Ideas to improve website-based trading, since a buyout seems impossible to implement:

Since trade, as you say, is an integral part of the game, at least make it accessible. The situation is really poorly managed.

These are some of my ideas that could improve the trading experience in the game.

AFK auto-detection after 3 minutes:

Set players to AFK status after only 3 minutes of inactivity and display it on the website.
If someone isn’t playing, they can’t trade, so this helps avoid wasting time for buyers trying to contact them.


Automatic rating system and penalties for ignoring whispers:

No player reports required : the trustworthiness score decreases automatically based on the number of whispers received from the website without inviting anyone to complete the trade.

Since mispricing an item can happen, leading to dozens of messages in seconds, thresholds should be set high to prevent unfair penalties. A price fixer won’t just ignore a few whispers—they’ll ignore hundreds.

Once certain thresholds are reached, trading restrictions should be applied:
Example penalties:
100 ignored whispers → 10-minute trade ban
500 ignored whispers → 2-hour trade ban
1000 ignored whispers → 24-hour trade ban
The trade block must be at the account level, not just per character.


Trusted seller badge:

Instead of only penalizing players, reward those who successfully complete trades initiated via the website with a trusted seller badge.

The requirements should be high, but the bonus should counterbalance the penalties from ignored whispers.

Example balancing: 100 successful trades remove the penalty for 20 ignored whispers. An honest player will always have more positive trades than negative ones.

Filter to block excessive whispers in a short time:

Implement a protection system that prevents a player from receiving more than X whispers in a few seconds, reducing spam caused by pricing errors.

There is no point in spending manhours on QoL features for the current system. The only thing that will make real difference is adding buyout.
Anything else is like adding makeup to a rotten corpse