This has been thoroughly discussed in the
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=103.0 thread. I suggest you read that thread as it contains some very good points on both sides of the debate.
This seems to be an issue that divides the PlanetMule community. There seems to be three positions:
1. Keep it like it is as I actively use it and it enriches the game
2. Keep it like it is as it was like that in the original game, we can change it later
3. It's obviously borken, so change it by [fill it your favorite solution here]
Personally I agree with position 3, though I have great respect for position 2. Position 1 is misguided, in my opinion. If there is a buyer willing to pay $X and a seller willing to sell at $X, but the transaction is stopped for any reason, an economist will say we have an inefficient market. I cannot believe that the original MULE developers would willingly introduce market inefficiency.
The way to prevent a player from gaining a plot, gaining food, energy or wossname, is to outbid him and buy it yourself.
When it comes to the "fill in your favorite solution here"-part, I will not advocate that players should be forced to buy something they don't want. Rather I think that you should be able to bid whatever you want, but if you don't really want it then you must (entirely) retract your bid thereby enabling others to buy instead. For land auctions this means that you must run all the way down to the initial price line, while for a goods auction it means that you must run down to the store's buy line. This provides one single solution for both auctions and should be easy to explain to new players (it's probably how they expected it to work, anyway).
