Gidget
As Bittty points out, the current Atysian economy runs largely on gifting and barter. Merchants are useful to those who have neither the connections to get gifts nor the skill to make their own gear, but realistically the usefulness of merchants drops precipitously once one hits Mainland and makes at least one friend.
I suspect that making merchants relevant again may not be possible without larger changes to the economy that I feel are beyond the scope of this discussion.
A few little tweaks could make things a lot better for those that are already selling a lot in the current system. Like the 14 days/64 slots, it would allow me to renew my items always on the same day of the week, that already would make it a lot easier.
I have usually 250+ slots used on the current resale, selling currently 30-40 items/stacks each day (still nearly double than before christmas!). At least half of my sales is equipment around q80/150.
Why I’m doing this? To earn lots of dappers? Lol, can make at least 10x as much in the same time with running crafting missions.
People are very happy and thankful about my offers! Thats the reason I’m keeping it up (for more than a half year now).