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Garis

Market Musings: Reilly's Law Of Retail Gravitation

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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reilly's_law_of_retail_gravitation:

Put succinctly, "People generally patronize the largest market in the area"

This has good implications for the markets on Celebration, if properly applied. It means, roughly, that the distance that people are willing to travel to get to a certain market is directly related to the size, diversity, quality, reliability, and ease of accessing that market compared to the next closest one. The farther away your customer, and the more impediments to travel, the less likely they are to patronize your market in general.

But another way reading of the law reveals that, in the absence of a close, easily accessible market selling what they need, people will often just build their own tools and goods, or go without. So, larger markets OR smaller regional markets that are closer to population clusters both increase trade.

It also means that a server with a large number of well run, high quality markets that are situated near the player community can attract more players, crafters, merchants, and so forth from nearby servers.

The competition between the various markets on Cele has led to certain innovations in quality and convenience, not only for the customers (in terms of proximity to their settlements, for example), but also for the player merchants, which are the limiting factor in market growth. Amenities for crafters such as a secure, private workshop on site, seafront distribution for bulk merchants, and free advertising from the market owners are the new minimum offering on Celebration, and in order to compete for the best crafters and crofters, market owners are under pressure to offer them. And other innovations are on the way that will fundamentally reshape the playing field between the different markets.

More markets leads to more innovation, and closer proximity to population centers. Private markets leads to flexibility, adaptability, and experimentation.

The crafters, marketeers, and other players who stuck through the bursting of Cele's "new-server-bubble" are now ideally situated for the new phase of population growth and expansion we're going through. Emerging markets and continuous improvements to highway and harbor infrastructure help to enable the new phase of population growth throughout the server.

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Hehe, we should have a player-made Wurm 'zine that comes out bi-monthly or something. I'd enjoy reading articles and things like this in it, but that's a distant dream. ;)

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Ahhh, the innovative phrasing of this post drew my attention to it. Retail Gravitation to be sure. And you have hit upon a point within that hinders Wurm trade, crafting attractiveness and profit to a great deal, that being: " in the absence of a close, easily accessible market selling what they need, people will often just build their own tools and goods, or go without." Many a time, I have wanted a tool improved that can't be mailed or to purchase an upgraded weapon that can't be mailed and the results have been that I have "gone without".

More small markets dispersed throughout local areas of the servers will not resolve this problem since there are not enough superior crafters available to supply all of them with the desired items. Even a larger central market on a server still may very well not have the required specialized superior crafters to supply desired tools, weapons and armor. The farther from the edges of settled areas it is, the fewer of those players will spend their time traveling to it. On a very large server like Independence, the split in these requirements will make the failure of this concept even more apparent.

Add onto this the problem of having unmailable items that need to be improved subject to extensive travel times, scheduling for drop off and pickup, and the marketplace as a solution in retail gravitation breaks down even further. It is all a nice and pleasant experience for players who can easily access these local or regional marketplaces to browse through them for what may be there but beyond this they will never work as an effective solution to distribute goods to the playerbase and boost crafters profits, which would in turn make the crafting profession a more desirable one to participate in.

Then consider that these more well setup marketplaces basically depend upon one persons (or perhaps rarely a small group) vision and dedication to setup and perpetuate. When this person decides that they are no longer interested in what had initially attracted them to the project, the marketplace folds up and whatever market was established for those crafters goods is disrupted and fragments, further degenerating into frustrated customers and crafters that now have no more practical distribution process for their goods.

Back to the point that: "in the absence of a close, easily accessible market selling what they need, people will often just build their own tools and goods, or go without". This is a moot point that can not be achieved in Wurm in the first place, so it is misleading to imply otherwise with this statement, since the travel times, superior crafter population, tool/weapon improvement system, marketplace owners keeping them open, all put major impediments in it's path that can not be overcome with any marketplaces no matter how well designed and attractive that they might be.

The only real solution to this whole distribution system of goods and services within Wurm is to have either a Freedom Isles wide auction house or a *real* central Marketplace setup by means of an *Instant Portal Teleportation Device*. The IPTD to this *real* Freedom Isles Marketplace (FIM) would be my prefered solution where anyone would be able to build say a 2x2 vendor house once approved by the GM controler of this FIM. In turn, anyone would be able to build a portal on their deed to this FIM for easy and quick access. Add onto this the ability to mail all tools and weapons through mailboxes for improvement purposes, or otherwise, and you have the solution to the current fractured and ineffective system of marketplaces that do little to achieve what they claim to be their stated goals, which are doomed to remain little more than enjoyable projects that promote some local trade within shorter travel distances from them.

I am not trying to demean any positive steps that the marketplaces on Celebration (or other servers for that matter) have taken to make them more attractive to potential buyers and sellers alike but to merely point out that this is no viable solution for the distribution of crafter goods and services within Wurm. If Wurm players insist upon remaining in the dark ages in respect to this issue with this fragmented, time sink, individualistic marketplace approach, the results will continue on as expected, which has been shown time and again in the past.

As BobD. would say, don't need no weatherman to check the wind for the direction that this will take you (paraphrased). Anyways, happy marketplacing.....

=Ayes=

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I think you will find most people who have isolated themselves away from all of the markets will continue to do so, regardless of having a portal. We do not need an easymode button to get to the market. That's just lazy talk.

Not to mention it would kill my business. I am a bulk goods merchant in terms of goods I actually produce, but my main business is being a broker. The people who utilize my services once almost always come back. That's the beauty of this game is that we define our own world. The only reason we have markets is because players decided to establish them. If you're going to put in developer made markets there's no point in having a portal. Just make it an auction house that looks and functions exactly like wow, since that's clearly what the goal would be by making the portal.

There are many, many viable means for crafters to sell their goods. You can put up a merchant in a marketplace, you can advertise on the forums, you can advertise in Freedom chat, you can watch for people buying what you offer directly, or you can even go through people like myself who offer brokering services. Plus ideas people haven't even thought of yet that I'm sure someone will come up with and make a bucket of money off.

If I understood what the OP was trying to say correctly, I totally agree. I think the competition caused by the large number of markets that have been established on our server has greatly improve the experience market experience for buyers.

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North Cele needs a market....while all the current ones are great, they are a bit of a pain to travel to as they are still all basically 'centred' or at least in and around the same area. This kinda puts me off because i dont really look forward to an hour sail time when i might not find the item that i am looking for. Its the main reason i watch and buy the forum auctions/sell posts and not shop 'locally on server'.

Dont this this has anything to do with the OP....and sorry for that, but im just saying :)

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I think the competition caused by the large number of markets that have been established on our server has greatly improve the experience market experience for buyers.

Agreed. But, like many worthy goals, the buyer experience isn't something that can just be charged at head on, but must be approached indirectly:

make the crafting profession a more desirable one to participate in.

This is the key. It is, in my mind, the primary thing that a market owner should focus on, aside from location and access to the market. Attempting to be the 'seller of last resort' by sailing around and buying up goods from everywhere else to sell for a razor thin margin at your market doesn't scale, and can't be sustained without immense effort. And a "Craft All The Things!" approach is also unsustainable.

When this person decides that they are no longer interested in what had initially attracted them to the project, the marketplace folds up and whatever market was established for those crafters goods is disrupted and fragments, further degenerating into frustrated customers and crafters that now have no more practical distribution process for their goods.

This problem can be resolved by alliance mechanics, if properly employed. Also, the example of old Kami shows it isn't true--it was a struggling market with little buy-in from the local crafter community. But then the owner sold it, and under new management it's gone from dead and cold to glowing hot in a matter of days.

Can't blame Ayes for the doom and gloom. If I still lived on Independence, with its massive transportation times and monolithic, GM-owned, centralized market, my outlook might be as pessimistic as his.

North Cele needs a market....

I'm glad you agree. And, as the new owner of Ridgepoint, I can assure you that good things are on the horizon.

In closing,

C x T = k

The product of commerce and transportation cost is a constant.

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