I was referring to the practice of city-dropping to attack someone. When it was first introduced, I think that the primary intent was to allow players to move away from undesirable locations, and that using it for attacks was an unintended side-effect. But that's an argument that was hashed out long ago on the forums with no result.
As far as this...
Nathan05 wrote:... sell for a greater amount of money so your resources etc are safe and then sell a smaller amount back at the maximum possible price, it is uneccesary in my opinion to have a private marketplace. i have never once had anything i have put on the market for cheap stolen by someone else.
Yes you can do this, but it gets complicated, and time consuming when you have to scroll through hundreds of listings to find the maxed price resource. I have had had a few things swiped that I was trying to sell. I never posted on wc that I was selling them and never left them in the market for more than 30 seconds. Coincidentally, the ones swiped were usually within the first few
seconds.
These are the main benefits I see to a Private trade system.
1) Providing a one-transaction way assure that resources or treasure get to the person intended.
2) Being able to sell resources and treasure to people who play at different times than yourself.
3) Make it easier to get nuggets and resources to new players, thus encouraging them to keep playing the game.
And the negative...
1) People will use this to sell treasure and resources to themselves from alternate accts.
2) People will use this to help specific people to advance at an abnormal rate.
3) People will be less likely to spend coins on treasures if they are easier to buy on the market.