The big day is here! Our whole team is proud to achieve this milestone for our service.

As part of our official launch we’ve made the following improvements:

• Fun new homepage to better introduce PlayerAuctions
• Buyers: Free Pizza Promotion – when you place 3 orders between our Official Launch and Dec-31 we’ll give you a free Papa John’s Pizza!
• Sellers: Zero commission fees for your first 5 game currency orders!
• The average delivery time for game currency sellers is now automatically calculated and displayed to further add to the transparency of our marketplace
• Improved market price comparison charts
• Other miscellaneous improvements

We have a lot of free pizzas to give away, so start trading!

It is almost time.

All of us at PlayerAuctions have worked many a moons to officially launch the most secure place for players to buy and sell MMO game assets. I'm very happy to once again say, it is almost time.

In our official launch update, we will be adding several features that we have been preparing for the past few weeks, including another new (better!) look. Click the image below to see more. I betcha you can't guess the promotions we'll be holding for buyers and sellers in light of our official launch. No, really, I betcha.

PlayerAuctions will leave open beta and officially launch in the early hours of November 11^th, 2008. Blink, and you'll miss it :-)

Yesterday we completed a significant update to PlayerAuctions that included the following enhancements:

• Further refined player-to-player order handling for buyers and sellers, including a redesigned My Account homepage that provides improved access to, and information about, your order activity.
• Payment methods expanded to include Google Checkout.
• Enhanced and expanded game currency market price charts and comparison tools show how much you save when ordering on PlayerAuctions.
• The currency Bulk Offer Upload system is no longer only available to PowerSellers, all sellers may now freely use it!
• Improved currency shopping experience for buyers:
  • Less confusion! We’ve removed the Single-Unit Currency Offer format; all currency offers will now be Multi-Unit Currency Offers.
  • Less clutter! The maximum number of active currency offers a member may have in a single market (game > server > faction) has been reduced from 5 to 1.
• Simplified powerleveling and game guide offer management; a single offer for each these product types will now appear across all servers in a given game.
• Improved support for more web browsers, including Google Chrome & Safari
• Improved feedback graphics (cool smileys instead of wimpy hearts)!
• Lots and lots of usability enhancements and miscellaneous bug fixes.

We’re now getting near to the end of our open beta period, and our official launch is just on the horizon. Exciting times lie ahead.

Until next time, safe and happy trading!

Starting shortly after midnight PST tonight, Wednesday October 30th, PlayerAuctions will conduct planned maintenance for several hours. While no trading will be able to occur during this time, we will be releasing a significant update to our trading platform that will include many exciting enhancements.

A summary of the changes will be announced shortly after the update is completed.

Occasionally, an enhancement we develop will change our website in a way that we think is best to first notify our community of in advance.

Today’s post is the first of these occasions. We’ve found Single-Unit Currency Offers to be introducing unwanted complexity for our members, especially first time buyers. As one of many other enhancements scheduled for our next system release early next month, we’ll be merging Single-Unit and Multi-Unit Currency Offers together. The result will be a more simplified buying and selling experience; and perhaps a few more orders for our sellers.

Don’t worry about any negative impact to offers you may post before this change goes live. All the offers that were created using the current system will be smoothly transitioned to the new system.

For some time now PlayerAuctions has scanned game currency prices from multiple sources across the web. In our last release we enabled a feature that gives our members access to this data so that buyers may more clearly see the benefits of making their purchase on PlayerAuctions.

So far we’ve only been testing this feature on a limited basis with our PowerSellers. The response we’ve gotten has been very positive, and with our next release, all sellers will be able to enjoy this feature to boost their orders.

It’s been a few months since I’ve made a long overdue update to our blog. During this time we’ve been listening to your feedback and working hard to release a number of enhancements, including:

• The world’s first secure player-to-player game account trade service
• Improved checkout and order handling processes, including:
  • Clear visibility into when your disbursement / refund will be processed
  • Improved on-site messaging
  • Easier dispute resolution
• Streamlined seller registration
• Game currency market price comparisons (see how much you save on PlayerAuctions!)
• And so much more...

There are many more exciting updates that we’ll soon be releasing to the site. Over the coming days I’ll share a series of posts with information on what’s to come. Check back again soon.

It’s been nearly two weeks now since the launch of our Open Beta, and so far the response from the community has really outmatched our expectations. As I write this update, there are now well over 35,000 For Sale Offers and Wanted Offers posted across over 1,100 MMO games and servers. In World of Warcraft US alone, there is now over 35,000,000 WoW gold for sale at prices that give buyers and sellers a better deal than can be found elsewhere.

PlayerGuardian has also been a phenomenal success over these past two weeks. Our whole team is very proud to announce that even with all the thousands of dollars in transactions being processed each day on PlayerAuctions, each buyer’s order was delivered or has been refunded, and not a single seller was impacted by a fraudulent payment. Never before has there been a marketplace for players across all MMO games in our region of the world to directly, and securely trade their digital assets. Together, we’re all a part of this better future.

There is also positive news to share regarding the future ability to securely buy and sell game accounts on PlayerAuctions. Given the strong progress we’ve made here over the past two weeks, it can now be announced that we will be officially launching secure account trade services during the month of June. Until this time, and for your security, please be sure not to post any account offers as this violates our Offer Policies.

We’ve also released some updates tonight to further enhance our marketplace.

• Community Contests: For a limited time only, we’ll be giving away a free 2007 BlizzCon card once each week to a very lucky PlayerAuctions member. If you’re not familiar with this incredibly rare item, they were exclusively distributed to participants in the 2007 BlizzCon. The cards provide beta access to Blizzard's next MMO as well as a World of Warcraft Murloc costume.

We didn’t stop just there either. We’ve also kicked off a weekly Screenshot & Caption Contest that should be fun and rewarding for the whole community to participate in.

• Featured For Sale Offers: We have implemented phase 1 of this feature. Currently, this section will only be available to our PowerSellers whose For Sale Offers will be randomly selected for inclusion. Rest assured we have many more plans to further enhance this high visibility area of our homepage in the future and open it up for more members to participate in.

• And more: Numerous other bug fixes and feature enhancements have also been completed.

Until next time, let us know your thoughts. As always, we will be listening.

Best regards,

Josiah

Managing Director
PlayerAuctions

With great excitement we welcome the MMOG player community to open beta of the new PlayerAuctions. It has been a real pleasure to see the communities’ interest in the big things our team has been hard at work developing. Today we mark a new, more secure era in player-to-player trade, and the beginning of a better future for all MMOG players.

Open beta will only last for a short while. We’ll be using this period to receive further feedback from the community and polish up our new website. Additionally, over the coming days we’ll be publishing the remainder of our key policies, agreements, and guidelines to help players fully enjoy the protections we offer. Please don’t mind the dust during this period, and take note that all transactions are real, and are protected by PlayerGuardian.

So… What’s New?

We have added key new features and upgrades to our player-to-player marketplace.

• PlayerGuardian – will keep you, your payments, and your trades protected. Buyers will enjoy guaranteed delivery or their money back. Sellers will revel in unparalleled protection from payment fraud.

• Going global – enhanced support for international player-to-player trade lets you connect to more trading partners than ever!

• Greater bargains – Shop securely and discover great loot at great prices!

• Easier currency exchange – trade your game currency with greater convenience.

• Expanded communication methods – contact your trading partners more easily than ever before.

• Convenient delivery coordination – easily setup delivery times and locations for your player-to-player trades!

• All-day support – our Customer Service team is now available 24/7!

• Updated design – Wow, colors!

Before You Get Started

Please take note of the following information to make the best of your beta program experience.

1. Accounts from the old PlayerAuctions have been successfully transitioned to our new website. Users who have previously registered may sign in using the same username and password as before.
2. To further strengthen the unparalleled security on the new PlayerAuctions, any individual user may only have 1 account. Two or more accounts from a single user will result in a permanent suspension from our website. For this reason, please take care not to register multiple accounts.
3. All offers you create are real offers, involving real transactions, and real money. As such, please maintain accuracy in all your offers during and after the open beta program period.
4. For more details about our policies, or any inquiries relating to our website, please do not hesitate to contact us for help.

As a final note, throughout our journey at PlayerAuctions we’ll be using this blog to communicate with our members, as well as the overall MMO community for topics we believe are important to you and our digital worlds. Be sure to check back often!



Well, now what are you waiting for? Start securely trading!

Josiah

Managing Director
PlayerAuctions