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Armor and weapons are level based, meaning you can't equip them until you are of the required level and as you level you will out grow them require you to find new weapons. The really good stuff in the game is "attuned" to you meaning that once you equip it the item is becomes a no-drop item and can't be traded or sold.[/quote}
Attuned doesn't mean much really. All attunable means is that the buyer will become the permanent owner of it. The most damage will come from people that hit high end mobs and sell the equipment for real life cash or in game money that they later sell for in game cash. It might take highly skilled players, but not unheard of (people in EQ1 are hitting AoW with 18 players just to sell the loot for eventual real life cash).
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Tradeskilling is set up so that you have to physically be there to do them, using macros will not work like in EQ1. Crafting an item is a long drawn out process, not just a click and you done. This will cut down on the number of tradeskill items available for sale. Really good trade skill items require rare drops to complete them, and I mean RARE drops. 3 months of beta and I only found 2 rare drops myself which was used to make a spell.
Macroing is still possible, but will take a much more skilled programmer to make software to do so and is not likely to be a huge concern off the bat. The crafting process will hurt cash cows though. Most recipes require you to make atleast 1 ingredient from raw materials you harvested yourself. If you make something from buying all components from a vendor, it shouldn't sell back to a vendor for profit unless it's a bug. In addition, crafting takes much longer than it does in EQ1 simply because you have to go through the time of making each object instead of just clicking a button.
[quote]From what I saw in beta, all drops are at least semi common, meaning something may drop out of every 10 kills, and this item may only sell for a couple copper or silver pieces. I didn't see one mob that dropped currency.
Correct, currency does not drop from mobs. There might be 1 or 2 that might, but not likely intended to do so. Any cash that enters the world will come from items sold to a vendor or as a quest reward. Most items dropped by common mobs don't sell for large sums of cash either. Can't speak for high end stuff, but 1 - 20 mobs dropped stuff that mostly sold for 1 to 2 silver. There are no Hill Giants loaded with large sums of coins or creatures that frequently drop diamonds that sell for 190p each that I know of. Also, they based currency demoninations on 100 instead of 10. Meaning, it takes 100 copper to get 1 silver, 100 silver to get 1 gold, and 100 gold to get 1 platinum. Roughly speaking, 1 platinum in EQ2 = 1000 platinum in EQ1.
However, despite all the money sinks and other stuff, it's inevitable that buying and selling in-game items, toons, and money will occur. Most damage, as always, will come from people who sell high level toons to profiteers (so they can harvest high end mobs), people who exploit bugs and aren't caught, and the people who simply buy in-game stuff from players for real money and then sell the items to someone else for profit. The only thing SoE can truely do to discourage this stuff is to bring legal action against major groups/businesses providing such a service. Sounds silly to do, but I'm sure SoE could prove any number of damages from those who violate this part of the Terms of Service. Whether it's financially worth-while or acceptable is another question entirely.