Guild Wars 2

Now I never use to get this, but I’ve been getting it for a week or two…..

When I’m selling stuff I can sell about the first 10-12 items with no problem, then I get the “Error attempting to sell” problem and I have to close the TP.

I open up TP again and sell another 1-3 items and get the error again, and I keep getting the error from then on at every 1-3 items.

Every time I have to close the TP and start over, it’s REALLY annoying if I have a lot of stuff to sell.

Anybody else getting this ?

i have the same, very bad thing, the second time in 2 days.

This error has been in there since beta, it happens when you sell items too fast. Allot of people have made threads about it and the most any player has ever said about it is, it was placed there to stop bots or something. I don’t’ really think it would stop bots but yeah, when I’m flipping things I usually just have a browser open looking at other stuff while I wait a bit for the error to go away.

I don’t think it’s been there since beta, I never used to get it, I tried selling slower and I still get it.

Why should we suffer because Anet can’t deal with the bots, if it is that then they need to get their act together.

I wish an employee would chime in and explain this feature. This is a common problem and threads are also commonly made about it. Anet has yet to reply to any of them from what I’ve seen.

As a very active trader, this feature jams me up 10+ times per day at a minimum. I have lots of items to sell and I am continuously blocked from selling them in a reasonable time frame.

Count yourselves lucky you are even able to sell anything, I have been unable to use the mail or sell anything on the trading post for over 2 weeks with this error.

Ticket was raised, responded with “wait and see” response I waited.. I saw.. nothing happened.. they said it was escalated, and still nothing is being done.

This entire system should be reviewed as it’s crippling peoples gameplay.

and yes, I have been playing since beta and only seen this problem recently, and permanently, for my account. At least buying isn’t a problem, that’s something I guess.

I made 2 posts in the merged thread and to-day had 15 mins of using the TP now I have again the 502 error exception re proxy server again.

So the pattern is 15 mins for me then it goes down and the error appears.

The down time for repair last night has only patched for minimal time and yes its annoying to say the least. Mabe the new build that’s coming in the next hour or so will ratify the error on TP

Hello anybody there, is everybody getting this problem or just an elite few…………………

It’s not a bug. If you list too many items too fast you’ll get an error. This is not going to change. The program can/will only process so many items in a short time.

When you get the error, just wait thirty seconds and try again. If you pause a moment between items you can usually avoid it altogether.

I get it everytime everyday I use the TP

tolunart.2095:

It’s not a bug. If you list too many items too fast you’ll get an error. This is not going to change. The program can/will only process so many items in a short time.

When you get the error, just wait thirty seconds and try again. If you pause a moment between items you can usually avoid it altogether.

I don’t want to wait, and anyway I tried that and it doesn’t work.

The TP is hard work as it is, selling one item at a time, it’s slow.

tolunart.2095:

It’s not a bug. If you list too many items too fast you’ll get an error. This is not going to change. The program can/will only process so many items in a short time.

I can bid and buy as fast as I can click but I can’t sell.

Riddle me that.

how often you see this error is probably proportional to how fast your computer is and/or your internet. for me, I see it almost more often than items I sell.
as an anti-bot system, it’s less than worthless. the reason is that it inhibits people but bots deal with it just fine, allowing bots to greatly outpace people.
as alternatives, I’ve suggested a few in the past: can’t post more than 1 thing every 2 seconds. can’t post more than 500 things per day. ban the bots and no limits.

Mystic.5934:

how often you see this error is probably proportional to how fast your computer is and/or your internet. for me, I see it almost more often than items I sell.
as an anti-bot system, it’s less than worthless. the reason is that it inhibits people but bots deal with it just fine, allowing bots to greatly outpace people.
as alternatives, I’ve suggested a few in the past: can’t post more than 1 thing every 2 seconds. can’t post more than 500 things per day. ban the bots and no limits.

Nobody from ArenaNet has said it’s an anti bot measure.

Why would they put in an anti bot measure that looks like shoddy programming and/or low end servers and connections.

Doesn’t do ArenaNet any favours does it.

Solid Gold.9310:

Mystic.5934:

how often you see this error is probably proportional to how fast your computer is and/or your internet. for me, I see it almost more often than items I sell.
as an anti-bot system, it’s less than worthless. the reason is that it inhibits people but bots deal with it just fine, allowing bots to greatly outpace people.
as alternatives, I’ve suggested a few in the past: can’t post more than 1 thing every 2 seconds. can’t post more than 500 things per day. ban the bots and no limits.

Nobody from ArenaNet has said it’s an anti bot measure.

Why would they put in an anti bot measure that looks like shoddy programming and/or low end servers and connections.

Doesn’t do ArenaNet any favours does it.

If it was shoddy programming, it probably wouldn’t be quite as consistently appearing, but sporadic instead.
It has been here for a year, and is obvious to almost every single player that it exists.

A bug as huge as that wouldn’t have stayed an entire year. The chances that anyone at anet would admit putting in a nuisance on purpose is zero. If it was a bug, they would have said so after an entire year. The fact that nothing has been said or done means that it was intentional.

magic fly.2041:

A bug as huge as that wouldn’t have stayed an entire year. The chances that anyone at anet would admit putting in a nuisance on purpose is zero. If it was a bug, they would have said so after an entire year. The fact that nothing has been said or done means that it was intentional.

well… I can count on left hand the number of updates they’ve done to the TP since launch:
1 – added the ‘projected profit’ display
(in october: http://guildwars2.mmmos.com/?page=view&id=2587, this how it was: http://i.imgur.com/28M7T.jpg)
2 – added ‘ascended’ to the rarity list

It’s something they’ve ignored, so clearly not a priority. and since this error is not game-breaking, it doesn’t get addressed.
a friend of someone’s roommate’s sister’s bookie said that about a month after launch Anet had said it was intentional and to fight botting. obviously not a reliable source, but someone’s said it was like that. and since the search doesn’t work… anyone want to scan through the first 100 or so pages of the bug forum for us?

I will continue to advocate the delay is there to prevent the TP database from being overwhelmed by players and crashing. We are talking worst possible case, peak users everyone selling to the TP at once. So a fix number per time unit is set, running average, and the TP remains up, available to all.

3: Added the ability to preview items.

Get as mad as you want about it but if you go too fast you’ll get the error. List items in short bursts and take a break for a minute or two to let the system catch up and you won’t hit it.

I love it when people say it’s for listing items “too fast”. You would have to list items at the speed a computer illiterate 80-year old to never get this error.

I sold a several items a bout 12 hours ago and my amount in TP has stayed the same. Tested again with a low value sigil , sold but 17 bronze not added.

Could have been someone’s Legendary weapon.

It happened to me today for the first time. It never happened before.

the argument of delaying to even out usage is complete kitten.
say an update comes out and 1 million people need to sell their ectos before they plummet.
as is, 1 million people place 1 million sell listings.
say they all have 5 stacks. 1 million people place 5 million sell listings.
say they all have 10 stacks. 1 million people place 7 million sell listings, wait 10 seconds, 1 million people place 3 million sell listings. 10 million sell listings in 20 seconds.
if error was removed, that would be 10 million sell listings in 10 seconds. (1 second per listing)
while technically easier on the server, the amount of coordination needed to result in this is mind-boggling. 10 million people all clicking ‘sell’ at the same moment??? real lift would be closer to: 1 million people place 10 million sell listings in 12 hours.
stretching 10 seconds out to 20 seconds gives the server 0.023% more leeway in this time frame. there would be a bell-curve associated with how many sell listings over a period of time after the update, the peak probably being a minute or so after the update; having this delay will make the bell curve 0.023% wider and 0.023% shorter.
in short, it’s meaningless in the big picture but a pain in the kiester for the individual user.
the failed attempt at anti-bot theory is at least plausible.

You seem to be under the assumption that databases can handle 100s of thousands of queries, inserts or deletes a second. They don’t. At least on the kind of hardware ANet is likely to spend on it.

whoosh
fine, I’ll use more realistic numbers:
1,000 people listing 1,000 items, etc. etc. etc.
the point is that large groups of people do not coordinate to place sell listings at the same time. they do it over a significant period of time. extending how long it takes to list them extends that length by that same extension. so an extra 20 seconds added on to 12 hours makes almost no difference. If it really comes down to their needing to buy a server that can work 0.023% faster, they have bigger problems.

No you have to set some limits based on projected worse case access rates. The purpose of the delay is not to slow the individual down per se but cap the total number of requests per second so nobody or only a few will get a timeout issue. So by capping the rate an individual can post an item for sale multiplied by peak players accessing the TP thus caps the total number of requests.

Or do you want it to be whoever posts the fastest gets to post on the TP while you or others get timed out because you aren’t quite fast enough or simply have the misfortune of trying to post when so many others are? That’s what is trying to be avoided here by limiting number of posts per minute.

It say’s “Error attempting to sell”, an error, which I would call a bug.

It’s a pain, I could have 150 or so items I want to sell, I get the “So called” error every 2-3-4 items and I have to close and open the TP.

So it has a lousy message. If it included “please try again” would that make you happy. No reason to close and reopen the TP.

Behellagh.1468:

So it has a lousy message. If it included “please try again” would that make you happy. No reason to close and reopen the TP.

Only way to get it working again…………….

If your happy with the crummy message then live with it.

trying again makes it worse. it won’t let you post anything as long as you keep trying again. they updated it to do that somewhere around july.

Mystic.5934:

trying again makes it worse. it won’t let you post anything as long as you keep trying again. they updated it to do that somewhere around july.

its been going on a lot longer than that.

not the error. the error has always been there. before july, if you keep clicking ‘sell’, it will go through as soon as your time limit is up and you can sell again.
then they changed it so every time you hit ‘sell’ while on the time limit resets the timer.
I had fun with an auto-clicker one day and got the error for 2 straight hours while I watched a movie.

Mystic.5934:

trying again makes it worse. it won’t let you post anything as long as you keep trying again. they updated it to do that somewhere around july.

When it happens to me I just wait ten seconds then try again and it works. As long as you don’t rush and go clickclickclickclick it won’t happen. Just take more than five seconds per item and you should be fine.

tolunart.2095:

Mystic.5934:

trying again makes it worse. it won’t let you post anything as long as you keep trying again. they updated it to do that somewhere around july.

When it happens to me I just wait ten seconds then try again and it works. As long as you don’t rush and go clickclickclickclick it won’t happen. Just take more than five seconds per item and you should be fine.

5s………….so every time I did one sale I’ll have to time 3s before I make another one.

Generally speaking, yes. I find that I get the error when I get in a rush, like when I log in on my TP toon after a few hours and have a lot of items to flip. I get into a rhythm where I go clickclicksell, clickclicksell… and soon I start getting errors and have to wait. So if I go click…click…sell… and proceed at a slower pace, this doesn’t happen.

Anet is not going to change the way the TP works, it’s that way for a reason, whether you like it or not. Your choices are to proceed more slowly to avoid the error, or stop and wait when you get the error.

This is probably the most annoying thing everXD It’s been going on for months for me. I really wish they would find another way to do whatever it is that this is actually accomplishing.

magic fly.2041:

A bug as huge as that wouldn’t have stayed an entire year. The chances that anyone at anet would admit putting in a nuisance on purpose is zero. If it was a bug, they would have said so after an entire year. The fact that nothing has been said or done means that it was intentional.

There are many many bugs worse than this one that have been around for a year.

Lord Kuru.3685:

magic fly.2041:

A bug as huge as that wouldn’t have stayed an entire year. The chances that anyone at anet would admit putting in a nuisance on purpose is zero. If it was a bug, they would have said so after an entire year. The fact that nothing has been said or done means that it was intentional.

There are many many bugs worse than this one that have been around for a year.

Doesn’t mean they should stay for a year.

I really wish ANet could give us 30 seconds and explain what this is all about and if it’s here to stay or not.

This issue takes all the fun right out of posting multiple items on the trade market. Every night I battle this error message and I am beyond sick of it.

I stopped trading in high numbers because of it. Try listing 160 items as fast as you can. Tell me how it was an hour later. Blah.

I’m a little confused on how this works. I can understand the tp is getting a bit of an overload at times when a ton of people try to sell. But it gets annoying even at times when I get this late at night or in the mornings. The slowing down suggestion did work at first but not anymore :’(

Silverbleed.3169:

I’m a little confused on how this works. I can understand the tp is getting a bit of an overload at times when a ton of people try to sell. But it gets annoying even at times when I get this late at night or in the mornings. The slowing down suggestion did work at first but not anymore :’(

There are 3 theories right now about this:

- It’s an anti bot measure that fails at life.
- It’s an intentional feature that protects 1990’s era server technology
-It’s a legitmate error that has been ignored by Arena Net.

Things that set it off:
-Selling items quickly.

Things that don’t set it off:
-Buying items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard
-Bidding on items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard

I find that it will get set off anywhere from 5-10 items depending on how fast you sell. I can get it to trigger 100% of the time no problem in 10 items or less.

Dench.5968:

I really wish ANet could give us 30 seconds and explain what this is all about and if it’s here to stay or not.

This issue takes all the fun right out of posting multiple items on the trade market. Every night I battle this error message and I am beyond sick of it.

I stopped trading in high numbers because of it. Try listing 160 items as fast as you can. Tell me how it was an hour later. Blah.

But the thing is most players aren’t listing 160 items as fast as they can. They do a few, in the field or at a vendor and with blue/green salvage for luck they likely have even fewer items to sell. I’m guessing you are a dungeon speed runner so you want to dump your loot and get onto the next run.

As it is now you can burst sell a small number and then you get a time out. Or you can sell slower and not have a time out at all. That many items, 10-15 minutes.

Dench.5968:

Silverbleed.3169:

I’m a little confused on how this works. I can understand the tp is getting a bit of an overload at times when a ton of people try to sell. But it gets annoying even at times when I get this late at night or in the mornings. The slowing down suggestion did work at first but not anymore :’(

There are 3 theories right now about this:

- It’s an anti bot measure that fails at life.
- It’s an intentional feature that protects 1990’s era server technology
-It’s a legitmate error that has been ignored by Arena Net.

Things that set it off:
-Selling items quickly.

Things that don’t set it off:
-Buying items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard
-Bidding on items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard

I find that it will get set off anywhere from 5-10 items depending on how fast you sell. I can get it to trigger 100% of the time no problem in 10 items or less.

Pfft, 1990s technology. Show me a transactional database that can do multiple thousands of insertions and deletions a second on moderately priced servers then you have a point. It’s the insertion into the TP DB and the removal from your character’s DB that is the costly part. Bidding is merely a subtraction of coin and creation of a bid and queries can be deferred slightly without a player noticing but making sure an item is properly moved between the two, preventing “dupes”, keeping a record to allow rollbacks and restoration.

They ain’t Amazon and it’s not running on some Linux box under someone’s desk but you seem to overestimate the performance of a modern database that can be pummeled during peak hours.

Silverbleed.3169:

I’m a little confused on how this works. I can understand the tp is getting a bit of an overload at times when a ton of people try to sell. But it gets annoying even at times when I get this late at night or in the mornings. The slowing down suggestion did work at first but not anymore :’(

As I said earlier, the easiest way to keep loads down is to limit the sell rate at the source which is at the client (your copy of the game). Without that the alternative is when the TP is busy with players selling as fast as possible is other players being locked out because the TP database is overloaded. It would be rapid sellers get to sell while everyone else has to wait. This way can be annoying but if you are only selling a few items at a “slow” rate then you can.

It’s not the DB telling your client to put you in time out, it’s your client that’s saying “whoa there Tex, slow down”. Much easier to do it there. That means that you could be the only person using the TP and you will still hit the limiter.

When I get this error I just click on another tab and back. Usually clears it up.

Behellagh.1468:

Dench.5968:

I really wish ANet could give us 30 seconds and explain what this is all about and if it’s here to stay or not.

This issue takes all the fun right out of posting multiple items on the trade market. Every night I battle this error message and I am beyond sick of it.

I stopped trading in high numbers because of it. Try listing 160 items as fast as you can. Tell me how it was an hour later. Blah.

But the thing is most players aren’t listing 160 items as fast as they can. They do a few, in the field or at a vendor and with blue/green salvage for luck they likely have even fewer items to sell. I’m guessing you are a dungeon speed runner so you want to dump your loot and get onto the next run.

As it is now you can burst sell a small number and then you get a time out. Or you can sell slower and not have a time out at all. That many items, 10-15 minutes.

I’ve run under 25 dungeons in the past year. I’m a flipper.

Behellagh.1468:

They ain’t Amazon and it’s not running on some Linux box under someone’s desk but you seem to overestimate the performance of a modern database that can be pummeled during peak hours.

You’ve been selling that hard for a long time here. We both know you have no citations and what you’ve been saying is pure speculation based off your guesstimates on AN policy and hardware – in other words, as significant as an anonymous person on the internet.

None of us know for sure why it does it. AN can’t be bothered to answer.

Looking at this forums snail paced performance as an example of their equipment/services, you could be on to something, though.

First world MMO- problems.

Ethics.4519:

First world MMO- problems.

if it makes you feel any better i used to play MMO’s while living in 3rd worlds and I would still complain about things like this.

People don’t like stuff getting in the way of their entertainment time.

And saying it’s using 1990s technology is as equal as my “anonymous post”.

Have you worked with database servers, as in developing or maintaining them? I’m telling you unless you are willing to put in a metric ton of memory, which costs beaucoup bucks, performance is limited to a few thousand transactions per minute, like in the 2-3 thousand range, at most. And that includes queries. Insertion/deletion costs takes longer and therefore fewer of them can be done.

And no we aren’t going to be trading CVs here.

Then there’s the web server itself, remember the TP we see is simply a browser. We talk to the server, the server calls up the database server, the web server gets the OK and then you see the OK as the browser gets the OK from the web server.

Edit: And if for some miracle someone from ANet comes along and tells us that the reason selling on the TP is artificially slowed and it’s intended to allow equal access to all then what will you say and do? They’re wrong? They should spend the money on a better server infrastructure? It’s a flippin’ game. We aren’t even paying them monthly. And they probably have to use whatever equipment that’s already at NCSOFT’s two data centers or that they had standardized on.

I’m tired that so many people are spoiled on how fast computers are on TV or in movies. Guess what, they aren’t. Not the reasonably affordable ones (<$100K).

Behellagh.1468:

And saying it’s using 1990s technology is as equal as my “anonymous post”.

Have you worked with database servers, as in developing or maintaining them? I’m telling you unless you are willing to put in a metric ton of memory, which costs beaucoup bucks, performance is limited to a few thousand transactions per minute, like in the 2-3 thousand range, at most. And that includes queries. Insertion/deletion costs takes longer and therefore fewer of them can be done.

And no we aren’t going to be trading CVs here.

Then there’s the web server itself, remember the TP we see is simply a browser. We talk to the server, the server calls up the database server, the web server gets the OK and then you see the OK as the browser gets the OK from the web server.

Edit: And if for some miracle someone from ANet comes along and tells us that the reason selling on the TP is artificially slowed and it’s intended to allow equal access to all then what will you say and do? They’re wrong? They should spend the money on a better server infrastructure? It’s a flippin’ game. We aren’t even paying them monthly. And they probably have to use whatever equipment that’s already at NCSOFT’s two data centers or that they had standardized on.

I’m tired that so many people are spoiled on how fast computers are on TV or in movies. Guess what, they aren’t. Not the reasonably affordable ones (<$100K).

If Anet comes along and says “it’s like this due to hardware limitations” I’ll say “ok, thanks for the reply.”

GW2 is a polished game. Mostly. One of the glaring unpolished portions is the trade post, and one of the annoying things about the trade post is the error message. It’s not the end of the world, but there are continuous threads about it with many people wondering why it does that. The fact that it’s not being answered implies to me that it could be something worth hiding, and a hardware limitation in my opinion would not be worth hiding unless it was a real hot mess.

I’m a sys admin at a small university. I oversee our server environment but I don’t admin it typically. I worked alongside the director of IT to replace my works server environment, so I have some knowledge of hardware config and pricing.

Dench.5968:

There are 3 theories right now about this:

- It’s an anti bot measure that fails at life.
- It’s an intentional feature that protects 1990’s era server technology
-It’s a legitmate error that has been ignored by Arena Net.

Things that don’t set it off:
-Buying items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard
-Bidding on items as fast as possible with a mouse/keyboard

I love every and all things you said. well put!

Behellagh.1468:

Pfft, 1990s technology. Show me a transactional database that can do multiple thousands of insertions and deletions a second on moderately priced servers then you have a point. It’s the insertion into the TP DB and the removal from your character’s DB that is the costly part. Bidding is merely a subtraction of coin and creation of a bid and queries can be deferred slightly without a player noticing but making sure an item is properly moved between the two, preventing “dupes”, keeping a record to allow rollbacks and restoration.

As someone who owns a website with a database, I can confirm that my $6/month server takes about 6 seconds to do 10,000 database updates. I’ll test insertions and deletions for you later tonight.
If bandwidth was the issue, why can I buy things as fast as I can click? and I can buy things like 3 times faster than I could sell things if this error wasn’t there. selling should be insert-delete, buying should be delete-insert. (or maybe insert-update vs. delete-update). I see no reason buying and selling would have different bandwidth requirements.