Trading is done in person. I should hope we never develop an 'AFK' trading system. WHY? Because we're here to Roleplay, and trading in person gives us a chance to roleplay the situation in character.

Planeshift is a medieval fantasy setting, and to think that anything completely automated exists within the world would only destroy the settings.

That was my guess, since the focus is on roleplaying, and that makes sense.

I saw in the description of one of the market days a request to limit how many items you have on display, to limit lag. It seemed like based on that description there was a way to put items up for sale. I'd like to create a merchant type of player, that can trade and move around goods, etc. It seems reasonable to be able to set up a market stall, with items listed for sale, and items I'd like to buy; however, I can also understand the desire to keep all aspects of the game RP'd.

I actually found a better description of the current economy here (http://planeshift.ezpcusa.com/pswiki/index.php?title=Dynamic_Economy#How_does_the_economy_work_in_PS_today). I think the current system is pretty good. Merchants can provide low-quality items, but the high-quality ones must be player-made.

To me, one of the most appealing aspects of EVE was the fact that nearly everything you could buy had to be made by a player at some point, and as such the entire economy was player-driven. It seems like this made the game much richer, knowing that there was this whole supply chain supported by actual players to provide the items, although their system makes transactions completely impersonal and wouldn't make sense here.

Thanks for your help