Hmm… except maybe for the identically named zone “The Bazaar” in EverQuest which functions almost the same and was released with Shadows of Luclin back in 2001? I’m genuinely surprised no one has mentioned that in this thread.
That being said The Bazaar in EQ allowed you to search the current merchants for specific items and would tell you were the vendor(s) which have that item are located within the bazaar. You still had to run over to them (and hope that a player was actually selling said item at the time ofc) to buy, but it allowed convenience while also enabling window-shopping.
One thing that also hasn’t been mentioned (unless I skimmed past it) is that you could potentially be able to list “buy orders” along with your items for sale. I could imagine an implementation that allowed you place both, and then players that see your shop could potentially fulfill your buy orders and make a pretty penny for themselves.
I also think it should be okay to search for items within your current Bazaar offerings (similar to how EQ did it), since it’s not a perfect knowledge search (since your Bazaar is only a subset of available vendor listings). It would be QoL without enabling the “instant BiS” behavior that EHG appears to be avoiding here.
Personally I’m a fan of the proposed system, but I really want to see how it plays out first. There’s a ton of possibility for making it useful without overtaking the actual gameplay imo. Perfect knowledge trade systems, like AHs from WoW, enable players to amass huge fortunes without ever leaving the AH. Simply buying low and selling high you can become rich in those systems (which is one reason why most BiS aren’t tradeable in MMOs). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems EHG wants to avoid that pattern of gameplay in LE.