At that time, malls were very closed to new vendor placement. Many malls required private membership or joining their guild. Newer players didn’t get all that many opportunities. Vendor management was difficult; it took an entire afternoon to page a GM to remove an unwanted vendor. Also at this time, OSI had frozen house decay after the 9/11 attacks and housing was becoming extremely rare and costly. A castle mall could hold 95 vendors and would crash shoppers’ systems. The Green Grove house wasn’t self-owned, so it was hard to get the owner’s time to assist with placement issues. It was clear we needed our own building.
Then along came a happy little Small Marble Shop in the quiet hills north of the Desert of Compassion, Tram. For 6.5 million gold, it was purchased in March 2002 and soon opened for business. The only requirement demanded was the willingness of new vendor owners to keep their vendor stocked and looking good. Soon 28 vendors worked out of this small marble shop and the public went wild.
Along came AOS and all was well... until a total redesign of the vendor system ruined our mall. Where we had a few dozen vendors set up in neatly on all 3 levels, the old mall could NOW hold only 10 vendors max. We had no choice but to close down and move with a record number of visitors on the house sign for a mall standing alone. At the point of Publish 16 (7/2002), many malls vanished and many people quit the game. We stayed open as long as we could and then we found and moved to the modern building you will find open N/E the Yew cemetery today. With the introduction of Malas and an entire town just for vendor malls, this laggy-land of high prices will never include the R&PMM. We will serve Yew Tram Atlantic as long as UO is on-line.
The old Small Marble Shop at the time of being closed.
The origional design of the R&PMM at its current location.
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/slideshow/13810151
Here is the before and after the facelift from the orgional design to the new.
