Auction house
A centralized marketplace where players list items for sale and others bid or buy outright, letting supply and demand set prices rather than fixed vendor rates. Diablo III's real-money auction house is the infamous cautionary tale — it undermined the core loot-drop dopamine loop by making the best gear purchasable, and was removed in a landmark post-launch reversal. World of Warcraft's in-game-currency-only auction house, by contrast, works because it channels player-driven economy without displacing the thrill of finding items yourself. Designers use auction houses to give trading structure and price discovery, to create secondary economic gameplay (flipping, market-watching), and to let players convert surplus loot into currency. Key decisions: currency type (in-game versus real-money, a decision with major design consequences), listing fees and duration, search/filter tooling at scale, and — the central question — how directly auction-house access competes with the game's own reward loop.
- Dev effort: Medium
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: mmo, arpg