Economic balance and whats needed to achieve it.

[Owl_Bundy]

1. Make all crafting materials dropped.
2. Make it so gold is almost worthlesss.
3. Have advanced crafting items require no-drop player crafted items to purchase.
4. Require Devs and Admins to have Damned Cheaters accounts and play characters using the cheats for 1 month before they take action to close loopholes.

[Eldran]

I would like to add two other thing to your wonderful list.

2.This one may not influence the actual economy, but would like to see it implemented. The ability to sell your item to the vendor, and another player can actually buy it off one of the vendors. Instead of it disappearing into, well where ever it goes, if not on the vendors list of items.

That's a really intriguing idea - and it could potentially be used to balance the economy. In a real economy price is driven by demand. If vendors ended up drowning in a particular item, then both the buy and sell prices would plummet.

Some MMOs also allow you to salvage equipment as an alternative to selling them. That not only stops equipment from disappearing into a virtual black hole, but it gives more combat oriented players a way to collect materials. Eg. instead of selling all their cheap rusty swords as loot, players could maybe take them to the equivalent of a recycling yard and exchange them for some iron.

[Liziana]

I would like to add two other thing to your wonderful list.

1. Keep the bots away.
2.This one may not influence the actual economy, but would like to see it implemented. The ability to sell your item to the vendor, and another player can actually buy it off one of the vendors. Instead of it disappearing into, well where ever it goes, if not on the vendors list of items.

YESS, YES, yessssss please! I used to love trawling round the NPCs to see what goodies I could find in EQ

[FoH_nonest]

YESS, YES, yessssss please! I used to love trawling round the NPCs to see what goodies I could find in EQ

As did I. I am also in favor of not having any type of auction house system. It would be much more interesting for players to develop their own regional markets.

[Maxxy]

YESS, YES, yessssss please! I used to love trawling round the NPCs to see what goodies I could find in EQ

I know,wasn't that fun?

[Linolea]

Active devs closing loopholes/cheats/dupes so that mudflation doesn't set in. The worst case in my playing memory was how VG's inflation erupted when duping became rampant. Stuff that was selling for 5-10gp (which used to be a lot of cash) was suddenly selling for over a plat (100gp = 1 plat).

Close down the cheat, and permaclose the cheaters accounts and any that traded huge amounts of gold with them (i.e. received the obviously duped gold).

[Ather]

Ahh, dumpster diving, how I miss thee. I found lots of awesome stuff doing that. Acrylia reinforced tradeskill stuff, batskull earrings, forest loops, and once I remember hitting the big time with something that was worth 7k in EC.. though I can't remember what it was, bleh.

Sad to see that go. I remember dinging 14 as a Druid in Faydwer, picking up SoW and heading off to Butcherblock docks to take the boat to Freeport and then onto Oasis. Part of the excitement of that journey was knowing I'd have new shops to dive through, with inventories that were particular to that area, and different to Faydwer's.

Dumpster diving rocked, it was a fun meta-game and its sad nobody features it anymore.

[Liziana]

Ahh, dumpster diving, how I miss thee. I found lots of awesome stuff doing that. Acrylia reinforced tradeskill stuff, batskull earrings, forest loops, and once I remember hitting the big time with something that was worth 7k in EC.. though I can't remember what it was, bleh.

Sad to see that go. I remember dinging 14 as a Druid in Faydwer, picking up SoW and heading off to Butcherblock docks to take the boat to Freeport and then onto Oasis. Part of the excitement of that journey was knowing I'd have new shops to dive through, with inventories that were particular to that area, and different to Faydwer's.

Dumpster diving rocked, it was a fun meta-game and its sad nobody features it anymore.

Shhhh...now you're making me want to fire up EQ again!

[FoH_nonest]

Ahh, dumpster diving, how I miss thee. I found lots of awesome stuff doing that. Acrylia reinforced tradeskill stuff, batskull earrings, forest loops, and once I remember hitting the big time with something that was worth 7k in EC.. though I can't remember what it was, bleh.

Sad to see that go. I remember dinging 14 as a Druid in Faydwer, picking up SoW and heading off to Butcherblock docks to take the boat to Freeport and then onto Oasis. Part of the excitement of that journey was knowing I'd have new shops to dive through, with inventories that were particular to that area, and different to Faydwer's.

Dumpster diving rocked, it was a fun meta-game and its sad nobody features it anymore.

It is definitely a sad thing. I think it's left out mainly because of auction house systems and just the overblown itemization of modern MMOs in general. EQ, after all, didn't really have ubiquitous greens, blues, purples, etc. Thus, just upgrading from rusty to bronze stuff was a huge deal, and finding magic items that you could afford on vendors was simply awesome.

[Izzy]

I think local econ's based on region/location would be awesome, specifically so when travel is involved simply to check for items.
Some may see this as a chore or see it as a hassle, I however think it adds both a sense of adventure and helps eliminate mass market selling to drive up/down prices on specific items. Especially when you're able to find amazing items at random locations scattered throughout the game.