play your character and still have a vendor up. Not sure why this wasn't implemented here as well but still a very nice feature.
This is something that was in Ultima Online originally. You just rented a vendor to stand outside your house to sell for you.
The only problem I have with the new offline system is how they put all items individually. So if you are selling stacks of a tradeskill item it lists them for pages, so the last person to put their trader up has the top 50 slots and are more likley to sell. I will put my items up and then go offline only to see my price pushed all the way down over time and the other person who matched my price sells like crazy.
EQ2 has basically the same functionality as the auction house in WoW implemented through their broker system. It's actually a bit better in that you pay a premium to buy it directly from the broker at a markup (10% normally, 5% if the person has a vet reward container) or you can travel to the person's house and buy it there at face value. The reason I say this is better is that I've run across some of the coolest houses when I went to buy something and ended up spending an hour+ exploring the residence.
I like the feature and think it's a great addition to EQ. One extra for this I would love to see added is the ability to have transaction notification. What I mean is, i have 200 of Item X for sale. Someone buys a stack. The trader system sends an email to my email address on file for the account notifying me of the transaction. No real utility in that, I don't think, other than just letting me know when my stock might be running low so I can restock.
