Of course I have. Intrepid server. It was plenty busy, but I didn't lag out. Unlike back in the day in Ultima Online at the Britannia bank . Now THAT was epic lag.

But they have employed methods since then to curb that to a large degree.

Lord of the Rings Auction House in Bree, Always crowded, no lag.

Star Trek Online Exchange. Always crowded, no lag.

Different MMOs use different methods to control player crowd lag. In fact, many times the lag is not actual lag, but the end user's system struggling to handle the graphics load because the specs are just barely within the system requirements. And a lot of time when there IS lag, IP tracing indicates a poblem somewhere BETWEEN the user and the server, so again it isn't the server lagging, but data being bottlenecked somewhere that the developers have no control over.

I won't say server lag never happens. I'd be lying if I did. But it is less of a concern these days than it once was.

Another approach to in-game economy, which is similar to some of what I already mentioned, is to make the economy player crafter-driven, but fully NPC facilitated.

Remove the ability to set one's own price on the items we craft and sell. If we want to sell somethin, we sell it to an NPC. When someone visits that NPC, the wares he sells are what we sold to him, marked up by 3x what he paid us for the items.

This way, it would remove more money than it puts in, which is one of the problems that plagues other MMO exonomies. Too much money flows into the economy and not enough flows out.

The seller would get his money up-front from the NPC, and the items on the NPC would have gotten there through players. Player driven... NPC facilitated.

That actually sounds like a vrey nice and worth thinking through idea. Only flaw I see is that you'd have to get rid of any and all possibilities for players to trade money/items for items with other players. Means no dropping gold/items to the world and no direct trading interface. Otherwise the players WILL circumvent the NPCs. Still the basic idea looks good to me.

I'd rather see "zone-wide" Auction Houses, i.e. one "channel" for trading in Skyrim, one channel in Morrowind, one in High Rock, and so on. So you'd basicly have to travel to a town in Morrowind to auction an item in the Morrowind zone. Likewise, you'd have to travel to a town in High Rock to auction an item in that zone. The "upside" with this (or atleast just what I find fun), is that the prices would vary throughout the world. An example:

A piece of ivory from Elsweyr (if elephants exist there), that is fairly easy to come by there, has been carried by a player to be sold up in Skyrim. This player takes the distance in consideration to the price, and sells his ivory for x4 times the price in Elsweyr. Which basicly creates "local" and "exotic" items of trade whereever you are.

The downside with this (apart from not having everything avaidible, instantly, from anywhere), depends on how the zones are used in the endgame. If the population ends up to just stay in one area - this idea gets nullified - but if everyone is evenly spread out, it could work. "Could".. work.

There is no need to eliminate direct trade. the result would be that players would do direct trades that cost less than what the NPC charges. That's a good thing. It would be a stupid player who would actually pay more for something in a direct trade that he can get for less from the NPC merchant.

The ideal direct trade price would be higher than what the NPC merchants pay out, but less than what they charge. But so long as EVERY item has a fair market standard price, then the prices players may charge for direct trades are kept under control.

The idea is not to remove freedom of trade, but to make sure that freedom of trade is not abused.

If i find a bunch of crap swords durring a dungeon crawl, I want it to be like in the regular Elder Scrolls games. I want to be able to go to a merchant and off-load my junk for a guaranteed price. As long as I get my money, I'm not going to care how much the merchant is going to resell the wares for.

The important thing for a viable player-driven economy is to make sure that whatever can be looted can also be crafted. Even epic loot, as subsequent end-game extensions are rolled out. While a piece of end-game content is the current one to go to for a bit of loot, it should be loot only. But when the next piece of content becomes the latest and greatest thing, then I see no reason why the previous content's loot shouldn't become craftable. Maybe it has a different look, so its clear who earned it by playing the content and who just bought it, but the more accessible gear becomes, especially if it isn't the current best in slot gear, then the more people will be inclined to go after it.

As many steps to keep players playing together should be taken. Otherwise you end up with elitism. "I did this raid so I'm better than you." How many horror stories are there about raid groups who reject people just because they don't have a high enough gear score? Level the playing field at the entry point of top-end content, and you will have more people willing to participating in it, and fewer people turned away because their gear isn't good enough.

Heck, Gear stats play a major role in the elder scrolls core series games, and only a fool would think the same won't be true in an MMO. But the more effort the developers put into creating a level playing field for whatever is the top-end content, the more cohesive the player base will be within itself.

So yes. If it can be looted, it should also be craftable, except maybe for the absolute best gear. But if second best is craftable, then whether I buy a sword from a merchant who bought it from a crafter, or if I won it from the last raid, It's just as useful for going after the latest best.

Now a guild can still put a prerequisite on who they let into the actual guild based on whether or not they have completed all current raids. But if a guild wants to do the latest raid tonight, but not enough people are on, then there doesn't need to be an unrealistic bar to forming a pickup group, even if those who join to fill out the group bought their gear rather than having earned it in a previous raid. Now if I was the guild leader and one of the pickup guys wants to join, I would say, We only accept members who have done all the raids and have earned all raid gear, and when you've done that, come back and see me. It allows a guild to maintain a standard while not restricting the potential of forming solid raiding groups.

Just to clarify, if I was that guild leader, I would encourage a mentoring program within the guild where members help hopefuls do the prerequisites. It helps when everyone has experienced everything, so nobody is clueless on something.

I would also lke to see a raiding loot reward system that pays out gear pieces in a fixed order, rather than just random drops. So maybe it goes in this order:

Armor, Boots, Gauntlets, Helmet, main weapon, secondary weapon, Bow, shield.

So that's 8 playthroughs of the raid in order to get everything. And in the raising ceremony of a potential new member, I would call upon the candidate to "Present Shield!" and when he does, I would say, "You are hereby recognized as a worthy member of [guildname]. Welcome [brother/sister]!

But if someone has never played any of the preceeding raids wants to join my raidgroup, and he's max level and geared up correctly, I won't turn him away.

A lot of people don't even bother with raiding because of all the elitism at the top that is only encouraged by gear that can only be obtained by raiding.

I like this idea quite a lot.

Seconded.

Brian