I remember the rationale being used by Verant, back at the time when they introduced the Bazaar...
What a lot of you are either selectively remembering, or simply forgetting altogether, is the fact that back in the day, a lot of lowbies used to complain about the constant /auction spam in the EC and GFay zones. It made it harder for beginners and lowbies to sort through the spam and hook up with groups. It also interfered with those folks who enjoyed roleplaying (remember roleplayers?).
Additionally, there were often complaints about occasional griefing from high-level players, who were primarily in lowbie zones to buy and sell things... but who also got bored sometimes and decided to "go mess with the n00bs." For example, I remember an occasion where some high level players charmed the EC griffon, buffed him, and then sent him on a rampage of terror all over EC... slaughtering players and NPC's alike. Not cool. Hilarious to be sure, but totally uncool... especially back in those days before PoK books, when a dead player might have to run back from five zones away to reclaim their corpse.
So to respond to all of those complaints... which had been going on for YEARS by the time Luclin was finally rolled out... Verant in their wisdom decided that they could eliminate a lot of headaches by creating a faction-neutral and centralized location for player trading to take place. Hence the inception of the Bazaar.
At the time, I was like most of you. I had become so accustomed to the GFay and EC tunnel trading scene that I wrinkled my nose at the Bazaar. For a long time, I refused to use it at all. But after awhile, I found myself reluctantly agreeing with Verant's reasons for creating it.
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