[knowom]

I wouldn't even have a Bazaar type of market place and keep it 100% bartering like EQ classic Freeport/Tunnels. The prices fluctuate instead of being a fixed undercutting of the bottom end price or a marginal market up on bottom end prices for low volume high commodity items if your a flipper.

Classic's player bartering market is really closer to the stock market where values change constantly and you need to learn trends a bit and adjust your buying and selling habits a bit based upon them. The more you study the market the better your decision making will be in general.

It's really more difficult to control the market in said system than with the Bazaar which is far more predictable anyone can easily undercut a price or buy a cheap item and mark it up if the going rates are directly in front of them to look at.

I'd also like to point out the AH in D3 completely failed and EQ's economy was really more healthy prior to Bazaar even though it did add convenience particularly for the ones in the best position to control the market itself.

I think the best way to add longevity is to ensure items never go out of style to begin with make them progressively upgradable to a extent much like UO had different grades of magic weapons and armors. Build them into a crafting system take 2 of a particular item and combine them to form a superior grade version of itself the bonus can be minor, but over time obviously you can build upon it.

This would keep the items always in demand much like we continuously build and enhance upon stuff in the real world just look at the smart phone industry as one example that's evolved by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years.

I agree with most of those bullet points though. I do think the large scale raid element is a bit of a poor situation for the masses it creates too much politics and detracts from just creating a fun game environment. You can still have a fun and challenging game without resorting to crazy political nonsense. I also agree that bots and boxing ultimately spoils the game in a lot of ways it waters down the social grouping aspect of the game unfortunately.

In real life I don't typically hang out with 12-18 people nearly as regularly on my own free time as I would 6 people. It's really a bit obnoxious to be expected to emphasize that as a common game play aspect to me personally.

I think providing a mix of solo friendly content with group content that's both hard and easy for both play styles is ideal. Couple that along with a reasonable bit of raid content about 1/3 of overall game content perhaps without huge social barriers to participate in that varies from easy to hard in difficulty.

Also progression can be really poor and dodgy at times it shouldn't be overly easy or difficult and for the most part more in between the two, but can lean a bit more on one side or the other at times.

I actually think in terms of spawn designs you really need a lot of variety when you want to increase difficulty and challenge, but keep things more bland with less variety where you want it easier. The harder and more rewarding group content should be more structured on better overall group balance though shouldn't always be same sort of group balance make up that is often the case. I'd say that enchanters are often undervalued more than they perhaps should be healers can be overvalued and tanks very undervalued it's too seldom that you'd ever want two tanks in a group.

I think that MOBA/DOTA really gets to the core of balanced team group mechanics that would be more ideal for MMO's to strive towards. You've got carries, supports, assassins, mages, fighters, tanks, ect...and different situations require different tactics and adapting to them a bit. I'd like to see more group team tactics than well I'm a healer so I spam heals and that's pretty much it that's a really tired formula for MMO genre as a whole. Having different class armor branches for different play style variations would be a really nice way to change things up sort of like WoW has with class skill trees which could be race or deity based perhaps.